CONTEXT DYNAMICS 1: IS RELEVANCE SUBSCRIPTED ?
Authors : C AKSOY
Pages : 203-208
View : 25 | Download : 9
Publication Date : 2005-12-15
Article Type : Research Paper
Abstract :It is generally assumed that a pragmatic proposition is formed by an utterance as relevant to some context. However, such assumptions may not yet be treated as scientific because operational definitions of the main concept \`relevance\` hardly exist, thus prone to circular definitions as \`relevance of an utterance to a context exists whenever the utterance is relevant to the context\`, or \`relevance exists whenever a relevance-theoretician says it exists\` insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(to arrive at such inferences, please see [1], the book that marks the birth of the literary hypothesis of relevance);. This theoretical vulnerability is probably due to the treatment of a context as invariant, and/or the belief that short-term memory can hold an infinite amount of propositions insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(some of which become inferences as a result of undefined procedures while some others remain as presuppositions);, and/or the conception of an utterance as unitary and static following its onset in the hearer\`s mind, which is scientifically tolerable, because after listening to or reading out an utterance thoroughly and thinking about it for a period which an ordinary hearer/reader would unfortunately lack, the utterance could have a consolidated unitary episodic structure and the number of pertaining propositions could be easier to count, without the well-known limitations of short-term memory. Leaving such speculative and non-empirical deductions out of the discussion here, the utterance itself maybe considered as a token for context analysis by the hearerinsert ignore into journalissuearticles values(s);, as previously proposed [2, 3]; please also see [4]...Keywords : CONTEXT DYNAMICS
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