The concept of theory of mind (ToM), a hot topic in cognitive psychology for the past twenty-five years, has gained increasing importance in the fields of linguistics and pragmatics. However, even though the relationship between ToM and verbal communication is now recognized, the extent, causality and full implications of this connection remain mostly to be explored. This book presents a comprehensive discussion of the interface between language, communication, and theory of mind, and puts forward an innovative proposal regarding the role of discourse connectives for this interface. The proposed analysis of connectives is tested from the perspective of their acquisition, using empirical methods such as corpus analysis and controlled experiments, thus placing the study of connectives within the emerging framework of experimental pragmatics.

This book presents both general issues in pragmatic theories and specific arguments for an inferential approach to pragmatics. At the present time, pragmatics is generally approached from the neo- and post-Gricean perspectives. These perspectives, which stem from philosophical theories of meaning, can be viewed as paradigms, that is, sets of concepts, procedures and results which structure scientific investigations. The main purpose of the book is to defend a new post-Gricean approach to the substantial lexicon and to the functional lexicon (tenses, connectives), and more specifically to explore lexical and non-lexical pragmatics. A precise approach to lexical and non-lexical pragmatic contents will be developed, with special emphasis on non-lexical temporal and causal information. A model for inferring temporal relations in discourse (the directional inferences model based on French data) is developed. This approach to temporal representations and inferences will be completed by a discussion on how causal inferences are triggered in discourse interpretation. The role of conceptual causal relations, as well as causal procedural information encoded in discourse connectives (mainly parce que ‘because’, donc ‘therefore’, et ‘and’), is empirically and theoretically supported. Pragmatic theory can be described as a very powerful interface system which gives access to lexical and functional information, and which contains rich pragmatic enrichment processes, for non-lexical information (quantifier, tenses, connectives) as well as for lexical information (event predicates). The book’s originality stems from its demonstration that pragmatic enrichment is structurally constrained, and occurs at the level of explicature.

This volume is one of the first books to present a comprehensive view of lexical pragmatics, describing its origins, assumptions, scope, methodology and the various approaches to it, focusing specifically on the approach offered by relevance theory. In addition to theoretical considerations, the book discusses particular linguistic expressions and pragmatic phenomena, showing how the relevance-theoretic tools may be used to explore pragmatically motivated changes to lexically encoded meanings. The most recent developments are discussed and questions are asked to indicate directions for further research within this rapidly developing field.

Pragmatics has grown considerably in its relatively short history, from its original disciplinary influences in philosophy and linguistics, into a multidisciplinary field that encompasses a range of theoretical and empirical concerns. The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia captures the diversity of these intellectual interests in a comprehensive, single-volume edition. The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia covers concepts and theories that have traditionally been associated with pragmatics, but also recent areas of development within the field, scholars who have had a significant influence on pragmatics, interdisciplinary exchanges between pragmatics and other areas of enquiry and all major research trends. Extensive cross-references between entries, along with suggestions for further reading at the end of entries, ensure that the interested reader can pursue additional study of chosen topics. With over 200 entries, written by leading academics from around the world, The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia captures the rich complexity of pragmatics in an accessible manner. This reference will be relevant to students of pragmatics as well as to established scholars in the field.

The fourteen contributions in this collection come from different approaches in pragmatics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis and dialogue analysis; the name given to what is studied ranges from spoken language and conversation to interaction, dialogue, discourse and communication. What the articles have in common is a similar starting point: they are informed by a form of linguistic understanding which has emerged within what could be called the interactional turn. The materials investigated come from several different languages, representing a variety of interactions: private and public, written and spoken, historical and present-day. While studies of such diverse materials naturally differ in their starting points, goals and aims, engaging them in a dialogue can help reveal where old beliefs may be challenged and new understandings may emerge. The interactional approaches to discourse presented in this volume show that there are several discourses on interaction: interconnected, parallel, but also varying and even divergent.

Cognitive pragmatics is a mature field of research, characterized by robust theories and a growing amount of experimental work. In particular, Relevance Theory has provided a rich framework for research in the field. However, this theory makes a number of assumptions that are rooted in a modular view of cognition. This book provides a detailed analysis of such assumptions, arguing for an alternative model which has, however, some support in ideas explored by relevance theorists. First of all, inferences are explained in terms of associative pattern completion within associative networks, based on the schematic organization of memory. This explanation is shown to apply to a number of cognitive domains besides pragmatics, including mindreading. Moreover, such a view is compatible with a general understanding of the neurocomputational machinery of our cortex, suggesting a general argument to the effect that modularity in its standard version cannot be right. Second, the book argues for a crucial role of conscious attention in pragmatics as well as in most cognitive processes. In the end, what is proposed is not only a revision of Relevance Theory but also a fresh analysis of reasoning, which vindicates some Gricean intuitions.

Methods in Pragmatics provides a systematic overview of the different types of data, the different methods of data collection and data analysis used in pragmatic research. It offers authoritative and comprehensive surveys of the entire breadth of methods and methodologies. Part 1 covers introspectional, philosophical and cognitive pragmatics. Part 2 is devoted to experimental pragmatics, including discourse completion and dialogue construction tasks, role-plays and other production and comprehension tasks. Part 3 reviews observational pragmatics including ethnographic and discourse analytic methods, and part 4, finally, is devoted to corpus pragmatics including accounts of corpus compilation, annotation and data retrieval specific to pragmatic research. Each contribution provides a state-of-the-art account of the precise workings of one particular method, its applications in the relevant research literature as well as a critical assessment of its strengths and weaknesses and the type of pragmatic research questions for which it is most suitable.

The present volume demonstrates the multifaceted potential of Relevance Theory, which, for more than two decades now, has been inspiring studies of the relationship between human communication and cognition. In the Mind and across Minds reflects the main strands of relevance-theoretic research, by expanding, evaluating and revising the researchers’ ideas in a collection of papers by an international array of scholars. The papers explore various aspects of communication including such issues as non-literal meaning with the focus on irony and metaphor, the construction of ad hoc concepts, the conceptual-procedural meaning distinction, metarepresentation, context and politeness as well as test the applicability of Relevance Theory to the domain of translation. A set of readings on varied linguistic and sociocultural phenomena, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students investigating meaning in natural language and an insightful reference for those interested in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, or pragmatics in general, semantics, sociolinguistics and Translation Studies. Ewa Wałaszewska, Marta Kisielewska-Krysiuk and Agnieszka Piskorska work at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw as Assistant Professors. They pursue their individual research connected with Relevance Theory and jointly organise a biennial conference Interpreting for Relevance: Discourse and Translation.

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.