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Article published In:
New Developments in Relevance Theory
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz and Agnieszka Piskorska
[Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2] 2021
► pp. 321–346

Relevance

Communication and cognition and…?

| University of Brighton

Deirdre Wilson (2018) provides a reflective overview of a volume devoted to the historic application of relevance-theoretic ideas to literary studies. She maintains a view argued elsewhere that the putative non-propositional nature of (among other things) literary effects are an illusion, a view which dates to Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 224): “If you look at [non-propositional] affective effects through the microscope of relevance theory, you see a wide array of minute cognitive [i.e., propositional] effects.” This paper suggests an alternative, that modern-day humans have two apparently different modes of expressing and interpreting information: one of these is a system in which propositional, cognitive effects dominate; the other involves direct, non-propositional effects. The paper concludes by describing two ways such affects might be assimilated into relevance theory. The first, to accept that humans are much more than merely cognitive organisms; the second, to rethink quite radically what we mean by cognition.

Keywords: affect, emotion, non-propositional effects, non-verbal communication, propositions, relevance theory, natural codes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Towards a ‘something else’
    • 2.1Ineffability
    • 2.2Mental imagery
  • 3.Creature construction
  • 4.Affective effects
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21013.wha
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