Search

Whether visual representation can function in arguments is a controversial issue. Those who claim they cannot, claim that only propositions may function thus and that as visuals cannot represent propositions, they cannot function in arguments. The current paper, invoking recent developments in Relevance Theory, demonstrates that visuals, specifically photographs, can represent propositions and can therefore function as and in arguments. The paper demonstrates that visuals also communicate more than propositions in that they provide evidence for a range of ‘impressions’ that support a ‘credal attitude’ toward the document in which they occur.

This paper analyses the Polish complementiser jakoby within the framework of relevance theory. It suggests that those environments in which jakoby is licensed, namely certain indirect-speech-type constructions and clauses embedded under inherently negative predicates, such as zaprzeczyć (“to deny”) and nieprawdą jest (“it is untrue”), have in common that they can be conceived of in metarepresentational terms. Furthermore, it argues that jakoby encodes procedural meaning which restricts it principally to these types of environment. Unlike że (“that”), which can always be substituted for it, jakoby constrains the range of attitudes towards the embedded proposition that can be implied contextually, blocking interpretations on which this proposition is understood to be endorsed, while encouraging the recovery of evaluative stances such as scepticism, doubt and rejection. We show that jakoby can be selected from the point of view of the reporting voice, in which case it receives a global interpretation, or that of the matrix subject; this yields a local interpretation.

The article presents the nature and legitimacy of translation studies; it examines the function of a translator, its role during the translation process and the generated linguistic product from the point of view of cognitive pragmatics. In the present study we are looking for the answer to what factors influence the translator in his/her activity, what aspects he/she keeps in mind, how relevance theory prevails in translation, what role the current context, target audience and readers’ prior knowledge have in interpreting the translated text. In order to answer the questions, in the first part we summarize the opinions published in the literature, then we examine our hypothesis with the method of structural discourse analysis in relation to three languages (English, German, Hungarian) in EU texts, according to which, despite the European Union’s language policy aspirations, similarities and differences can be noticed depending on what the translator considered relevant to highlight. In the examined texts we can find formal, semantic and pragmatic differences according to the levels of identity. In the course of the analysis, we have made an attempt to highlight the semantic and pragmatic similarities and the differences between the versions, the factors which may cause them, and also their connection with the cognitive context, relevance and the general context. As a first step, we identified the different parts of the texts, and then the reason for the differences was revealed during the analysis. The aim is therefore to support our hypothesis and to illustrate with linguistic examples that context and relevance are central to translation.

This paper takes a relevance-theoretical approach to the English translation of “Дзікае паляванне караля Стаха” (1964), the Belarusian novel written by Uladzìmìr Karatkevìč – “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt” (translated by Mary Mintz, 1989). In doing so, it proposes a different perspective on the alleged ‘untranslatability’ of minority literature. The analysis takes into account various procedures applied to the different elements of the novel and reveals that Mintz makes strategic choices aimed at choosing the best solution for each problem individually.

The purpose of this paper is to take a close look at the interplay of semantic and pragmatic components of animal jokes. Rather than insisting on the priority of one particular theoretical tradition and selecting a few illustrative examples, 30 animal jokes – most of them translated into English from Hungarian – are presented to help identify the different mechanisms that make them amusing. Adopting a theory-by-theory approach, it becomes clear that some jokes fit well the explanation of frame or script semantics, while others are best captured by one or another pragmatic framework and classification. This leads to the related question of whether it is possible, at this stage of research, to integrate the diverse lines of thought or whether the semantic and pragmatic study of verbal humour will have to remain relatively fragmented. It is argued that certain basic elements of major pragmatic theories are important complements to frame/script semantics, the humour of animal jokes is reliant on the same meaning-generating processes as observed in other jokes, and that the attraction of animal jokes lies in their psychological and cultural-anthropological characteristics. Finally, their cross-cultural investigation is encouraged.

This paper introduces the new pragmatic concept of Nested Presuppositions (NestPs) and develops a relevance- theoretic account that explains its cognitive dynamics and manipulative mechanisms. The first section lays necessary theoretical foundations, by defining pragmatic presupposition, compiling a taxonomy of the types of presupposition and their triggers, identifying and critiquing research gaps in eight of the most relevant studies and drawing the conclusion that none of the existing definitions or accounts of pragmatic presupposition can adequately capture the manipulative characteristics and mechanisms of the instances of informative presupposition at issue. In section two, I shall introduce the concept of NestPs as the filler of those gaps, grounding it in Textual Rhetoric and Relevance Theory and highlighting its defining characteristic of information structures, i.e. how the message is segmented and its degrees of prominence and suppression are assigned in order to achieve strategic goals. I further problematize the relationship between NestPs, on the one hand, and informativeness and manipulation, on the other, in light of Gricean and Relevance-Theoretic linguistics, establishing that NestPs are inherently manipulative. I finally expound the manipulative dynamics of NestPs, in terms of the information processing mechanisms they employ, by capitalizing on the concepts of Ostensive Stimulus, Cognitive Principle of Relevance, Principle of Optimal Relevance and Comprehension Procedure, and suggesting the two new mechanisms of Cognitive Underpassing and Structure-Content Cognitive Conflict.

This paper examines the pragmatic translation of cultural-linguistic items through a relevance-theoretic study. The results suggest: 1) implicative value of the cultural-linguistic items is context-dependent and 2) loss of the linguistic form might imply the loss of the implicit clue. The study aims to expose the pragmatic values conveyed by the cultural-linguistic elements of Spanish and its Chinese translation. Furthermore, it explores how much original Spanish linguistic elements are accessible to the target readers of the Chinese translation. Based on a Spanish novel, namely La Colmena, and its Chinese translation Feng Fang, linguistic cultural referents from the Spanish original and their translations were compared, considering their cognitive contexts. This research points to the fact that the cognitive-environmental values of cultural-linguistic elements are generally underestimated, especially in Spanish-to-Chinese translation and, a large number of Spanish linguistic items do not maintain their implicatures in the Chinese translation due to different contextual assumptions.

As the translation profession has become more technologized, translators increasingly work within an interface that combines translation from scratch, translation memory suggestions, machine translation post-editing, and terminological resources. This study analyses user activity data from one such interface, and measures temporal effort for English to Japanese translation at the segment level. Using previous studies of translation within the framework of relevance theory as a starting point, various features and edits were identified and annotated within the texts, in order to find whether there was a relationship between their prevalence and translation effort. Although this study is exploratory in nature, there was an expectation based on previous studies that procedurally encoded utterances would be associated with greater translation effort. This expectation was complicated by the choice of a language pair in which there has been little research applying relevance theory to translation, and by contemporary research that has made the distinction between procedural and conceptual encoding appear more fluid than previously believed. Our findings are that some features that lean more towards procedural encoding (such as prevalence of pronouns and manual addition of postpositions) are associated with increased temporal effort, although the small sample size makes it impossible to generalise. Segments translated with the aid of translation memory showed the least average temporal effort, and segments translated using machine translation appeared to require more effort than translation from scratch.

Until recently, lexicography and information science could rightly be considered two disciplines which had developed along parallel lines but with no or very little formal relation between them. Although the two disciplines developed in almost complete isolation from each other, during the last few years it has nevertheless become increasingly clear that they have a lot in common. This trend began within lexicography which started viewing lexicographical works as a special kind of tool designed to be consulted in order to obtain information. Upon this basis, it has been suggested that lexicography should be considered a part of information science and, hence, integrated into it (cf. e.g. Bergenholtz and Bothma 2012, Tarp 2009). It is evident that this integration of two hitherto independent disciplines with long traditions of their own is not something to be solved overnight and neither can it be a unilateral process. This article will explore the concept of relevance in both disciplines in more detail and show, at the hand of examples from lexicographical tools, how the theoretical frameworks of both disciplines can complement one another. This will be done within the framework of the function theory of lexicography, as discussed in the many works of Tarp and Bergenholtz (e.g. Bergenholtz and Tarp 2002) and others, and relevance theory in information science as defined by Saracevic (1975, 1996), Cosijn and Ingwersen (2000) and others.

Recent research has demonstrated that children are sensitive to the underlying causal structureof the world and seek to form new causal representations at a much earlier age than hadpreviously been supposed. Modern scientific understanding of the evolution of life conflictswith the biblical representation of earth as the centre of the world, and of human beings as theimago Dei. Consequently, young children frequently experience cognitive dissonance whenexposed to biblical texts. Two previous pilot studies utilising specifically designed illustratedbooklets demonstrated that children respond more readily to a text that is relevant to their owncultural context. This article tests the possibility of presenting a universally relevant biblicaltext (Lk 11:2b�4) to young children in a form that does not conflict with modern science andtakes aspects of recent research on child psychology into account.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: In our postmodern culturalcontext children tend to experience cognitive dissonance when exposed to biblical texts,and consequently lose interest. This article proposes that by presenting the biblical contentin accordance with Relevance Theory, and in coherence with recent scientific explanatorytheories, the interest of the children may be sustained.