Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T16:03:51.059Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Relevance, Reference and Procedures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2019

Kate Scott
Affiliation:
Kingston University, London
Get access

Summary

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the main ideas and principles of relevance theory. The cognitive and communicative principles of relevance are introduced, along with the notion of procedural meaning. The roles that these principles and concepts play in utterance interpretation are discussed. Attention then turns to reference with an overview of Wilson’s (1992) relevance-based account. The importance of the role of accessibility of context and referents in understanding the process of reference resolution is highlighted. Focus then turns to the cognitive process of referring itself. The act of resolving reference is presented as the process of mapping argument slots in the logical form of an utterance onto conceptual files. Referring expressions are a means by which a speaker can guide a hearer in this process. That is, they are procedural in nature. As with other interpretive processes, reference resolution is driven by the presumption of optimal relevance. The processes of mapping an argument slot onto a conceptual file and enriching that conceptual file are driven from the bottom-up by the semantics of the verb and constrained from the top-down by considerations of relevance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Referring Expressions, Pragmatics, and Style
Reference and Beyond
, pp. 9 - 36
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×