Deirdre Wilson

Meaning and Relevance (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is a process of inference guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? Meaning and Relevance sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. März 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781139334006
• Artikelnr.: 53048487

Autorenporträt

Deirdre Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London and Research Professor at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: 1. Pragmatics
Part I. Relevance and Meaning: 2. The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon
3. Truthfulness and relevance
4. Rhetoric and relevance
5. A deflationary account of metaphors
6. Explaining irony
Part II. Explicit and Implicit Communication: 7. Linguistic form and relevance
8. Pragmatics and time
9. Recent approaches to bridging: truth, coherence, relevance
10. Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences
11. Metarepresentation in linguistic communication
Part III. Cross-disciplinary Themes: 12. Pragmatics, modularity and mindreading
13. Testing the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance
14. The why and how of experimental pragmatics
15. A pragmatic perspective on the evolution of language.

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Introduction: 1. Pragmatics; Part I. Relevance and Meaning: 2. The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon; 3. Truthfulness and relevance; 4. Rhetoric and relevance; 5. A deflationary account of metaphors; 6. Explaining irony; Part II. Explicit and Implicit Communication: 7. Linguistic form and relevance; 8. Pragmatics and time; 9. Recent approaches to bridging: truth, coherence, relevance; 10. Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences; 11. Metarepresentation in linguistic communication; Part III. Cross-disciplinary Themes: 12. Pragmatics, modularity and mindreading; 13. Testing the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance; 14. The why and how of experimental pragmatics; 15. A pragmatic perspective on the evolution of language.

Rezensionen

'... significantly expands upon [the authors'] groundbreaking 1986/1995 book Relevance: Communication and Cognition, and nicely situates relevance theory within contemporary developments in cognitive science ... a masterful scholarly achievement that correctly places mind and relevance as the essential site for the scientific study of meaning and cognition.' Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr, University of California, Santa Cruz