ABSTRACT
Cognitive pragmatics is the study of the psychological processes involved in human communication in context, especially on the side of comprehension. Paul Grice has laid the foundation for this field by describing comprehension as a form of inference-based intention recognition. This chapter presents Grice’s framework, describes how Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory develops it, and defends it against criticisms leveled at both the notions of communicative intention and inferential pragmatic processing. I also argue that inference-based intention recognition may include recognition of conventional patterns as a component, which would allow for a theoretical convergence between Grice’s and Austin’s paradigms.
