RELEVANCE THEORY ACTIVITIES
1. List the assumptions that will constitute the initial, immediately
accessible context in which the hearer will process the second
utterance of the following exchange:
A and B, two friends living in Cadiz, are talking:
A: Why don’t we go to the Seville Fair on Thursday?
eB: This will have to go into the garage tomorrow morning and I
don’t feel like spending hours in Santa Justa to get back here.
Explain how the hearer will have to extend that initial context to be
able to interpret B’s remark. (You can supply any assumptions you
consider appropriate to provide a good explanation)
Possible assumption for the initial context is that two
friends that want to do something new and they are
calculating possibilities. They have never been in Seville
Fair.
Explicitly, “B” said to “A” that “this” refers to a car, a car
that probably does not belong to him as “b” declares “will
have to go into the garage tomorrow”, the car possibly
belong to his parents, and then he does not want to wait
hours in Santa Justa Station to return to home.
Implicitly, ”B” means that his parents will not let him the
car to go to Seville and he is lazy enough to wait a train
there.
2. Consider clause (a) of optimal relevance and analyze the
following utterance said by one stranger to another on a train to
Manchester:
a. Trains are very comfortable nowadays.
•First stranger is in a train to Manchester.
•A second stranger is in a train to Manchester too.
•So, both strangers are in a train to Manchester.
•The utterance ‘Trains are very comfortable nowadays’ is
relevant to the hearer because the speaker males a
reference to the same vehicle of transport they are
using. The utterance agrees with the context,
independently whether the utterance is true or false.
3. Explain why the hearer is restricted to choosing the minimal
acceptable context and contextual effects. Base your argument
on clause (b) of the definition of optimal relevance. Use the
following example to develop your argument:
