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Relevance Theory: Recent developments, current challenges and future directions
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 268] 2016
► pp. 261–285

Rhetoric and cognition

Pragmatic constraints on argument processing

| University of Fribourg

This chapter defends a cognitive-pragmatic take on rhetorical effectiveness by hypothesising that information-selection mechanisms at play in the interpretation of verbal stimuli positively influence the outcome of subsequent argumentative evaluation. Moreover, this chapter also shows that relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995) is ideally well equipped to develop this assumption. Indeed, this chapter argues that the inclusion of a cognitive pragmatic component in a theory of argumentation can boost the explanatory power of existing accounts, which typically refrain from adopting the sort of cognitive insights offered by relevance theorists (cf. van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 74). Accordingly, an example from political discourse is discussed in this framework to illustrate its explanatory advantages.

Keywords: argumentation, contextual constraint, persuasion, pragmatics, rhetorical effectiveness
Published online: 20 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.268.10osw
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