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Article published In: New Developments in Relevance Theory
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz and Agnieszka Piskorska
[Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2] 2021
► pp. 321–346

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Relevance

Communication and cognition and…?

 | University of Brighton
Published online: 27 June 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21013.wha
Abstract
Wilson, Deirdre. 2018. Relevance theory and literary interpretation. In Cave, T. & Wilson, D. (eds.) Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory, 185–204. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar provides a reflective overview of a volume devoted to the historic application of relevance-theoretic ideas to literary studies. She maintains a view argued elsewhere that the putative non-propositional nature of (among other things) literary effects are an illusion, a view which dates to Sperber and Wilson (Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1986/1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1st and 2nd eds.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 224): “If you look at [non-propositional] affective effects through the microscope of relevance theory, you see a wide array of minute cognitive [i.e., propositional] effects.” This paper suggests an alternative, that modern-day humans have two apparently different modes of expressing and interpreting information: one of these is a system in which propositional, cognitive effects dominate; the other involves direct, non-propositional effects. The paper concludes by describing two ways such affects might be assimilated into relevance theory. The first, to accept that humans are much more than merely cognitive organisms; the second, to rethink quite radically what we mean by cognition.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Towards a ‘something else’
    • 2.1Ineffability
    • 2.2Mental imagery
  • 3.Creature construction
  • 4.Affective effects
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (108)
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