This paper outlines the main assumptions of relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson 1985, 1995, 1998, 2002, Wilson & Sperber 2002), an inferential approach to pragmatics. Relevance theory is based on a definition of relevance and two principles of relevance: a Cognitive Principle (that human cognition is geared to the maximisation of relevance), and a Communicative Principle (that utterances create expectations of optimal relevance). We explain the motivation for these principles and illustrate their application to a variety of pragmatic problems. We end by considering the implications of this relevance-theoretic approach for the architecture of the mind. 1

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This paper questions the widespread view that verbal communication is governed by a maxim, norm or convention of literal truthfulness. Pragmatic frameworks based on this view must explain the common occurrence and acceptability of metaphor, hyperbole and loose talk. We argue against existing explanations of these phenomena and provide an alternative account, based on the assumption that verbal communication is governed not by expectations of truthfulness but by expectations of relevance, which are raised by literal, loose and metaphorical talk alike. Sample analyses are provided, and some consequences of this alternative account are explored. 1

This paper is designed to illustrate and consider the relations between three types of metarepresentational ability used in verbal comprehension: the ability to metarepresent attributed thoughts, the ability to metarepresent attributed utterances, and the ability to metarepresent abstract, non-attributed representations (e.g. sentence types, utterance types, propositions). Aspects of these abilities have been separately considered in the literatures on “theory of mind”, Gricean pragmatics and quotation. The aim of this paper is to show how the results of these separate strands of research might be integrated with an empirically plausible pragmatic theory. 1

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Within the philosophy of language, pragmatics has tended to be seen as an adjunct to, and a means of solving problems in, semantics. A cognitive-scientific conception of pragmatics as a mental processing system responsible for interpreting ostensive communicative stimuli (specifically, verbal utterances) has effected a transformation in the pragmatic issues pursued and the kinds of explanation offered. Taking this latter perspective, I compare two distinct proposals on the kinds of processes, and the architecture of the system(s), responsible for the recovery of speaker meaning (both explicitly and implicitly communicated meaning). 1. Pragmatics as a Cognitive System 1.1. From Philosophy of Language to Cognitive Science Broadly speaking, there are two perspectives on pragmatics: the `philosophical' and the `cognitive'. From the philosophical perspective, an interest in pragmatics has been largely motivated by problems and issues in semantics. A familiar instance of this was Grice's concern to maintain a close semantic parallel between logical operators and their natural language counterparts, such as `not', `and', `or', `if', `every', `a/some', and `the', in the face of what look like quite major divergences in the meaning of the linguistic elements (see Grice 1975, 1981). The explanation he provided was pragmatic, i.e. in terms of what occurs when the logical semantics of these terms is put to rational communicative use. Consider the case of `and': (1) a. Mary went to a movie and Sam read a novel. b. She gave him her key and he opened the door. c. She insulted him and he left the room. While (a) seems to reflect the straightforward truth-functional symmetrical connection, (b) and (c) communicate a stronger asymmetric relation: temporal sequence in (b) and a causeconse...

It is now over 25 years since Paul Grice, in his William James Lectures, sketched a theory of utterance interpretation based on a Co-operative Principle and maxims of truthfulness, informativeness, relevance and clarity (Quality, Quantity, Relation and

As a post-Gricean pragmatic theory, Relevance Theory (RT) takes as its starting point the question of how hearers bridge the gap between sentence meaning and speaker meaning. That there is such a gap has been a given of linguistic philosophy since Grice’s (1967) Logic and Conversation. But the account that relevance theory offers of how this gap is bridged,

This thesis is about the reconciliation of realistic views of rationality with inferential-intentional theories of communication. Grice (1957; 1975) argued that working out what a speaker meant by an utterance is a matter of inferring the speaker’s intentions on the presumption that she is acting rationally. This is abductive inference: inference to the best explanation for the utterance. Thus an utterance both rationalises and causes the interpretation the hearer constructs. Human rationality is bounded because of our ‘finitary predicament’: we have limited time and resources for computation (Simon, 1957b; Cherniak, 1981). This raises questions about the explanatory status of inferential-intentional pragmatic theories. Gricean derivations of speakers’ intentions seem costly, and generally hearers are not aware of performing explicit reasoning. Utterance interpretation is typically fast and automatic. Is utterance interpretation a species of reasoning, or does the hearer merely act as if reasoning? Within the framework of cognitive science, mental processing is understood as transitions between mental representations. I develop a traditional view of rationality as reasoning ability, where this is essentially the ability to make transitions that preserve rational acceptability. Following Grice (2001), I claim that there is a ‘hard way’ and a ‘quick way’ of reasoning. Work on bounded rationality suggests that much cognitive work is done by heuristics, processes that exploit environmental structure to solve problems at much lower cost than fully explicit calculations. I look at the properties of heuristics that find solutions to open-ended problems such as abductive inference, particularly sequential search heuristics with aspiration-level stopping rules. I draw on relevance theory’s view that the comprehension procedure is a heuristic which exploits environmental regularities due to utterances being offers of information (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). This kind of heuristic, I argue, is the ‘quick way’ that reasoning proceeds in utterance interpretation.

this paper). But this is not B-R's view; his whole enterprise rests on the assumption that sentences encode propositions, truthevaluable entities. Yet, the sentences at issue appear not to be fully propositional AND the default implication induced by the CTB is non-truth-conditional; it seems to follow that utterances of this sort do not actually express a full proposition, so do not have determinate truth-conditional content