Weak communication, joke targets and the punch-line effect : a relevance-theoretic account

Artykuł przedstawia analizę mechanizmów poznawczych stanowiących podłoże humoru w dowcipach słownych, wykorzystującą pojęcie tzw. słabej komunikacji, zaproponowane przez teorię relewancji. Podczas gdy większość pragmatycznych modeli humoru podkreśla rolę rozwiązania inkongruencji oraz poszczególnych etapów inferencyjnych, przez które odbiorca jest planowo prowadzony w interpretacji żartów (por. Yus 2016), przedstawiona tu analiza tłumaczy efekt humorystyczny przez pryzmat swoistego "przeciążenia poznawczego", które towarzyszy przetwarzaniu pointy dowcipu. W tym ujęciu wiele słabo komunikowanych informacji, do których odbiorca nagle uzyskuje dostęp w momencie, gdy dowcip się kończy, tworzy efekt przeciążenia poznawczego dający impuls do reakcji afektywnej. Analiza humoru na gruncie pojęcia słabej komunikacji wskazuje, że wspólnym mianownikiem tekstów uznawanych za śmieszne pod każdą szerokością geograficzną i tzw. humoru etnicznego czy narodowego jest to, że kluczowe pojęcia i postaci w tekście, stanowiące cel satyry, muszą (przynajmniej potencjalnie) dawać dostęp do całego wachlarza informacji, gdyż w innym wypadku efekt słabej komunikacji nie zaistnieje. O śmieszności dowcipu przesądza zatem nie samo zrozumienie jego treści i pointy, ale osiągnięcie specjalnego efektu poznawczego.The paper offers an analysis of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the production and comprehension of verbal jokes in terms of what relevance theorists refer to as weakly communicated import. While pragmatic analyses of humour emphasize the role of the inferential stages that the audience is intended (or even manipulated, Yus 2016) to go through in processing a joke, the weak communication model presented here focuses on the punchline effect, exploring the nature of the "cognitive climax" that is created. On this account, a vast array of weakly communicated assumptions, resulting in a cognitive overload effect, rather than incongruity resolution on its own, is identified as the laughter-inducing mechanism underlying verbal humour. The central idea is that universal and culture-specific humour-generating elements in jokes have one quality in common, viz. their potential to cause a cognitive overload effect, which may, and often does, result in amusement. On this approach, what is typically recognized as national or ethnic humour is posited to recruit the same humour-invoking pragmatic mechanisms as in other kinds of jokes, the principal difference lying in the choice of the target being mocked, which must be well-known to the audience for the cognitive overload effect to be brought forth

Niewidzenie a kompetencje pragmatyczne w komunikacji

The paper argues that gaps in knowledge attested in congenitally blind individuals may negatively affect their performance in foreign language tasks testing reading comprehension. Characteristics of a blind learner at various stages of cognitive and educational development are presented, with focus on gaps in knowledge resulting from sight impairment. The concept of pragmatic competence is first explained generally in reference to communication and then it is applied to a case of a comprehension task taken from an EFL exam (Polish “matura”, basic level). An analysis of the text indicates that despite being relatively simple in linguistic terms, comprehension tasks may pose a significant processing challenge to blind students due to a large amount of implicitly communicated information dependent on visual experience.The paper argues that gaps in knowledge attested in congenitally blind individuals may negatively affect their performance in foreign language tasks testing reading comprehension. Characteristics of a blind learner at various stages of cognitive and educational development are presented, with focus on gaps in knowledge resulting from sight impairment. The concept of pragmatic competence is first explained generally in reference to communication and then it is applied to a case of a comprehension task taken from an EFL exam (Polish “matura”, basic level). An analysis of the text indicates that despite being relatively simple in linguistic terms, comprehension tasks may pose a significant processing challenge to blind students due to a large amount of implicitly communicated information dependent on visual experience

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Editorial: Relevance Theory and Intercultural Communication Problems

This editorial to the special issue of RiL dedicated to relevance theory and problems of intercultural communication addresses the general requirements that a theory of communication must meet to be applicable to the analysis of intercultural communication. Then it discusses criticism levelled against Grice’s theory of conversational implicature and Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness on the grounds that these theories were not universal enough to be applied to all data. Finally, it offers some remarks on the applicability of relevance theory to intercultural pragmatics

Relevance theory, figuration, and continuity in pragmatics Figurative thought and language ;, v. 8./ edited by Agnieszka Piskorska.

Includes bibliographical references and index."The chapters in this volume apply the methodology of relevance theory to develop accounts of various pragmatic phenomena which can be associated with the broadly conceived notion of style. Some of them are devoted to central cases of figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, puns, irony) while others deal with issues not readily associated with figurativeness (from multimodal communicative stimuli through strong and weak implicatures to discourse functions of connectives, particles and participles). Other chapters shed light on the use of specific communicative styles, ranging from hate speech to humour and humorous irony. Using the relevance-theoretic toolkit to analyse a spectrum of style-related issues, this volume makes a case for the model of pragmatics founded upon inference and continuity, understood as the non-existence of sharply delineated boundaries between classes of communicative phenomena"--Introduction: Literal-figurative language continuum and optimally relevant interpretations / Agnieszka Piskorska -- Category extension as a variety of loose use / Ewa Wałaszewska -- Metonymic relations : from determinacy to indeterminacy / Maria Jodlowiec and Agnieszka Piskorska -- Evidential participles and epistemic vigilance / Manuel Padilla Cruz -- The Greek connective gar : different genres, different effects? / Sarah Casson -- Metarepresentation markers in Indus Kohistani : a study with special reference to the marker of desirable utterances loo / Beate Lubberger -- When everything stands out, nothing does : typography, expectations and procedures / Kate Scott and Rebecca Jackson -- Relevance, style and multimodality : typographical features as stylistic devices / Ryoko Sasamoto and Minako O'Hagan -- Towards a relevance-theoretic account of hate speech / Jadwiga Linde-Usiekniewicz -- Tropes of ill repute : Puns and (often thwarted) expectations of relevance / Agnieszka Solska -- Another look at "Cat in the rain" : a cognitive pragmatic approach to text analysis / Seiji Uchida -- Echoic irony in Philip Larkin's poetry and its preservation in Polish translations / Agnieszka Walczak -- Humour and irony in George Mikes' How to be a Brit / Maria Angeles Ruiz-Moneva.1 online resource (vi, 357 pages)

Scotland with a Pinch of Westeros? The Case of Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth

The paper discusses the resemblance between Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and its cinematic adaptation directed by Justin Kurzel (2015) with respect to the image of Scotland in the geographical and historical sense. To this end, tools derived from translation studies are employed, such as the notion of intersemiotic translation, interpretive resemblance and interpretants. It is argued that alterations introduced in the adaptation are motivated by psychological reality and coherence of the plot, making the representation of medieval Scotland believable. In this respect, Kurzel’s production differs from many other cinematic versions of Macbeth, exploiting mostly the universality of the crime and madness motifs

Zastosowanie przenośni jako nacechowanej negatywnie strategii grzecznościowej w artykułach prasowych

Artykuł dotyczy zastosowania przenośni w artykułach prasowych o charakterze polemicznym, w których ten środek stylistyczny użyty jest do sparafrazowania poglądów, będących przedmiotem polemiki. Metaforyczne sformułowania prowadzą do interpretacji, w której osoba głosząca dany pogląd jawi się jako niekompetentna lub ograniczona, przez co stanowią one naruszenie „twarzy” tej osoby i wprowadzają do argumentacji element nacechowany negatywnie. W pracy przedstawiono pogląd, iż pośredni i implicytny charakter komunikatu ma kluczowe znaczenie w spełnieniu tej funkcji.The paper deals with the use of metaphor in press articles for the sake of paraphrasing opinions targeted by a polemist. Metaphorical formulations give rise to an interpretation in which the proponent of the targeted opinion appears as incompetent or downright daft, thereby constituting a threat to his/her face. By this token, such metaphors become a means of impoliteness strategy. It is argued that indirectness and implicitness are conducive to fulfilling the impoliteness function

Metonymy revisited : towards a new relevance-theoretic account

Metonymy is a pervasive aspect of spontaneous as well as reflective linguistic performance and its cognitive and communicative role needs to be adequately attended to. The paper aims to offer a new model of metonymy grounded in the relevance-theoretic approach to communication, adopting the view that all comprehension is underlain by inferential processes. First, we present a critical overview of selected existing accounts of metonymy put forward by cognitive linguists, arguing that although they offer valuable observations about the role of metonymy in online meaning construction and bring to light a varied spectrum of different types of metonymic conceptualizations, cognitive linguistic analyses fall some way short of offering a convincing rationale for metonymic uses in verbal communication and do not articulate a psychologically plausible and testable principle that would explain why metonymy arises and how the intended meaning is inferred in context by the recipient. We also critically address the existing relevance-theoretic models, which, while offering a cognitively motivated account of metonymy, likewise suffer from certain inadequacies. In an attempt to remedy these shortcomings, we develop a fully inferential relevance-theoretic account, which assumes that metonymy is a case of tagging the intended referent by a concept literally denoted by the metonymic expression. The real-world contiguity which underlies metonymic usage is postulated to be encapsulated in mental schemas that are indexed by the concept that the metonymic word or phrase provides access to

Cognitive functioning of a blind student in a foreign language classroom

Niniejszy artykuł poświęcony jest specyfice funkcjonowania poznawczego niewidomych dzieci i nastolatków w zakresie postrzegania, uwagi, pamięci, przetwarzania informacji oraz Teorii Umysłu. Poruszone jest też zagadnienie jej wpływu na naukę języków obcych. Omówione są badania empiryczne dotyczące wpływu niepełnosprawności wzrokowej na funkcje poznawcze, a proces nauki języka obcego jest przedstawiony z punktu widzenia teorii, według których jest on wynikiem działań poznawczych zorientowanych na rozwijanie kompetencji komunikacyjnych. Sytuacja niewidomego ucznia na lekcji języka obcego jest omówiona zarówno z perspektywy trudności stojących przed niewidzącą osobą, ale także z punktu widzenia możliwości zmniejszenia luki pomiędzy osobami widzącymi i niewidzącymi dzięki treściom zawartym w podręcznikach do nauki języków obcych.This paper deals with the specific character of cognitive functioning of blind children and adolescents with respect to perception, attention, memory, information processing and Theory of Mind. It also discusses the impact of this specificity on foreign language learning. Empirical research on the influence of visual impairment on cognitive functions is discussed, and foreign language learning is presented from the viewpoint of theories which look upon this process as a result of cognitive operations, oriented towards developing communicative competence. The situation of a blind learner in a foreign language class is discussed both from the perspective of challenges a blind student has to face and also from the perspective of opportunities to diminish the gap between the blind and the sighted thanks to the content included in foreign language textbooks