Book contents
- Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation
- Relevance, Pragmatics and InterpretationEssays in Honour of Deirdre Wilson
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Cover Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Reflections on the Development of Relevance Theory
- Part I Relevance Theory and Cognitive Communicative Issues
- Part II Pragmatics and Linguistic Issues
- 8 Mood and the Analysis of Imperative Sentences
- 9 The Korean Sentence-Final Suffix ci as a Metarepresentational Marker
- 10 Expressive Epithets and Expressive Small Clauses
- 11 Ad Hoc Concepts, Polysemy and the Lexicon
- 12 The Polysemy of a Norwegian Modal Adverb
- 13 Noun-Noun Compounds from the Perspective of Relevance Theory
- 14 Procedural Syntax
- Part III Figurative Language and Layered Interpretations
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
10 - Expressive Epithets and Expressive Small Clauses
from Part II - Pragmatics and Linguistic Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2019
- Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation
- Relevance, Pragmatics and InterpretationEssays in Honour of Deirdre Wilson
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Cover Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Reflections on the Development of Relevance Theory
- Part I Relevance Theory and Cognitive Communicative Issues
- Part II Pragmatics and Linguistic Issues
- 8 Mood and the Analysis of Imperative Sentences
- 9 The Korean Sentence-Final Suffix ci as a Metarepresentational Marker
- 10 Expressive Epithets and Expressive Small Clauses
- 11 Ad Hoc Concepts, Polysemy and the Lexicon
- 12 The Polysemy of a Norwegian Modal Adverb
- 13 Noun-Noun Compounds from the Perspective of Relevance Theory
- 14 Procedural Syntax
- Part III Figurative Language and Layered Interpretations
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
In this chapter, Diane Blakemore focuses on two kinds of linguistic phrase which seem to be inherently expressive, nominal epithets such as 'the idiot' and small clauses such as 'you angel'. Blakemore argues against accounts that treat these structures as linguistically encoding the property of expressiveness and in favour of a relevance-theoretic account according to which they communicate a particular conceptual content that guides the addressee in identifying the attitude the speaker holds towards the target individual. Expressiveness arises when the main relevance of the utterance comes from this information about speaker attitude.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation , pp. 137 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
- 2
- Cited by