Cover not available
Article published In:
New Developments in Relevance Theory
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz and Agnieszka Piskorska
[Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2] 2021
► pp. 394–415

Interpretation, relevance and the ideological effects of discursive practice

| University of Malta
Research in Critical Discourse Studies has for long recognised the central role that both direct and indirect communicative strategies play in the reproduction of social inequality, but a main proponent of this approach has expressed scepticism with regard to the contribution that theories of pragmatics which specifically focus on speaker intentions can make to its agenda. This paper sets out to examine how relevance theory’s theoretical machinery can be applied to the critical discussion of ideology in discourse, by offering insights that overcome the limitations imposed by this concentration of its precursors on speaker intentions. More specifically, I discuss how the cognitive perspective that relevance theory adopts can inform our understanding of the way in which ideological effects automatically arise during spontaneous utterance interpretation. After accounting for the derivation of these effects, I briefly suggest how it can additionally be taken to underlie the propagation of ideologies through discursive practice.
Keywords: critical discourse studies, ideology, speaker intentions, relevance theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relevance theory and the territory beyond speaker meaning
  • 3.The ideological effects of discourse
  • 4.The propagation of ideological effects through discursive practice
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21015.ass
References (59)
References
Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Louis Althusser (ed.) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 121–173. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Assimakopoulos, Stavros. 2017. Context in relevance theory. In Joanna Blochowiak, Cristina Grisot, Stephanie Durrleman, Christopher Laenzlinger (eds.) Formal Models in the Study of Language: Applications in Interdisciplinary Contexts, pp. 221–242. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. Beyond meaningNN and ostension: Pragmatic inference in the wild. In Elly Ifantidou, Louis de Saussure, Tim Wharton (eds.) Beyond Meaning, pp. 11–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2022. Ostension and the communicative function of natural language. Journal of Pragmatics 1911: 46–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balkin, Jack M. 1998. Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology. New Haven / London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Brescoll, Victoria L. 2016. Leading with their hearts? How gender stereotypes of emotion lead to biased evaluations of female leaders. The Leadership Quarterly 27 (3): 415–428. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cave, Terence & Deirdre Wilson (eds.). 2018. Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2005. Missing links in mainstream CDA: Modules, blends and the critical instinct. In Ruth Wodak & Paul Chilton (eds.) A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity, pp. 19–53. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. 1995a. Discourse semantics and ideology. Discourse & Society 6 (2): 243–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995b. Discourse analysis as ideology analysis. In Christina Schäffner & Anita L. Wender (eds.) Language and Peace. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing.Google Scholar
2006. Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies 8 (1): 159–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008. Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London / New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fazio, Lisa K., Nadia M. Brashier, B. Keith Payne & Elizabeth J. Marsh. 2015. Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144 (5): 993–1002. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fogal, Daniel, Daniel W. Harris & Matt Moss (eds.). 2018. New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forceville, Charles. 1998. Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London / New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger. 1991. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London / New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Garg, Nikhil, Londa Schiebinger, Dan Jurafsky & James Zou. 2018. Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (16): E3635–E3644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation’, in Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics (vol.3): Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41–58.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Introduction. In Christopher Hart (ed.) Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, pp. 1–5. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2018. Discourse Analysis (3rd edn). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2020. Discursive shifts and the normalisation of racism: Imaginaries of immigration, moral panics and the discourse of contemporary right-wing populism. Social Semiotics 30 (4): 503–527. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maillat, Didier. 2013. Constraining context selection: On the pragmatic inevitability of manipulation. Journal of Pragmatics 59 (Part B): 190–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maillat, Didier & Steve Oswald. 2009. Defining manipulative discourse: The pragmatics of cognitive illusions. International Review of Pragmatics 1 (2): 348–370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Constraining context: A pragmatic account of cognitive manipulation. In Christopher Hart (ed.) Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, pp. 65–80. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mey, Jacob L. & Mary Talbot. 1988. Computation and the soul. Journal of Pragmatics 121: 743–789. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oswald, Steve. 2014. It is easy to miss something you are not looking for: A pragmatic account of covert communicative influence for (critical) discourse analysis. In Christopher Hart & Piotr Cap (eds.) Contemporary Studies in Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 97–120. New York / London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Padilla Cruz, Manuel. 2017. Conceptual competence injustice and relevance theory: A reply to Derek Anderson.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6 (12): 39–50.Google Scholar
Polyzou, Alexandra. 2018. Pragmatics and critical discourse studies. In John Flowerdew & John E. Richardson (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, pp. 195–207. London / New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
de Saussure, Louis. 2007. Procedural pragmatics and the study of discourse. Pragmatics & Cognition 15 (1): 139–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Discourse analysis, cognition and evidentials. Discourse Studies 13 (6): 781–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Cognitive pragmatic ways into discourse analysis: The case of discursive presuppositions. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 8 (1): 37–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Saussure, Louis and Tim Wharton. 2020. Relevance, effects and affect. International Review of Pragmatics, 12(2): 183–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schulz-Hardt, Stefan, Annika Giersiepen & Andreas Mojzisch. 2016. Preference-consistent information repetitions during discussion: Do they affect subsequent judgments and decisions? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 641: 41–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan. 1996. Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, Francesco Cara & Vittorio Girotto. 1995. Relevance theory explains the selection task. Cognition 57 (1): 31–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi & Deirdre Wilson. 2010. Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language, 25 (4): 359–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd edn). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 1987. Precis of Relevance. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (4): 697–710. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1997. Remarks on relevance theory and the social sciences. Multilingua 161: 145–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Beyond speaker’s meaning. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 151: 117–149.Google Scholar
Watson, James & Anne Hill. 2012. Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies (8th edn). New York / London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Waugh, Linda R., Theresa Catalano, Khaled Al Masaeed, Tom Hong Do & Paul G. Renigar. 2016. Critical discourse analysis: Definition, approaches, relation to pragmatics, critique, and trends. In Alessandro Capone & Jacob L. Mey (eds.) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, pp. 71–135. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wharton, Tim, Constant Bonard, Daniel Dukes, David Sander & Steve Oswald. 2021. Relevance and emotion. Journal of Pragmatics 1811: 259–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2006. The pragmatics of verbal irony: Echo or pretence? Lingua 116 (10): 1722–1743. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. Relevance theory and literary interpretation. In Terence Cave and Deirdre Wilson (eds.) Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory, pp. 185–204. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2019. Relevance theory. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Retrieved 12 June 2021, from DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Robyn Carston. 2019. Pragmatics and the challenge of ‘non-propositional’ effects. Journal of Pragmatics 571: 125–148. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. 1985. On choosing the context for utterance-interpretation. In Jens Allwood & Erland Hjelmquist (eds.) Foregrounding Background, pp. 51–64. Lund: Doxa.Google Scholar
. 2004. Relevance theory. In Lawrence R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.) The Handbook of Pragmatics, pp. 607–632. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2005. Reply to Rajagopalan. Intercultural Pragmatics 2 (1): 99–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2007. Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis: A cross-disciplinary inquiry. Pragmatics & Cognition 15 (1): 203–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer. 2016. Critical discourse studies: History, agenda, theory and methodology. In Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd edn), pp. 1–22. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Yus, Francisco. 2011. Cyberpragmatics: Internet-Mediated Communication in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

de Oliveira Fernandes, Daniel & Steve Oswald
2022. On the Rhetorical Effectiveness of Implicit Meaning—A Pragmatic Approach. Languages 8:1 ► pp. 6 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.