Relevance
Communication and cognition and…?
Deirdre Wilson (2018) 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 (
1986/1995: 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
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Newspaper headlines, relevance and emotive effects.
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Pragmatics of Internet Humour,
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Strassheim, Jan
2022.
Relevance as the Moving Ground of Semiosis.
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► pp. 115 ff.
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