This thesis explores what is involved in the production of communicative behaviour. It argues that pragmatic theories can contribute to accounts of production as well as comprehension and that the kinds of processes involved in production must be similar to those involved in comprehension. It assumes that the processes involved include fairly intuitive unreflective ones and also that processes can be more or less reflective. It adopts the framework of relevance theory, which assumes the existence of what is termed a ‘relevance-guided comprehension heuristic’ (Wilson and Sperber, 2002) which guides comprehension. This thesis proposes that a relevance-focused heuristic is involved in production. The thesis considers a number of previous approaches to pragmatic theory and to accounting for production. As Kecskés (2007; 2008; 2013) points out, many pragmatic theories say little or nothing about production. The thesis considers some which do (including proposals made by Kecskés) and aims to build on these by developing a fuller account from the perspective of relevance theory. One important idea in the account developed here is that (as pointed out by, among others, Clark, 1996, Culpeper and Haugh 2014, and Thomas 1995) communicators are typically both producing and comprehending communicative acts, often simultaneously. Taking this dynamic and interactive view of communicative interaction seriously means recognising that production and comprehension heuristics are often operating simultaneously. A more radical proposal (not pursued here) is that one or more processes might simultaneously be involved in both production and interpretation. After developing the idea that a production heuristic is involved, and making some claims about the nature of this heuristic, the thesis reports empirical work which provides evidence about how the communicative behaviour of participants is affected by assumptions about interlocutors. It then considers some implications of the ideas developed here, including ways in which they might be applied in a number of areas, and concludes with suggestions for future research.
Date of Award | 26 Oct 2023 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | |
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Supervisor | Billy Clark (Supervisor), Mimi Huang (Supervisor) & Anna Charalampidou (Supervisor) |
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- Korean language
- communication heuristics
- Inference
- reasoning
- social image
Relevance theory and the pragmatics of production
Park, K. H. (Author). 26 Oct 2023
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis