UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9 (1997)
Relevance-theoretic pragmatics and
modularity
ROBYN CARSTON
An interesting issue for any mentalist approach to pragmatics is whether the utterance
comprehension system is an autonomous processor within the overall cognitive system or
consists
of processes carried out by an unencapsulated central inferencing system. Two approaches to
pragmatics which claim to involve modular subsystems in utterance understanding are
discussed
(Barton's contextual submodules and Kasher's pragmatic competence systems) and their
modularity claims are found to be unwarranted. Then, a recent shift within relevance theory
towards a modular view of pragmatics is outlined; some of the evidence supporting it, some
of
the
questions it raises and some of its implications are discussed.
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