I examine the Brown and Levinson (1978) model of politeness. On the assumption that a model of face attention must involve impolite as well as polite interactive behaviour, I construct an analogous model to deal with what I term Face Attack Acts. I show that an extension of a politeness model in this way reveals serious flaws in some hypotheses central to Brown and Levinson's work. I apply the principles of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986)to the extended model, and show how the theory can offer an explanatory account of face attention, on a continuum from polite to impolite. Relevance Theory makes predictions about the interpretation of utterances in context, which explain how the face-oriented aspect of interaction is recovered by hearers. I show that Relevance Theory provides a motivated way of linking utterances with facts about power asymmetries and group-membership which are seen to be recoverable by the interpretive process. I apply the resulting face-attention model of utterance interpretation to examples of the use of language to encode power and communicate assumptions about social behaviour and status. In terms of previous accounts of utterance interpretation, particularly Grice's Cooperative Principle and maxims, the account of face attention which incorporates Relevance Theory has greater explanatory power. In practical terms, this application of Relevance Theory is shown to be illuminating in raising the assumptions underlying non-cooperative communication to a conscious level, at which their validity can be sustained.

This thesis represents an attempt to show how recent research in pragmatic theory can contribute to our understanding of humour. Two inferential theories have been selected: speech act theory and relevance theory. In addition, I have looked at the modification of the speech act model proposed by Leech. An exposition of each theory is followed by an account of how these theories can be applied to humour. Some research into humour has already been carried out using the speech act model. This is described and evaluated. For Leech's extension of that model, and for the relevance-theoretic model, there is virtually no existing research on which to draw. Consequently, both the application of these theories to humour, and their evaluation thereof, are my own. Speech act accounts of humour are based on the notion that humorous utterances are unconventional and unpredictable. One way of exploiting our expectations, and thereby creating a condo effect, it is argued, is to violate the norms of conversation (that is to say, Grice's maxims and Searle's conditions). This analysis is found to be insufficient, on its own, to distinguish between the humorous and the non-humorous utterance. I will show how the unpredictable, unconventional remark can be used to create a number of different effects, some humorous, some nonhumorous. Maxim violation is thus seen to be inadequate, both as a descriptive and as an explanatory tool. Relevance theory constitutes a radical departure from the whole maxim-based framework. Adopting this approach to the analysis of verbal humour, I will try to find out exactly what is going on in our minds when we interpret humorously intended utterances. I will identify the various processes which I believe are employed in the appreciation of verbal jokes, and will conclude that these processes are not unique to humour. In spite of this, I will claim that there is a sense in which verbal humour can be said to be unique.

This thesis uses insights from a modern theory of communication, Relevance Theory, to examine the function of certain particles - in particular the conjunction hina - in Koine Greek. This particle has been regarded from the time of Classical Greek as an introducer of purpose clauses and so has been thought to have the lexical meaning of ‘in order that.’ More recently, however, scholars have recognised that in the New Testament at least, no more than 60% of the uses of hina merit such a translation, with a considerable number of independent clauses being introduced by this particle also. Apart from the New Testament it is the case that pagan writers of Koine used this particle to introduce a wider range of clauses than merely those with a telic relationship to the main clause of the sentence. This is particularly noticeable in the Discourses of Epictetus, a philosopher who taught in the latter half of the first century of the Christian era. In addition, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a notable critic of literary style and the historian Polybius, both writing within the Koine period used hina to introduce indirect commands and noun clauses as well as purpose clauses. The frequency of such uses (approximately 10% of all the instances of this particle) in their writings is considerably less than that of Epictetus, but those uses are nevertheless present in their works. Since iota-nu-alpha was used for this wider range of clauses by pagan, non-Jewish authors, some of whom spoke Greek as their first language, it seems extremely implausible to attribute such use to the incompetence of the implied authors of the New Testament, or ‘Semitic interference’. Since the many instances of non-telic hina in the New Testament are identified with reference to the context in which they occur, the telic instances should also be deduced from such context. I claim that the function of this particle is not to introduce a purpose clause nor does it have a fixed lexical meaning of ‘in order that’, but rather that it alerts the reader to expect an interpretation of the thought of the speaker or implied author. Of course in many instances a clause introduced by hina will be a purpose clause, but this is inferred from context rather than solely from the presence of this particle. This thesis proposes a unified account of the function of hina which fits the developing pattern of the language and relates it to the particle 'hina', and provides a theoretical basis for its use as an indicator of speaker or subject’s thought, thus enabling a reader to re-examine biblical texts whose interpretation has been problematic to date.

While the original focus of pragmatics was spoken conversation, this approach has been increasingly used in the analysis of written and monological texts, e.g. advertisements (Tanaka, 1994), as a means of explaining how the meanings within them are generated and recovered through context. The range of texts subjected to pragmatics has thus far been somewhat limited and there is scope for applying pragmatics in other genres. The research for this essay was designed to explain the generation of implicatures in newspapers by relating a sample of articles to theoretical approaches offered within pragmatics, such as Relevance Theory and deixis. A number of semantic and stylistic devices are used in such articles, such as anaphora, metaphor and metonymy. These depend upon an expectation of reader familiarity with them and they are thus able to contribute to brevity and comprehension. While newspapers have been examined by scholars to some extent, the focus of these studies has been on headlines and not on entire articles. In this current study, three articles from different British tabloid papers were examined. The examination showed that the articles had many features in common and what was the most salient was that they require the reader to rely heavily on encyclopaedic knowledge. It turned out that writers keep their articles brief by withholding details or clarifying information from the reader, as they assume the reader are familiar with the phenomena mentioned. Anaphora is frequently used in tabloid newspaper articles as it also enables the writers to keep their articles brief, but also because it makes the articles more varied and less repetitive. Additionally, reader familiarity with metonymy, metaphor and deixis is necessary if the reader is to make sense of what an article means.

‘Relevance theory’ is a linguistic theory offering an alternative to the conventional ‘code model’ of communication, by suggesting that inference, rather than coding and decoding, is the primary driving force motivating interpretation. In this thesis, I consider the implications for literary criticism of the relevance theory account of communication, particularly in relation to metaphor, as an enduring concern of both linguistics and literary studies. The thesis focuses on three temporally disparate authors – Shakespeare, Dickinson and Heaney – whose work, analyzed by linguists as well as literary critics, is abundant in metaphor, but might prompt us to think about literary communication in different ways. The Introduction considers the coincidence of the central terms of relevance theory (context, interpretation, inference, intention) with many of the fundamental concerns of literary criticism. Chapter One examines various accounts of metaphor, historical and recent, by literary critics, philosophers and linguists, before offering a brief introduction to relevance theory’s ‘deflationary’ account of metaphor and its implications for literary critical analysis. Chapter Two looks at plays by Shakespeare that are as much concerned with communication as they are representations of it, and considers how relevance theory’s account of the cognitive process of developing new interpretations on the spot, in context, based on expectations of relevance, challenges any straightforward sense of what textual metaphors ‘mean’. Chapter Three explores the striking prominence of the term ‘inference’, fundamental to the relevance theory account of communication, in Dickinson’s poetry. Whilst Dickinson’s ‘definitional’, ‘X is Y’ metaphors appear to facilitate a bridging of the gap between abstractions and the concrete world linguistically, her dependence on inference exposes the bleak uncertainty of that which can only be inferred, whilst nonetheless forging a communicative bond between the poet writing and her multiple audiences. Chapter Four analyzes different figurative forms in Heaney’s poetry, and looks particularly at the relationship between metaphor and simile in light of the relevance theory account. Critical analyses of Heaney’s work often attribute political significance to what are assumed to be metaphors within his poetry, without considering the role played by (perhaps unconscious) interpretative expectations of the kind relevance theory would predict; taking local linguistic context more thoroughly into account might offer a very different perspective on what Heaney is ‘saying’. In conclusion, I review Lakoff and Johnson’s profoundly influential ‘conceptual metaphor theory’ (CMT), and propose that relevance theory’s linguistically-driven account of metaphor in communication needs elements of ‘conceptual’ accounts such as CMT which describe metaphor as a matter of thought as well as language. Metaphor is a tremendously powerful communicative tool, but one to which literary critical analysis cannot do justice without a functioning theory of communication such as that offered by relevance theory.

Instagramkonton där föräldrar exponerar sina barn blir allt vanligare och allt mer populära. Detta kräver att barnen framställs på ett vis som är tilltalande för mottagarna. Denna uppsats ämnar att påvisa detta fenomen genom att granska hur två av de mer uppmärksammade svenska Instagrampersonligheterna i form av Penny Schulman respektive Naomi Ljungqvist framställs på Instagram. Målet är att genomföra studien med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys som är grundad i semiotiska teorier. Genom dessa teorier vill vi utläsa hur framställningen av dessa barn ser ut samt hur de förhåller sig till de enligt Barthes (1973) rådande mytbildningar som existerar kring barn och familjeliv. För att kunna genomföra analysen kommer vi utgå från Hallidays teorier kring agent och aktion, konnotationer och denotationer samt mytbildningar. Resultatet vi fann var att de bägge barnen innehar liknande karaktärsdrag men med olika förhållningar till de kulturellt rådande myterna kring barn och familjeliv. Penny Schulman upplever vi som mer avvikande från den traditionella myten om barn då hon har ett självständigt agerande och inte är en passiv agent. Naomi Ljungqvist samspelar desto oftare med sin mor Johanna och stämmer därmed bättre in på den traditionella uppfattningen om barn som en del av en familj och inte en självständig individ. Utifrån vår analys kan vi se tydliga skillnader i hur analysobjekten bryter sig ifrån den klassiska bilden om barn som en passiv agent. I det analyserade materialet ser vi istället en nybildad familjemyt där barnet och dess utveckling samt anpassning till vuxenlivet presenteras. / Instagram accounts where parents are exposing their children are in today’s society a common sight as well as a popular phenomenon. This requires a depiction where the children are appealing in the eyes of the recipients. Our thesis will examining the phenomenon through an analysis of two well known swedish Instagram personalities being Penny Schulman and Naomi Ljungqvist and how they are depicted on Instagram. The goal is to implement the study with the help of a qualitative content analysis which has its base in semiotic theories. Through these theories we want to study the depiction of these children and how they relate to the - according to Barthes (1973), existing mythologies regarding children and family life. To be able to perform this study we will originate from Hallidays theories regarding agency in action, connotations and denotations and finally mythologies. The conclusion we reached was that both of the children have similar traits of character but with different suspension to the prevailing myths of children and family life. We find Penny Schulman to be more divergent from the traditional myth of children since she is acting more independent and not as a passive agent. Naomi Ljungqvist on the other hand is seemingly more dependent of her mother and therefore fit better into the traditional perception of children in a family context. Based on our analysis we can see clear differences in how the analyzed children are breaking from the traditional view of children as passive agents. In the analysed material we can see a new myth regarding family taking form where the children and their development is presented together with their adaption to adulthood.

Communiquer efficacement nécessite de produire une multitude d’inférences pragmatiques. Celles-ci reposent sur la capacité à prendre en compte un grand nombre d’indices, tels que le contexte ou l’état mental et physique du locuteur. Dans le cas du langage oral, l’interlocuteur s’appuie également sur les indices prosodiques. Ainsi, une prosodie enthousiaste associée à l’énoncé « Excellent. » aidera un interlocuteur à inférer que le locuteur est content tandis qu’une intonation plate le conduira au contraire à penser qu’il était ironique. Ces situations peuvent être particulièrement délicates pour les patients atteints d’un Trouble du Spectre Autistique (TSA) qui éprouvent des difficultés pour reconnaître et interpréter les états mentaux d’autrui. Nous prédisons donc que l’interprétation des indices prosodiques est délicate dans les TSA. Cependant, tous les aspects de l’interprétation prosodique ne requièrent pas d’attribuer des états mentaux. Par exemple, la distinction entre « PREsent » et « preSENT » (en anglais) est basée sur une simple connaissance du lexique, indépendante des pensées du locuteur. Dans ce travail, j’explore différents aspects de la prosodie afin de déterminer si les personnes avec un TSA sont spécifiquement atteintes dans leur capacité à comprendre les signaux prosodiques reposant sur la compréhension des intentions du locuteur. Je présente une série de travaux traitant de la prosodie grammaticale (Article 1), de la transmission accidentelle d’informations (Article 2), de l’accent contrastif (Articles 3 et 4), et de l’identification des états mentaux du locuteur (Article 5). Les résultats présentés dans ces travaux me conduisent ensuite à discuter des questions plus générales concernant la Théorie de l’Esprit (Article 6) et à proposer une explication alternative des déficits sociaux observés dans les TSA (Article 7). / Efficient communication requires a great deal of pragmatic inferencing. This is rooted in the ability to take into account a variety of cues, such as the context and the speaker’s mental or emotional states. Crucially, in spoken language, hearers can also rely on prosodic cues. For instance, if someone utters “That was brilliant”, using an enthusiastic prosody, this will help the hearer to decipher that the speaker is happy. In contrast, if the speaker’s comment is uttered in a deadpan tone of voice, she will be thought to be ironical. These situations can be especially challenging for people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Indeed, these individuals have well-known difficulties in recognising and interpreting others’ mental states. This leads to the prediction that interpreting prosodic cues should be problematic in ASDs. However, not all aspects of prosodic interpretation involve mental states attribution. For instance, differentiating “PREsent” from “preSENT” merely requires one to be aware of the fact that these words stand for different things, without needing to attribute any particular thoughts to the speaker. In this work, I explore the various components of prosody and assess whether people with an ASD are specifically impaired in interpreting prosodic cues that rely on the understanding of the speaker’s intentions. I present a series of papers focusing on grammatical prosody (Paper 1), accidental information transmission (Paper 2), contrastive stress (Papers 3 and 4), and identification of the speaker’s attitude and emotional state (Paper 5). The results presented in these papers then lead me to address more general questions concerning Theory of Mind (Paper 6) and to discuss the possible origins of the social impairments found in ASDs (Paper 7).

Implicatura escalar é uma interpretação upper-bound (limite máximo de informatividade) de um termo escalar fraco. E.g. \'alguns\', o termo fraco da escala semântica <todos, alguns>, pode ter interpretação lower-bound/literal (\"pelo menos alguns e talvez todos\") ou upper-bound/pragmática, de implicatura escalar (\"apenas alguns mas não todos\"). Na primeira parte deste trabalho, investigamos, por vias teóricas e experimentais, a capacidade infantil de interpretação de implicaturas escalares, que entendemos, por influência da Teoria da Relevância, como a negação implicada por um termo fraco de uma pergunta explícita ou contextualmente implícita acerca do termo forte. Nossos resultados indicam domínio de implicatura escalar pelas crianças e sensibilidade capaz de flexibilizar a interpretação dos termos fracos de acordo com contextos lower-bound ou upper-bound. Assim, identificamos na já bem desenvolvida capacidade infantil de inferir intenções comunicativas alheias (mindreading) a função cognitiva central para o sucesso de sua interpretação pragmática. Dedicamos a segunda parte do texto a uma mais abrangente exploração do papel da leitura de intenções na aquisição de linguagem, ainda comprometidos com os paradigmas conceituais da Teoria da Relevância. Ultrapassando o escopo da interpretação pragmática, procuramos reunir evidências favoráveis à adoção da capacidade humana de leitura de intenções como a operação cognitiva motivadora e coesiva do processo de amadurecimento linguístico, de modo que, argumentamos, nenhuma teoria que se proponha a explicar a aquisição de linguagem deve negligenciar em seu modelo a esfera sócio-pragmática da comunicação verbal. / Scalar implicatures happen when an upper-bound interpretation (upper limit of informativeness) is given to a weak scalar term. E.g. \'some\' (the weak term of the scale <all, some>) may receive a lower-bound/literal interpretation (\"at least some and perhaps all\") or an upper-bound/pragmatic scalar implicature interpretation (\"only some but not all\"). In the first part of the work, we investigate children\'s capacity of scalar implicature interpretation through theoretical and experimental research. By influence of Relevance Theory, we assume that such interpretation must infer the negation implicated by the weak term of an explicit or contextually implicit question about the strong term. Our results indicate children\'s mastery of scalar implicature and their sensitivity to adaptation of weak term\'s interpretation according to lower-bound or upper-bound contexts. Thus, we see in the well-developed child capacity of reading other\'s communicative intentions (mindreading) the central cognitive function of their successful pragmatic interpretation. The second part is dedicated to a more embracing analysis of mindreading\'s role in language acquisition, still taking Relevance Theory\'s concepts as references. Beyond the scope of pragmatic interpretation, we sought to gather evidences that support the hypothesis of the human capacity of intentions reading as the cognitive operation that motivates language development and provides cohesion to the parts of the process. Being so, we argue that no theory that intends to explain language acquisition should neglect in its model the social-pragmatics level of verbal communication.

This dissertation examines the developmental trajectory of online processing toward second language (L2) pragmatic comprehension. This goal stems from two shortcomings of previous research: (1) approaching L2 pragmatics as the acquisition of discrete phenomena through progressive stages (see Kasper, 2009), and (2) focusing narrowly on production. Building upon previous L2 pragmatic comprehension work (Carrell, 1981; P. García, 2004; Taguchi, 2005, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2011a, 2011b; Takahashi & Roitblat, 1994), the current study investigates the development of L2 Spanish request speech act comprehension by native English-speaking adult learners. The analysis involves accuracy, comprehension speed and the relationship between the two dimensions across three levels of directness over a 13-week period. Previous research was informed by skill acquisition theories (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) to account for increased accuracy and decreased speed over time. Here, further analysis is based on Complexity Theory / Dynamic Systems Theory (CT/DST) (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008a; de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007; Ellis, et al., 2009; Verspoor, de Bot, & Lowie, 2011) to account for the seemingly chaotic results often found in L2 research. The findings of the current study show significant overall improvement in accuracy and speed of Spanish request identification, and a moderate relationship between the two measures. However, the association between slower responses and higher accuracy in the current data contradicts skill acquisition theories. Rather, the theoretical framework of CT/DST provides a more authentic account of development. As such, the results indicate that the levels of request directness develop along distinct trajectories and timescales. Direct requests reflect higher accuracy and faster interpretation. While the most indirect level of requests shows the largest improvement in accuracy, the responses for these items are no faster at the end of the study than at the beginning. The development of conventionally indirect requests occupies a middle ground in terms of accuracy similar to direct requests and comprehension speed like implied items. Further findings reflect L2 pragmatic comprehension as a complex, dynamic system that emerges through the differential effects of predictor variables across measures and within sub-groups of participants based on proficiency improvement, motivation and response strategy. / text

This thesis proposes a comprehensive cognitive account of metaphor understanding that combines aspects of Relevance Theory (e.g. Sperber & Wilson 1986/95; Carston 2002) and Cognitive Linguistics, in particular ideas from Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g. Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Johnson 1991) and Situated Conceptualization (e.g. Barsalou 1999; 2005). While Relevance Theory accounts for propositional aspects of metaphor understanding, the model proposed here additionally accounts for nonpropositional effects which intuitively make metaphor feel ‗special‘ compared to literal expressions. This is achieved by (a) assuming a further, more basic processing level of imagistic-experiential representations involving mental simulation patterns (Barsalou 1999; 2005) alongside relevance-theoretic inferential processing and (b) assuming processing of the literal meaning of a metaphorical expression at a metarepresentational level, as proposed by Carston (2010). The approach takes Tendahl‘s ‗Hybrid Theory of Metaphor‘ (2006), which also combines cognitive-linguistic with relevance-theoretic ideas, as a starting point. Like Tendahl, it incorporates the notion of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), albeit in a modified form, thus accounting for metaphor in thought. Wilson (2009) suggests that some metaphors originate in language (as previously assumed by Relevance Theory) and others originate in thought (as previously assumed within Cognitive Linguistics). The model proposed here can account for both. Unlike Tendahl, it assumes a modular mental architecture (Sperber 1994), which ensures that the different levels of processing are kept apart. This is because each module handles only its own domain-specific input, here consisting of either propositional or imagistic-experiential representations. The propositional level, which remains the dominant processing route in utterance 3 understanding, as in Relevance Theory, receives some input from the imagistic-experiential level. This is mediated at a metarepresentational level, which turns the imagistic-experiential representations into propositional material to be processed at the inferential level in the understanding of literal expressions. In metaphor understanding, however, the literal meaning is not processed as meaning-constitutive content. As a result, the imagistic-experiential aspects of the literal meaning in question are not processed as propositional input. Rather, they are held at the metarepresentational level and experienced as strong impressions of the kind that only metaphors can communicate.