In this chapter, we introduce the main ideas behind relevance theory. We begin by considering how it developed out of the Gricean approach to pragmatics, and we look at how it differs from that approach. Relevance theory is a cognitive pragmatic theory of how we process utterances (and information) in context. The chapter begins with a discussion of relevance and cognition, and we outline the relevance-theoretic characterisation of context. This then leads us to a definition of what it means for something to be relevant, and we introduce the two principles which drive the relevance-theoretic approach to utterance interpretation. When information is intentionally communicated (both in utterances and in other forms of communication), we say it is ostensive. Ostensive communication is, according to relevance theory, special. It raises expectations of how relevant it will be for the addressee, and this has important consequences for how we process information and how we understand utterance interpretation. We will see that this leads us to the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure which describes how we go about processing intentionally communicated information.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the main ideas and principles of relevance theory. The cognitive and communicative principles of relevance are introduced, along with the notion of procedural meaning. The roles that these principles and concepts play in utterance interpretation are discussed. Attention then turns to reference with an overview of Wilson’s (1992) relevance-based account. The importance of the role of accessibility of context and referents in understanding the process of reference resolution is highlighted. Focus then turns to the cognitive process of referring itself. The act of resolving reference is presented as the process of mapping argument slots in the logical form of an utterance onto conceptual files. Referring expressions are a means by which a speaker can guide a hearer in this process. That is, they are procedural in nature. As with other interpretive processes, reference resolution is driven by the presumption of optimal relevance. The processes of mapping an argument slot onto a conceptual file and enriching that conceptual file are driven from the bottom-up by the semantics of the verb and constrained from the top-down by considerations of relevance.

Ingrid Lossius Falkum uses data from young children’s communicative development to argue that metaphor and metonymy rely on different pragmatic mechanisms. Metaphor and metonymy do have certain characteristics in common: they both target individual words or phrases, they both contribute content to the proposition explicitly expressed, and they both lie on a continuum of literal and figurative uses. However, developmental data suggests that early metonymic uses may be the result of a more basic process than metaphorical uses, one in which the child exploits salient associative relations to compensate for gaps in vocabulary.

The focus of this chapter is on issues arising for the understanding of metaphors in a second language learning context. Elly Ifantidou presents an empirical study in which native Greek-speaking learners of English were presented with a selection of metaphors from British newspapers. The results of this comprehension task suggest that even when second language learners are confronted with a metaphor whose intended propositional content they cannot fully grasp, the literal content of the metaphor may still trigger images, sensorimotor processes and emotional attitudes which provide them with a partial interpretation.