Relevance-theoretic Perspective Research Articles

Examining interlanguage pragmatics from a relevance-theoretic perspective: Challenges in L2 production

AbstractThis paper explores three pragmatic challenges that learners of Japanese as L2 encountered during their study abroad programs and work placements in Japan. These challenges are examined within the framework of Relevance Theory. Research on interlanguage pragmatics of L2 Japanese is limited in scope, as studies mostly focus on speech acts and other sociolinguistic and interactional strategies. As a result, researchers have yet to formally establish how learners of Japanese have difficulties in regard to their production of meaning. This study draws on open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to determine the pragmatic competence of L2 students across two Irish universities. The study demonstrates that learners have difficulties with processing both linguistic encoding and phenomena that involve inference. That is, learners’ inability to activate their pragmatic competence hinders their ability to produce communicative acts. Findings lend support to the need to enhance pragmatic competence among L2 learners through specific cognitive processes. This paper also contributes to the need for interlanguage pragmatics to be pursued in conjunction with current developments in Relevance Theory. It is argued that ideas developed within Relevance Theory can be particularly beneficial to the teaching and learning of pragmatic competence in the L2 classroom.

A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to the Subtitle Translation of Farewell My Concubine

This paper investigates the subtitle translation of the film Farewell My Concubine from a relevance-theoretic perspective. The Chinese film Farewell My Concubine has been well-received in China as well as in other parts of the world and marked a milestone in Chinese film history. Its subtitle is rich in Chinese culture-loaded words, which may pose difficulties for both the translator to translate and for the oversea audience to understand. To explore the reasons for the warm reception of the subtitle translation of Farewell My Concubine among international audiences, this paper takes a relevance-theoretic approach to analyze the translation of culture-loaded expressions in the film, including mainly three types: Beijing Opera jargon, the Beijing dialect, and Chinese idioms. Through a detailed case study, this paper finds that the translator flexibly uses different translation strategies, such as domestication and foreignization, for different texts and contexts to cater to the audience’s cognitive environment. Meanwhile, the translator also takes into account the features of subtitles, which are often limited by time and space, and accordingly makes reasonable omissions of the translated texts. From the perspective of relevance theory, the translator realizes optimal relevance and delivers the subtitle information accurately to the target audience. This paper also proves that relevance theory, as a cognitive pragmatic approach to communication, is a useful tool for translation studies.

Novel veiling and concealing euphemisms in political discourse

Abstract This qualitative research explores the differences in the interpretation of novel veiling and concealing euphemisms from a relevance-theoretic perspective. I argue that the relevance of an utterance containing a novel veiling euphemism is established (1) via the adjustment of its linguistically encoded meaning so that it communicates the meaning encoded by a dispreferred expression, which is derived as an explicature, or (2) via its linguistically encoded meaning, derived as an explicature, and the meaning encoded by a dispreferred expression, recovered as a strong implicature. The relevance of an utterance containing a novel concealing euphemism is established via its linguistically encoded meaning, recovered as an explicature, and via weak implicatures. The recovery of weakly implicit content is not essential for inferring the speaker’s meaning.

Narrowed and Broadened Concepts: A Contribution to Current Issues and Future Directions

As standardly conceived in truth-conditional pragmatic theory, particularly from a relevance-theoretic perspective, lexical adjustment can be effected by a pragmatic process of ad hoc concept construction. Studies of ad hoc concept construction fall into two types: early (or traditional) and current (or later) studies. According to the early studies, ad hoc concept construction is claimed to be accommodated univocally. While this is so, it is, in fact, viewed as falling into two varieties: narrowing and broadening. On the other hand, although current studies developed out of a concern with certain issues connected to the traditional conception of ad hoc concept construction, they seem to retain these two varieties. The current paper takes issue with the two-directional approach to ad hoc concept construction. It is argued that the specific approach is based on a line of argument detracting from descriptive rigor and parsimony. It is also argued that it has unfavorable implications for theoretical assumptions that are well-established in pragmatic theory. In this light, it is proposed that the dual view of narrowing/broadening needs to be dispensed with, along with the labels sustaining it, in the interest of a genuinely coherent view. Ultimately, the discussion offered in the present paper is intended as a potential contribution to the currently developing or later approach to ad hoc concept construction.

Discrepancies in poetic discourse: A translation process from a relevance-theoretic perspective

This article intends to demonstrate a process that assigns a poem translation practice to relevance theory (RT). As a theoretical account and approach to human communication, it has enjoyed increasing popularity in translation studies around the world. After this article describes Ernst-August Gutt's account built on RT, it elaborates on a translator's inferential processes on a chosen concrete poem entitled ⟪走不出逝去的心境⟫ from Chinese-to-English and tests a hypothesis that Gutt's statements could guide a translator for the practice of this language pair. The discussion unveils the translator's relevant workings in the poetic context and serves its purpose in two folds. One is to validate the hypothesis, and the other is a call for more empirical demonstrations to circumvent limitations imposed by the account on reflecting affective states. This article elucidates an underexplored area of translation studies with the processing from a translator's point of view of a realistic working situation, accesses the interface between the translation process and product, and points out potential inquiries to be explored.

Deceptive clickbaits in the relevance-theoretic lens

Abstract This paper explores the nature of clickbaiting as a form of viral journalism from a relevance-theoretic perspective (Sperber and Wilson 1995; Wilson and Sperber 2012). The focus is on deceptive clickbaits, i.e., manipulative internet headlines whose interpretation, based on the way they are worded, leads to opening an information gap, thus luring the reader into clicking on the link provided with a view to increasing the website traffic. It is highlighted that such headlines exploit linguistic underdeterminacy, and unlike felicitous headlines, which provide an accurate representation of the article content and therefore play the role of relevance optimizers (Dor 2003), deceptive clickbaits induce recipients to generate interpretations which arouse their intense curiosity but are ultimately incompatible with the article’s content. The paper shows how relevance theory can explain the interpretation bias that the reader of deceptive clickbaits falls prey to and advances the idea that there is affinity in this respect between deceptive clickbaits and jokes.

Subtitling quality assessment from a relevance-theoretic perspective

Abstract Assessing the quality of translation is never straightforward and rarely objective. Context, audience, text type, function and lexis are only some of the criteria that need to be taken into account. In the case of constrained intersemiotic translation, subtitling being a prime example thereof, determining universal criteria for assessment is particularly testing. Often referred to as “necessary evil”, audiovisual translation (AVT) needs to avoid distracting the audience, while aiding their comprehension of the audiovisual message. This is particularly the case for additive AVT, for instance subtitling, where the translation does not replace the original, but coexists with it. Relevance Theory, a controversial but flexible approach to communication, may provide a viable framework for gauging subtitling quality. The interplay between relevance, communicative intention and processing effort can help explain the rationale behind the process of decision-making in the practice of AVT. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for the application of Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory to interlingual subtitling, followed by an analysis of selected examples from a large corpus of mostly English-language movies, series and documentaries streamed on Netflix with Polish subtitles. Though the corpus is Polish-centred, the research conclusions are intended to be universal enough to apply regardless of the language pair.

Typographical iconicity and the communication of impressions: A relevance-theoretic perspective

AbstractThis article studies the cognitive and communicative effects of typographical iconicity in poetry from the perspective of relevance theory. It argues that the visual aspect pertaining to an instance of typographical iconicity conveys a sensory impression, which perceptually resembles elements of the semantic material represented via the typographical iconicity’s lexical aspect. It is suggested that the non-propositional information relating to this impression can trigger the derivation of a wide array of weak implicatures which can combine to form an impressionistic and indeterminate cognitive state described within relevance theory as apoetic effect. Furthermore, since the added effort, which the typographical iconicity requires to be perceived and processed, is offset by the derived implicatures, the use of typographical iconicity may be said to produce anoptimally relevantlevel of processing.

Syntactic constraints on relevance: The case of causal pre-position in Modern Greek

This paper aims to investigate the pragmatics of pre-posing a subordinate clause from a relevance-theoretic perspective. In order to pursue this investigation, it initially looks into the case of Modern Greek (MG) causal subordination, as in ‘He came back, epiδi (because) he loved her’, with a focus on the type of meaning attached to pre-posed subordinate clauses in reversed configurations, as in ‘epiδi (because) he loved her, he came back’. Based on the results of this causal exploration, we reach the more general conclusion that the syntax of pre-position (of any type, i.e. causal or otherwise) is used to trigger a level of pragmatic meaning, which can be treated rigorously and comprehensively in typical procedural terms. More specifically, we conclude that the pre-posing of a subordinate clause serves as a syntactic constraint on contextual information. This constraint is employed to communicate a procedure that leads to the unobjectionable acceptance of the main clause (while its realization is pending) as potentially relevant to the communicated content of the subordinate clause. In this sense, this procedure can be said to contribute additional import to the overall interpretation of a conjunction.

Theory of autistic mind: A renewed relevance theoretic perspective on so-called autistic pragmatic ‘impairment’

Autism is typically characterised by impaired social communication, with pragmatic deficits commonly attributed to diminished theory of mind abilities. As such, autistic communicators have traditionally been used as a test case to evidence the explanatory power of relevance theory for ostensive-inferential communication.11The use of identity-first language (i.e. autistic woman) rather than person-first language (i.e. a woman with autism) is a considered one, and reflects the overall preferences expressed by autistic self-advocates and their allies (see Botha et al., 2021; Kenny et al., 2016). However, recent studies have begun to demonstrate the various difficulties that non-autistic people also have in understanding autistic people, such as problems in inferring autistic affective and mental states. These findings support the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012), which argues that intersubjective problems between autistic and non-autistic individuals are rooted not in one individual's deficient cognitive system but in a mutual failure to reach consensus. This paper challenges the way in which relevance theory has traditionally been applied to a so-called autistic pragmatic ‘impairment’ but argues that relevance theory—and in particular its central concept of mutual manifestness—may still offer crucial insights into these breakdowns of mutual understanding between autistic and non-autistic people.

The role of humorous elements in Cádizchirigotasin creating/reinforcing a local identity

AbstractThis paper adopts a relevance-theoretic perspective to analyse howchirigotas – one of the types of bands in Cádiz carnival – exploit a series of verbal and visual comic elements in order to create or reinforce local identity: (i) the names of the bands, (ii) their attire, (iii) gestures and (iv) the lyrics of their comical songs, which satirise, mock, criticise, ridicule, praise, flatter or censure events or states of affairs. These elements will be argued to make manifest assumptions, activate (private) mental frames or express attitudes about those events or states of affairs, which the audience discover are already manifest to, and shared by, its members. Checking that other people entertain similar assumptions about and/or have similar attitudes towards those events or states of affairs – i.e. the ‘joy of manifestness’ – will be shown to be essential for generating a feeling of in-group membership on which that of a local identity greatly depends.

Discourse Markers in Learner Speech: A Corpus Based Comparative Study

Having a vital role in organizing conversational interaction, discourse markers (DMs) are considered to be a significant part of communicative competence. From a Relevance Theoretic perspective and combining insights from corpus linguistics and second language acquisition research, this study is an attempt to explore how non-native speakers of English (NNS) use the DMs in their spoken language. Following the framework of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA), this study is based on two specific corpora: Turkish sub-corpus of The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI-TR) for NNS speech and The Louvain Corpus of Native English Conversation (LOCNEC) for native speech. The occurrences of DMs in both corpora were determined using inferential and descriptive statistics. The findings of the study are discussed in connection with implications for language practitioners and syllabus designers in the field of language teaching.

On Using and Realising Irony in Comparative Advertisements: A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

On Using and Realising Irony in Comparative Advertisements: A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

Identity inferences: Implicatures, implications and extended interpretations

This article considers how ideas from relevance-theoretic pragmatics can be applied in understanding the construction of identity in interaction, while presupposing that consideration of ideas about identity can make a significant contribution to pragmatic theories. While previous work on pragmatics has focused on the construction and performance of identity, this has not been much discussed in work from a relevance-theoretic perspective. For illustration, the article refers mainly to a video recording of a UK House of Commons Select Committee session on drug addiction. While the video provides considerable relevant data about identity construction, the article does not develop a detailed analysis of the video or the extracts it focuses on. Instead, it uses them to argue for the usefulness of relevance-theoretic ideas in understanding identity and impression management. The ideas focused on are that communication can be stronger or weaker (i.e. it can be more or less clear that particular assumptions are being intentionally communicated), that there is no clear cut-off point between very weakly communicated implicatures and non-communicated implications, that interpretation generally involves going beyond what the communicator intended to derive the addressee’s own conclusions, that the effects of communicative interaction include more than the derivation of new assumptions and that adjustments to ‘cognitive environments’ (the sets of assumptions which are accessible to individuals at particular times) can continue after interactions take place. These ideas can be useful in a number of areas including in understanding identity in general, literary identities, attitudes to language varieties, the production of communicative acts and the teaching of spoken and written communication.

정치캠페인 속의 아이러니, 그리고 적합성

정치캠페인 속의 아이러니, 그리고 적합성

Pragmatic Understanding of Linguistic Landscape : A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

This study aims to decipher linguistic landscape from a relevance-theoretic perspective in the hope of further broadening the exploration of linguistic landscape research. Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) is incorporated to answer three questions: (1) Why do viewers focus on linguistic landscape? (2) What is the cognitive mechanism when viewers noticing linguistic landscape? (3) How do viewers identify the intended meanings of linguistic landscape? The analysis uncovers that attention paid to linguistic landscape is on the grounds that it is an input relevant to the mentally represented assumptions of the addressers and exerts a “positive cognitive effect” (Sperber & Wilson 1995, §3.1–2) in a context which may strengthen, revise or yield implications of an existing assumption on one hand. On the other hand, in light of optimal relevance, the relevance-guided comprehension heuristic can be utilized by the viewers as a sound approach to identify the communicator's meaning of linguistic landscape.

A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective on (Im)politeness Issues in the CB Radio Discourse of Polish Drivers

This paper has two major objectives. The first objective is to present the phenomenon of CB radio discourse of Polish drivers and discuss its main features. The second goal is to analyse two of these features from the angle of the (im)politeness issues, using the perspective of Relevance Theory. The first part of the paper is devoted to a general discussion of the phenomenon under scrutiny: the socio-cultural background of the CB radio discourse as well as its basic linguistic features are presented. In the second part of the paper, I discuss Escandell-Vidal’s approach to politeness within Relevance framework (Escandell-Vidal 2004) and integrate the model with the habitus-based definition of politeness (Bourdieu 1977; Watts 2003). The final part of the paper shows how the integrated approach can be used to examine two major aspects of the CB radio discourse: its conversational structure and the use of diminutives.

A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF YEAH AS A DISCOURSE MARKER

The paper attempts to explain English native speakers’ use of the discourse marker yeah from a relevance-theoretic perspective (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). As a discourse marker, yeah normally functions as a continuer, an agreement marker, a turn-taking marker, or a disfluency marker. However, according to Relevance Theory, yeah can also be considered a procedural expression, and therefore, is expected to help yield necessary constraints on the contexts, which facilitates understanding in human communication by encoding one of the three contextual effects (contextual implication, strengthening, or contradiction) or reorienting the audience to certain assumptions which lead to the intended interpretation. Analyses of examples taken from conversations with a native speaker of English suggest that each use of yeah as a discourse marker is able to put a certain type of constraints on the relevance of the accompanying utterance. These initial analyses serve as a foundation for further research to confirm its multi-functionality as a procedural expression when examined within the framework of Relevance Theory.

Qualifying insults, offensive epithets, slurs and expressive expletives

AbstractThe category of insults comprises disparaging qualifying terms, derogatory epithets, racial/ethnic slurs and participle-like expletives. All of them channel speakers’ (negative) psychological states, so they are considered expressives. Despite the enormous interest that they have aroused, research has not duly addressed whether all types of insults communicate in the same manner, share the same nature and make a similar contribution to communication. This paper ventures some answers from a relevance-theoretic perspective. Relying on theshowing-sayingcontinuum and on theconceptual-proceduraldistinction, it argues that some insults merely show speaker’s meaning, others encode some conceptual load enabling them to communicate by saying and others communicate by an admixture of both. It also contends that some insults encode conceptual content and processing instructions, but others encode instructions alone. Their output, however, is complex, as it may trigger lexical-pragmatic processes adjusting the encoded conceptual load or psychological-state representations.

Lying and Misleading within the Philosophy of Language: A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

The aim of the paper is to examine the lying/misleading distinction from a relevance-theoretic perspective (cf. Sperber and Wilson [1986] 1995; 2004; Wilson and Sperber 2002; 2012). On standard accounts, the distinction is drawn parallel to the saying/implicating distinction. ‘What is said’, rooted in Grice (1975), has been subject to extensive discussion and numerous reanalyses under a variety of terms (see, for example, Recanati 1993; Bach 1994; Carston 2002), but no agreement has been reached as to the content of ‘what is said’ and the borderline between ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’. Accordingly, within the philosophy of language the attempts to capture the lying/misleading distinction (Meibauer 2005; 2011; 2014ab; Saul 2012ab; Stokke 2013; 2016) rely on different notions of ‘what is said’. The paper is an attempt to take a stance in the debate on the distinction under discussion from the perspective of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson [1986] 1995; 2004; Wilson and Sperber 2012), which is a cognitive extension and modification of Gricean model of communication and has been seriously concerned with the elaborated concept of what is said, known as ‘explicature’. One of our goals is to see how the relevance-theoretic understanding of “what is said” (Carston 2002; 2009; 2010; Carston and Hall 2012) affects the lying/misleading distinction, and the other way round. In an attempt to provide ground for the relevance-theoretic account, a critical overview and comparison of the existing approaches to lying and misleading is also presented.