TY - JOUR
T1 - Conversational relevance
AU - Dascal, Marcelo
N1 - Funding Information:
In everyday life, in science and in philosophy, we often express judgments of t~elevance: fact a is relevant to fact b, theory c is relevant to action d, statement e is irrelevant to belief f, etc. And we often have a great measure of confide:nee in such judgments, since we are ready to base important decisions upon them (e.g., in the courtroom, when an objection concerning the irrelevance of a question is either sustained or rejected by the judge) and, when necessary, we ar~ willing to ,engage in serious disputes about the truth of such judgments (e.g., a doctoral committee discussing about the relevance of the second chapter of a dissertation). In plulosophy, the concept of relevance or one of its clom relatiw.'s is often encountered at the bottom of efforts to soIve central philosophical problems and to analy'~e fundamental concepts: i:~duction, ve:dfiabitity, synony~3y, knowl~dg~, aat-. urat kinds. But when used by philosophers, scientists or the laym~a, t~tis concept is selc~;om clearly defined or characterized. ~ome take it to be hope|essly vague and therefo "e useless in serious endeavors. Others will com~ider the, recourse to such a concept in * This is a re~.sed ver~Aon of the paper i read at the colloquium on memdng ~,nd use in memory of Professor Yehoshua Bar-Hiltel, held in Jerusalem, April 25-30, 1976 (proceedings of which are forthcoming in Meaning and u~e, ed. by Avishai Margalit (Dordrccht: Retdel), and Jerusalem philosophical eneounyers 2, Jerus~L!em). I wish to thank P~ofessor Hetmu! SchneUe and the Deutsche Forsch~.ng~,emeinschaft for the financial ~;pport which m~de possible the preparation of part of trois work (Project AZ Schn 113/10, "3ernantische Relationen'). i am grateful also to Ruth Manor i'm"h er helpful suggestions in the ~ou~s~ of the preparation of this manu~tipt, and to t~l\[~x~G lo~_.¢-~man for his comments on an early draft.
PY - 1977/12
Y1 - 1977/12
N2 - Among the maxims that govern conversation and which can be exploited in order to generate 'implicatures', H.P. Grice includes the maxim 'Be relevant' (R). The present paper is an attempt to clarify the way in which maxim R operates. Two broad types of relevance are distinguished, a 'pragmatic' and a 'semantic' one, as well as a number of subtypes. It is argued that the generation of implicatures via R relies on the rather precise identification of the types of relevance allegedly missing in a conversational exchange. An abductive rather than deductive model for the derivation of implicatures via R is sketched, based upon a presumed hierarchical order of the various types of relevance.
AB - Among the maxims that govern conversation and which can be exploited in order to generate 'implicatures', H.P. Grice includes the maxim 'Be relevant' (R). The present paper is an attempt to clarify the way in which maxim R operates. Two broad types of relevance are distinguished, a 'pragmatic' and a 'semantic' one, as well as a number of subtypes. It is argued that the generation of implicatures via R relies on the rather precise identification of the types of relevance allegedly missing in a conversational exchange. An abductive rather than deductive model for the derivation of implicatures via R is sketched, based upon a presumed hierarchical order of the various types of relevance.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0000326346&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/0378-2166(77)90026-1
DO - 10.1016/0378-2166(77)90026-1
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AN - SCOPUS:0000326346
SN - 0378-2166
VL - 1
SP - 309
EP - 327
JO - Journal of Pragmatics
JF - Journal of Pragmatics
IS - 4
ER -