ABSTRACT
Relevance theory (RT) was developed by Sperber and Wilson in an attempt to capture general principles that govern pragmatic interpretation. Mazzone proposes that activation of speaker-related information is enhanced due to the representation of the speaker in the hearer’s working memory. But this proposal doesn’t differ much from the cognitive principle of relevance. This chapter argues that Mazzone’s account is not incompatible with the assumptions held by RT. More specifically, it demonstrates that cases such as the Neil example may be addressed in a modified version of RT in which the basic theory is complemented by a goal-based view that includes production-like if/then rules. The chapter suggests that this integration is realised by using working memory and that there exist conversational constraints, which might be described in the form of production rules, with which a constructed utterance interpretation should be consistent.
