I am new to this list. I have read Sperber and Wilson (1986) once only.
I have a concern and would like to know your opinions on whether relevance
theory might bear on it, or whether it would be a matter for some other area
of linguistics.
Suppose sentence (1) is uttered by a person looking right at me, in a room
with only the two of us:
(1) The Melvin Hall dormitory is on fire.
Now the total interpretation that I draw from that utterance will be
influenced by many things. Three of those things are:
(a) suppose the utterer is my boss; or
(b) suppose the utterer spoke (1) very loudly and quickly, while waving his
arms, and that this manner of speaking is not typical of the utterer; or
(c) suppose the utterer is known to be inconsistent, often untruthful, and
generally unreliable.
It seems to me that in cases (a) and (b) I am going to be willing to invest
more cognitive processing effort, and in case (c) less effort, than in a
neutral situation.
Does relevance theory have something to say about how and when we take
things such as (a), (b) and (c) into account? Are there articles that
someone could recommend, that might touch on considerations such as these?
Thanks in advance for your advice,
Hanno Beck
banneker@progress.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Oct 03 2004 - 20:02:36 GMT