5 - Relevance Theory, Non-propositional Content and Ineffability

Summary

Linguists, philosophers and pragmatists have tended to stay close to those areas of meaning illuminated by semantics and logic. In this chapter we suggest that relevance theory offers a solution to this limiting view. We say a little about the context in which the framework was devised, present the main tenets of the theory itself and then explain the two theoretical advances which form the basis of our belief that it is uniquely positioned to accommodate the communication of affect and emotion. The first of these is the notion of non-conceptual or procedural meaning. The second involves two key innovations in relevance theory which result in theoretical divergences from post-Gricean and Neo-Gricean approaches. In the first of these, the relevance-theoretic informative intention is not characterised as an intention to modify the hearer’s thoughts directly. In the second, relevance theory does not attempt to draw the line Grice drew between showing and meaningNN and recognises both as instances of overt intentional communication. These two innovations result in the theory’s being able to accommodate extremely vague types of communication and, further, demonstrate that communicated information - whether clock-like or cloud-like - can be shown rather than merely meantNN.