This is my colleague Chris Cocchiarella’s summary of the seventh chapter of Wilson and Sperber’s (2012) Meaning and Relevance. We previously posted Chris’s summary of the book’s preface, an intro to some of the terms and concepts of Relevance Theory, and a his summary of the introductory Chapter 1. All the other chapters before the present one have also… Continue reading M&R Ch 7: Linguistic form and relevance
This is my colleague Chris Cocchiarella’s summary of the first chapter of Wilson and Sperber’s (2012) Meaning and Relevance. We previously posted a summary of the book’s preface and an intro to some of the terms and concepts of Relevance Theory. I also posted a claim that Relevance Theory matters to rhetoric and TC. This… Continue reading M&R Chapter 1–Introduction: Pragmatics
Here is Chris Cocchiarella’s summary of the preface of Wilson & Sperber’s Meaning and Relevance. This is part of a series of posts discussing intersections between Relevance Theory (RT) and rhetoric. For an overview of this project, see this post; for definitions of terms and concepts from RT, see this post. -Brian Under various theoretical… Continue reading Meaning and Relevance: Preface
To assist readers following our series of posts on Wilson and Sperber’s Meaning and Relevance (2012), and to assist us, too by providing a place to refer to in future posts for definitions of terms, I’m posting here a summary of a book chapter W&S published in 2006: Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2006). Relevance… Continue reading Basic definitions and concepts from Relevance Theory
Chris Cocchiarella and I are working on a book review of Meaning and Relevance (M&R), the 2012 collection of scholarly essays in linguistic pragmatics by Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber, who present relevance theory (RT), a cognitive, as opposed to merely linguistic, theory of communication. By a ‘cognitive’ theory, they mean not only the process… Continue reading Is Relevance Theory relevant to rhetoric?
I received a link from friend and colleague Trent Kays to this article: Williams, J. M. (1981). The phenomenology of error. College Composition and Communication, 32(2), 152-168. (I UPDATED this post 11/22 with notes from Prof. Sihler below.) It’s a good read, and points up a key problem: Self-appointed arbiters of writing style, unofficial state… Continue reading The Phenomenology of Error
In what is likely to be another blow to my classroom ethos, I need to correct an error I introduced into the discussion in 5531 Composition Pedagogy last Wednesday. A classmate asked about what “structuralism” is. I confidently described it as arising from the linguistics of the Frenchman Ferdinand de Saussure, embodied famously in the… Continue reading Tripped up by “structuralism”