RELEVANCE AND WRITING

What is it about?

This article defends an inferential model of meaning – namely Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory – against structuralist arguments that we are constrained by the semantic and grammatical codes of language, and deconstructionist claims that figuration renders meaning, reading and understanding all but impossible. Utterances are often loose or metaphorical, and semantic and syntactic codes alone grossly underdetermine their interpretation. Hearers make inferential, interpretive assumptions about speakers’ intentions. Literary communication, however, is generally more complicated, requiring more ‘processing effort.’ Readers (and translators) interested in retrieving intended meanings attempt to reconstruct the author’s intended contextual assumptions; readers more interested in their own interpretations or the resources of literary language might well choose to disregard authorial intentions, in ways outlined and recommended by various recent ‘reader-response’ theorists.

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Perspectives