Publications

Publication details [#65718]

Ruytenbeek, Nicolas. 2019. Indirect requests, relevance, and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 142 : 78–89.

Publication type

Article in journal

Publication language

English

Keywords

imperative1 | indirect expression | politeness | relevance theory | request

Place, Publisher

Elsevier

Journal WWW

www.sciencedirect.com/web-editions

Annotation

This paper presents a relevance theoretic account of Can you? indirect requests (IRs). In theory, IRs' request meaning should be less open than in imperatives. Can you? IRs though do not inevitably raise processing costs. The politeness of Can you? IRs few forms a cognitive effect. Utterances of Can you? can attain both maximal and optimal relevance.