ABSTRACT
Psycholinguistics is about language and the mind: what goes on in the mind when we learn or use a language. A listener has the mental capacity to infer that intention by using the linguistic properties of what the speaker says to form semantic representations in the mind. People get from the semantic representations to the full-fledged thought by means of context. However, in relevance theory 'context' does not mean the co-text or the situation. It is rather a set of assumptions that the listener has about the world. The principle of relevance derives directly from these two elements of effort and benefit. One chooses from the context those assumptions that will satisfy two requirements: they will have the largest contextual effects or benefit; they will require least processing effort. Another distinction in relevance theory which is important for translation is that between primary and secondary communication situations.
