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On Grice's Theory of ConversationIn Paul Werth (ed.), Conversation and Discourse: Structure and Interpretation, St. Martins Press. pp. 155-178. 1981.
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Relevance TheoryIn Yan Huang (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.This paper outlines the main assumptions of relevance theory and points out some new directions for research. After discussing the nature of relevance and its role in communication and cognition, it assesses two alternative ways of drawing the explicit–implicit distinction, compares relevance theory’s approach to lexical pragmatics with those of Grice and neo-Griceans, and discusses the rationale for relevance theory’s conceptual–procedural distinction, reassessing the notion of procedural meani…Read more
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4Relevance TheoryIn Laurence R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics, Blackwell. pp. 607--632. 2004.General overview of relevance theory.
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11Chomsky and PragmaticsIn Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey (eds.), A Companion to Chomsky, Wiley. 2021.Pragmatic processes crucially rely on background or contextual information supplied by the hearer, which may significantly affect the outcome of the comprehension process. Construed as a branch of cognitive psychology, pragmatics is the study of the cognitive systems apart from the I‐language and the parser which enable speaker and hearer (or communicator and audience) to co‐ordinate on the intended interpretation, and this is how we propose to treat it here. This chapter considers some of Noam …Read more
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347Epistemic VigilanceMind and Language 25 (4): 359-393. 2010.Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguist…Read more
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KATZ, J. J. "Propositional Structure and Illocutionary Force: A Study of the Contribution of Sentence Meaning to Speech Acts" (review)Mind 88 (n/a): 461. 1979.
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223Relevance: Communication and CognitionBlackwell. 1986/1995.This revised edition includes a new Preface outlining developments in Relevance Theory since 1986, discussing the more serious criticisms of the theory, and ...
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PragmaticsIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press Uk. 2005.
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88A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: relevance, inference and ad hoc conceptsIn Noel Burton-Roberts (ed.), Pragmatics, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 3. 2007.
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72Précis of Relevance: Communication and CognitionIn Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy, Broadview Press. pp. 220. 2013.
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120Beyond Speaker’s MeaningCroatian Journal of Philosophy 15 (2): 117-149. 2015.Our main aim in this paper is to show that constructing an adequate theory of communication involves going beyond Grice’s notion of speaker’s meaning. After considering some of the difficulties raised by Grice’s three-clause definition of speaker’s meaning, we argue that the characterisation of ostensive communication introduced in relevance theory can provide a conceptually unified explanation of a much wider range of communicative acts than Grice was concerned with, including cases of both ‘sh…Read more
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89Mood and the Analysis of Non-Declarative SentencesIn J. Dancy, J. M. E. Moravcsik & C. C. W. Taylor (eds.), Human Agency: Language, Duty, and Value : Philosophical Essays in Honor of J.O. Urmson, Stanford University Press. pp. 77--101. 1988.How are non-declarative sentences understood? How do they differ semantically from their declarative counterparts? Answers to these questions once made direct appeal to the notion of illocutionary force. When they proved unsatisfactory, the fault was diagnosed as a failure to distinguish properly between mood and force. For some years now, efforts have been under way to develop a satisfactory account of the semantics of mood. In this paper, we consider the current achievements and future prospec…Read more
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La Pertinence, communication et cognition, collection « Propositions »Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 96 (3): 430-432. 1991.
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46Introduction: Special issue on pragmatics and cognitive scienceMind and Language 17 (1-2). 2002.
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381Relevance theoryIn Deirdre Wilson & Dan Sperber (eds.), Relevance theory, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 607-632. 2002.General overview of relevance theory
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156Linguistic Form and RelevanceLingua 90 1-25. 1993.Our book Relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986) treats utterance interpretation as a two-phase process: a modular decoding phase is seen as providing input to a central inferential phase in which a linguistically encoded logical form is contextually enriched and used to construct a hypothesis about the speaker's informative intention. Relevance was mainly concerned with the inferential phase of comprehension: we had to answer Fodor's challenge that while decoding processes are quite well understood…Read more
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94Précis of Relevance: Communication and CognitionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (4): 697. 1987.
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193Fodor's frame problem and relevance theory (reply to chiappe & kukla)Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (3): 530-532. 1996.Chiappe and Kukla argue that relevance theory fails to solve the frame problem as defined by Fodor. They are right. They are wrong, however, to take Fodors frame problem too seriously. Fodors concerns, on the other hand, even though they are wrongly framed, are worth addressing. We argue that Relevance thoery helps address them.
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404Metaphor, relevance and the 'emergent property' issueMind and Language 21 (3). 2006.The interpretation of metaphorical utterances often results in the attribution of emergent properties, which are neither standardly associated with the individual constituents in isolation nor derivable by standard rules of semantic composition. An adequate pragmatic account of metaphor interpretation must explain how these properties are derived. Using the framework of relevance theory, we propose a wholly inferential account, and argue that the derivation of emergent properties involves no spe…Read more
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132The mapping between the mental and the public lexiconIn Peter Carruthers & Jill Boucher (eds.), [Book Chapter], Cambridge University Press. pp. 184-200. 1998.We argue that the presence of a word in an utterance serves as starting point for a relevance guided inferential process that results in the construction of a contextually appropriate sense. The linguistically encoded sense of a word does not serve as its default interpretation. The cases where the contextually appropriate sense happens to be identical to this linguistic sense have no particular theoretical significance. We explore some of the consequences of this view. One of these consequences…Read more
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46Presupposition.Presuppositions and Non-Truth-Conditional SemanticsPhilosophical Review 86 (2): 274. 1977.
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214Truthfulness and relevanceMind 111 (443): 583-632. 2002.This paper questions the widespread view that verbal communication is governed by a maxim, norm or convention of truthfulness which applies at the level of what is literally meant, or what is said. Pragmatic frameworks based on this view must explain the frequent occurrence and acceptability of loose and figurative uses of language. We argue against existing explanations of these phenomena and provide an alternative account, based on the assumption that verbal communication is governed not by ex…Read more
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143Meaning and relevanceCambridge University Press. 2012.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 an inference process 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, approximat…Read more
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University College LondonRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |