Sperber: Relevance: Communication & Cognition (paper) (Language and Thought Ser) - Softcover

Sperber, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067475476X ISBN 13: 9780674754768

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1986

Synopsis

Relevance, first published in 1986, was named as one of themost important and influential books of the decade in the TimesHigher Educational Supplement. This revised edition includes anew Preface outlining developments in Relevance Theory since 1986,discussing the more serious criticisms of the theory, andenvisaging possible revisions or extensions.

The book sets out to lay the foundation for a unified theory ofcognitive science. The authors argue than human cognition has agoal: we pay attention only to information which seems to usrelevant. To communicate is to claim someone′s attention, and henceto imply that the information communicated is relevant. Thus, asingle property – relevance is seen as the key to humancommunication and cognition.

A second important feature of the book is its approach to thestudy of reasoning. It elucidates the role of background orcontextual information in spontaneous inference, and shows thatnon–demonstrative inference processes can be fruitfully analysed asa form of suitably constrained guesswork. It directly challengesrecent claims that human central thought processes are likely toremain a mystery for some time to come.

Thirdly, the authors offer new insight into language andliterature, radically revising current view on the nature and goalsof verbal comprehension, and in particular on metaphor, irony,style, speech acts, presupposition and implicature.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Sperber of the Centre National de la RechercheScientifique in Paris, and the Université de Paris X, isauthor of Rethinking Symbolism and On AnthropologicalKnowledge.

Dierdre Wilson is Reader in Linguistics at UniversityCollege London, and the author of Presuppositions andNon–Truth–Conditional Semantics and Modern Linguistics: TheResults of Chomsky′s Revolution.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 067475476X
• ISBN 13: 9780674754768
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288