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The current paper aims to investigate the distinctions in meaning between two prototypical markers of contrast in Modern Greek, i.e. alla and ma, from a relevance-theoretic viewpoint. At first sight, the two markers seem freely interchangeable across contexts, creating the impression that they basically share the same meaning. However, a more careful exploration of the contextual occurrences of these markers unravels their finely grained distinctions in meaning. This type of exploration requires a detailed categorization of the types of context that license or preclude the application of the markers at hand. In this sense, specific contexts highlight aspects of interpretation that motivate the use of one of the markers but not the other. Specifically, as it turns out, while the use of alla is chiefly associated with contexts of procedural elimination, in standard relevance-theoretic terms, the use of ma is justified in relation to expressing the speaker’s attitude of surprise to a contextual assumption constructed by the hearer, in addition to effecting procedural elimination. In this sense, ma proves to encode a dual constraint on the implicitly communicated content of an utterance, explained univocally in procedural terms.

The Default hypothesis on implicature processing suggests that a rapid, automatic mechanism is used to process utterances such as “some of his family are attending the wedding” to infer that “not all of them are attending”, an inference subject to cancellation if additional contextual information is provided (e.g. “actually, they are all attending”). In contrast, the Relevance hypothesis suggests that only context-dependent inferences are computed and this process is cognitively effortful. This article reviews findings on behavioural and neural processing of scalar implicatures to clarify the cognitive effort involved.

This paper presents an application of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) to pictures by studying the role that weak implicatures may play in the persuasiveness of multimodal argumentative discourse. We take a relevance-theoretic approach to the discussion of visual and multimodal argumentation with a particular focus on the role of onomatopoeia. To examine the possible mechanism by which persuasion operates through onomatopoeia, we analyse a corpus of Japanese-style comics (manga), where visuals and verbal text interact to convey onomatopoeia. We argue that the use of onomatopoeia in manga contributes to the recovery of weak implicatures which, in turn, helps to reinforce the persuasiveness of the communicated messages in the examples analysed.

The alleged vagueness of visual images and the lack of a univocal coding scheme make it difficult to be sure about the propositions to which image-makers are committed. This is particularly problematic for the analysis of multimodal discourse from an argumentation studies perspective, because it makes it hard for the analyst to establish the argumentative nature and relevance of visuals. The paper explores how insights from Relevance Theory can be applied in order to determine the commitments of image-makers. In particular, it has recourse to the inferential processes involved in the recovery of explicit and implicit content in order to analyse a series of covers from The Economist, where visuals in combination with verbal text cue allusions to films and paintings. It argues that these multimodal allusions are not simply used to attract the audience’s attention but also help the analyst to reconstruct the argument of the cover.

Rubio-Fernández (2013) is a noteworthy instance of the recent efforts of grounding speculative pragmatic models into empirical research. However, it also shows that between pragmatic theories and the relevant psycholinguist research there are still conceptual gaps. Specifically, Rubio-Fernández reports two studies concerning emergent properties, that is, properties that are not associatively activated by related concepts but need to be inferred thanks to contextual information. These studies seem to show that emergent properties are activated by an early integration of associative and inferential processes and this is taken as evidence in favour of one-stage over two-stage models of pragmatic processing. I analyse the relevant notions of associative and inferential process in terms of, respectively, automatic activation of directly accessible information and consciously sustained activation of indirectly accessible information. These are not, however, the notions adopted in the pragmatic models considered by Rubio-Fernández. At a closer analysis, therefore, none of these models is fully compatible with her evidence. My line of argument is based on a crucial, but too often ignored, distinction between two meanings of “associative”: as a behavioural description of cognitive processes and as a model for their implementation. I also illustrate some consequences of neglecting this distinction.

Wilson and Sperber purport to reveal several problems in Grice’s approach to irony and propose the echoic account for explaining ironic communication. In this article, I claim that some of the criticisms Wilson and Sperber level at Grice’s view are not well founded, whereas others can be addressed from a (neo)Gricean approach. I also note certain weaknesses in the echoic account. Finally, I propose the Asif-Theory, which is based on Critical Pragmatics and is Gricean in spirit, for explaining irony from a pragmatic perspective. This theory develops (and corrects) Grice’s ideas on irony, but it also accommodates powerful aspects of the echoic account and articulates a full-fledged theory for explaining ironic communication.

The goal of the paper is to show that relevance theory provides a theoretically sound framework for describing properties of expressions traditionally known as hedges in a consistent manner. In relevance-theoretic terms, hedges may be regarded as special linguistic expressions developed to guide hearers in the interpretation process, indicating the need for adjusting lexically encoded concepts. A closer look at several representative hedges: sort of, like, typical, regular and real, reveals that hedges may be re-classified according to how they interact with ad hoc concepts. Whether they are conceptual or procedural, hedges may signal: broadening (sort of, regular, real), narrowing (typical) or either of these processes (like). With regard to broadening, it turns out that at least two different types of this process may be distinguished, illustrated by the hedges sort of and regular/real, which introduce approximations and metaphors, respectively. It is also proposed that the classification should be expanded to accommodate Lasersohn’s “slack regulators” such as exactly (and possibly very) as expressions encoding a procedure to restrict the extent of broadening. Finally, properties and behaviour of different types of hedges may shed some light on the nature of procedural meaning.

This paper examines how categorization accounts handle cases of novel metaphor which involve “category-crossing” (e.g. “Her mind is a jungle”, “His life was a skiff with no oar”). I provide a stringent characterization of the cases I have in mind and show that the relevance-theoretic account of metaphor (Carston, 2002; Sperber and Wilson, 2008) as well as other central categorization accounts (Glucksberg, 2001; Recanati, 2004) lack the resources to explain such cases. An adequate categorization account, I argue, cannot avoid incorporating the central element of rival, comparison-based, views: analogy. I show how this might be done within a categorization framework.

Recent experimental studies appear to discredit Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor. I argue that appearances are decidedly misleading here and that Gricean accounts of these figures of speech are actually confirmed by the studies in question. However, my primary aim is not so much to defend Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor as it is to motivate two related points: one substantive and one methodological. The substantive point concerns something Grice suggests in his brief remarks on irony: that the interpretation of an ironical (vs. metaphorical) utterance requires two distinct applications of second-order theory of mind (ToM). I argue that such a view has considerable explanatory power. It can explain an intuitive contrast between irony and metaphor, some interesting data on the ToM abilities of patients with schizophrenia, and some intuitive similarities between irony on the one hand and hyperbole and meiosis on the other. The methodological point concerns the relationship between the empirical psychologist’s (or experimental philosopher’s) experimental studies and the armchair philosopher’s thought-experiments. I suggest that the credibility of an experimentally supported claim is enhanced when it captures the reflective judgments captured in the armchair philosopher’s thought-experiments.

According to truth-conditional pragmatics, a word may contribute an ad hoc concept to the proposition expressed, that is, something that differs from the concept the word encodes (the lexicalized concept). In relevance-theoretic lexical pragmatics, ad hoc concepts are treated like a species of concepts proper. Concepts as well as ad hoc concepts are taken to be atomic. Lexical pragmatic adjustment is conceived as the formation of an ad hoc concept that is narrower or broader in extension (or both) than the lexicalized concept involved. We argue that difference in extension should not be taken as the crucial feature of lexical pragmatics, since ad hoc concepts can have the same extension as the lexicalized concept. In contrast, we propose a positive view of ad hoc concepts as clusters of information poised to be used in inference. (Surprisingly, ad hoc concepts turn out not to be concepts at all.) The cluster account drops the assumption that ad hoc concepts are atomic and can therefore provide a satisfactory explanation of lexical pragmatic adjustment.

The last decade witnessed a surge of new research in pragmatics, fuelled by the emergence of new theoretical frameworks, an increased interest in the semantics-pragmatics interface, and the establishment of experimental pragmatics as a new research paradigm. Many of these developments concern the line of pragmatics which originated with the work of H. Paul Grice. Of new theoretical frameworks, we may mention different variants of optimality and game theoretic approaches, localist semantic theories of embedded implicatures, logical globalist formalisations of Gricean pragmatics, and multi-layered semantics for conventional implicatures. At the same time, research in older frameworks such as Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean pragmatics continued, and new investigations of speech act and presupposition theory emerged. This development led to a diversification of theoretical approaches, a synthesis of which is desirable but not to be expected in the near future. This issue is intended as a contribution to the enhancement of mutual awareness and the discussion of each other’s results.

Relevance theorists have claimed that successful communication need result only in similarity, not identity, of mental representations across communicator and addressee. Cappelen and Lepore have criticised this stance, partly on the basis that any definition of similarity must make reference to identity. Accepting this point, Kjøll (2010) argued in this journal that Relevance Theory has an appropriate notion of identical "shared content", in the shape of relevant contextual implications. While this is convincing on a technical level, Relevance Theory owes no such concessions to Cappelen and Lepore, and Kjøll's observations would in any case fail to meet their theoretical requirements. This relates to an important but under-appreciated distinction in analytical perspective that is instantiated in the difference between the cognitive pragmatics of Relevance Theory and the philosophical-semantic approach of Cappelen and Lepore – a distinction that is worthy of further reflection, having significant implications for linguistic theory, within and beyond pragmatics.

In this paper, I discuss the relevance theoretic view of shared content and ask how one can use the theory to understand in what situations communication is successful and when it's not. The paper is meant as a case study in the philosophy of linguistics, in which I aim to draw some conclusions based on a particular debate between two very influential groups of theorists. I look at Cappelen and Lepore's (2007) critique of Sperber and Wilson (1995) and claim that, contrary to standard conceptions in philosophy, it is possible to be a coherent similarity theorist about communicated content, postulating another level of content as the locus of identity. I emphasize the importance of basing a similarity view of communication on a foundation of identity, and argue, against Wedgwood (2007), that it's not possible for relevance theorists to abstract away from this issue.

In this article I clarify an argument by Richard Breheny against Relevance Theory based on a problem posed by infant communication. I present Sperber and Wilson's solution and argue that Breheny's objection to it does not hold. I argue that Breheny's alternative notion of communication does not meet the requirement of the overtness of communication. If one drops this requirement, then the way is open for a theoretically simpler notion of communication.

Manipulative discourse has attracted a lot of attention in various adjacent domains of linguistic research, notably in rhetoric, argumentation theory, philosophy of language, discourse analysis, pragmatics, among others. We start with a review of the existing definitions provided in these fields and highlight some of the difficulties they encounter. In particular, we argue that there is still a need for an analytic model that makes predictions about manipulative discourse. We propose an alternative account of manipulation couched in the relevance-theoretic framework which treats manipulation as a two-step communicative attempt at misleading the context-selection process when interpreting a target utterance. We argue further that such attempts systematically exploit the inherent weaknesses or flaws of the human cognitive system that are amply discussed in cognitive psychology under the heading of “cognitive illusions”. We claim that such a model correctly captures classical instances of manipulative discourse which fall outside the scope of other accounts.

Paul Grice’s distinction between what is said by a sentence and what is implicated by an utterance of that sentence is, of course, extremely familiar. It is also almost universally accepted. However, in recent literature, the precise account he offered of implicature recovery has been questioned and alternative accounts, emerging from different semantic programmes, have emerged. In this chapter, I would like to examine three such alternative accounts. My main aim is to show that the two most popular accounts in the current literature (the default inference view and the relevance-theoretic approach) still face significant problems. If this is right then there is a reason to look for a third alternative and in conclusion I’ll suggest that it is the approach emerging from so-called semantic minimalism which is best placed to accommodate Grice’s fundamental distinction between what a sentence means and what utterances of it implicate.

This paper has two main parts. The first is a critical survey of ways in which the explicit/implicit distinction has been and is currently construed in linguistic pragmatics, which reaches the conclusion that the distinction is not to be equated with a semantics/pragmatics distinction but rather concerns a division within communicated contents (or speaker meaning). The second part homes in on one particular way of drawing such a pragmatically-based distinction, the explicature/implicature distinction in Relevance Theory. According to this account, processes of pragmatic enrichment play a major role in the recovery of explicit content and only some of these processes are linguistically triggered, others being entirely pragmatically motivated. I conclude with a brief consideration of the language-communication relation and the limits on explicitness.

The importance of intention reading for communication has already been emphasized many years ago by Paul Grice. More recently, the rich debate on “theory of mind” has convinced many that intention reading may in fact play a key role also in current, cognitively oriented theories of pragmatics: Relevance Theory is a case in point. On a close analysis, however, it is far from clear that RT may really accommodate the idea that intention reading drives comprehension. Here I examine RT's difficulties with that idea, and propose a framework where intention reading is actually assigned a significant role. This framework is compatible with RT's account of a unified, automatic mechanism of interpretation in lexical pragmatics, to the extent that the account shares many features of associative and constraint-based explanations of other linguistic phenomena. In fact, my suggestion is that our sensitivity to others' intentions depends crucially on the availability of specific patterns of intentional behaviour grounded in social regularities. In other words, intention reading would be just a case, though a very special one, of pattern recognition.

The current relevance-theoretic approach to interjections (Wharton 2000, 2001, 2003) analyses these as procedural elements that contribute to the recovery of the higher-level explicatures of utterances. is analysis seems to work satisfactorily for those emotive/expressive interjections accompanying another proposition or appended to another utterance. However, it does not seem to apply to interjections occurring alone, as independent utterances, and to the so-called type of conative/volitive interjections. For this reason, based on previous work on interjections and some relevance-theoretic postulates, this paper seeks to suggest a more general procedural analysis of interjections, according to which the procedures they encode would not lead hearers to construct higher-level explicatures, but to access contextual material that is necessary for the correct interpretation of interjectional utterances. As a result of such procedural meaning, interjections can be used with a rather precise informative intention, can be taken to communicate propositions and result in cognitive effects.