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Phatic communication and relevance theory: a reply to Ward & Horn

  • Vlad Zegarac
    ,
  • Billy Clark
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

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’).

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 565-577

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Journal of Linguistics (Volume 35, Issue 3)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/11/1999

Publication status

Published - 01/11/1999

ISSN

0022-2267

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623675
  • Scopus: 84937186968

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