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Phatic communication and Relevance Theory: a reply to Ward & Horn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 1999

VLAD ŽEGARAC  and
BILLY CLARK
VLAD ŽEGARAC
Affiliation:
University of Luton
BILLY CLARK
Affiliation:
Middlesex University
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Abstract

In Žegarac & Clark (1999) we try to show how phatic communication can be explained within the framework of Relevance Theory. We suggest that phatic communication should be characterized as a particular type of interpretation, which we call ‘phatic interpretation’. On our account, an interpretation is phatic to the extent that its main relevance lies with implicated conclusions which do not depend on the explicit content of the utterance, but rather on the communicative intention (where ‘depends on X’ means: ‘results from an inferential process which takes X as a premise’).

Type
NOTES AND DISCUSSION
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , November 1999 , pp. 565 - 577
Copyright
1999 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We are indebted to a number of people for their help and encouragement in our work on phatic communication in general, and our reply to Ward and Horn in particular: Robyn Carston, Alan Durant, Steve Nicolle, Neil Smith, Helen Spencer-Oatey, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Vlad Žegarac is especially grateful to Robyn Carston for interesting discussion about the role of intuitions and other data in theory building. Many thanks to Bob Borsley and Ewa Jaworska for their considerable support and patience. Responsibility for remaining flaws in this text lies with the authors.