Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Dissimilarities in Perspective: a Reply to Kjøll

Dissimilarities in Perspective: a Reply to Kjøll <jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Relevance theorists have claimed that successful communication need result only in similarity, not identity, of mental representations across communicator and addressee. Cappelen and Lepore have criticised this stance, partly on the basis that any definition of similarity must make reference to identity. Accepting this point, Kjøll (2010) argued in this journal that Relevance Theory has an appropriate notion of identical "shared content", in the shape of relevant contextual implications. While this is convincing on a technical level, Relevance Theory owes no such concessions to Cappelen and Lepore, and Kjøll's observations would in any case fail to meet their theoretical requirements. This relates to an important but under-appreciated distinction in analytical perspective that is instantiated in the difference between the cognitive pragmatics of Relevance Theory and the philosophical-semantic approach of Cappelen and Lepore – a distinction that is worthy of further reflection, having significant implications for linguistic theory, within and beyond pragmatics.</jats:p> </jats:sec> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Review of Pragmatics Brill

Dissimilarities in Perspective: a Reply to Kjøll

Wedgwood, Daniel
International Review of Pragmatics , Volume 3 (2): 295 – Jan 1, 2011
Download PDF
12 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/dissimilarities-in-perspective-a-reply-to-kj-ll-0OF0Y5Ar80

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2011 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1877-3095
eISSN
1877-3109
DOI
10.1163/187731011X597550
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Relevance theorists have claimed that successful communication need result only in similarity, not identity, of mental representations across communicator and addressee. Cappelen and Lepore have criticised this stance, partly on the basis that any definition of similarity must make reference to identity. Accepting this point, Kjøll (2010) argued in this journal that Relevance Theory has an appropriate notion of identical "shared content", in the shape of relevant contextual implications. While this is convincing on a technical level, Relevance Theory owes no such concessions to Cappelen and Lepore, and Kjøll's observations would in any case fail to meet their theoretical requirements. This relates to an important but under-appreciated distinction in analytical perspective that is instantiated in the difference between the cognitive pragmatics of Relevance Theory and the philosophical-semantic approach of Cappelen and Lepore – a distinction that is worthy of further reflection, having significant implications for linguistic theory, within and beyond pragmatics.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Journal

International Review of Pragmatics – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2011

Keywords: RELEVANCE EORY; SHARED CONTENT; COGNITIVE PRAGMATICS; ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE; SEMANTICS

There are no references for this article.