Context selection in relevance theory

Abstract

Revisiting earlier research in the area (Assimakopoulos, Context Selection and Relevance, 2003), this paper sets out to investigate the notion of context from a relevance-theoretic perspective. Endorsing the idea that, in cognitive terms, contexts for utterance interpretation are best viewed as sets of assumptions that are brought to bear during the processing of an utterance, I collect the main arguments that relevance theorists have put forth regarding their treatment, focusing mainly on the central innovation of Relevance Theory on the matter, i.e. the proposal that contexts are actually selected during utterance comprehension rather than determined in advance of it. I then address the question of how contexts for interpretation are constructed on-line as well as how considerations of relevance, in the technical sense that Sperber and Wilson have assigned to the term, facilitate the admittedly effortless selection of contexts by the hearer and, to a certain extent, the speaker too.