Reviews

152 Linl<s & Letters 3, 1996 Reviews Diane BLAKEMORE. Understanding Utterances. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. p. xi+191. Understanding Utterances constitutes a welcome textbook on pragmatics which focuses on one particular approach: Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's (1986, 1990) relevance theoreric approach to communication and cognition. Under this approach, pragmatic interpretation is considered a psychological process, governed by a single cognitive principle -the principle of relevance. Understatvding utterances is not simply a matter of knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the way in which they are combined, it also involves drawing inferences' on the basis of non-linguis- tic information. Under the relevance approach, the basic claim is that every act of inferential communication creates a presumption of optimal relevance, in the light ofwhich hypotheses about the communicator's intention can be evaluated. The book is divided into three parts and each part is subdivided into three chapters. Some exercises and discussion topics are provided in the text and at the end of sections, so that the reader feels encouraged to participate in the development and application of the framework. Apart from the general references, recommended reading lists covering the main topics are also supplied at the end of each chapter. Part 1 Fundamentals offers the reader an inrroduction to the theoretical framework, which is further developed and exemplified in the following two parts. In chapter 1, Communication and the context, the aurhor addresses important notions such as the nature of communication and the role of inference in the recovery of what is being communicated. The author finaily takes up the question of the context, which she defines in psychologicai terms: a subset of the hearer's beliefs and assumptions about the world. Chapter 2, Relevance, provides a clear and illustrated explanation of Sperber and Wilson's theory of utterance interpretation built around the notion of relevance. Relevance theory has its origins in Grice's (1975) co-operative principle and maxims and is grounded in a general view of human cognition. The theory is based on a few very simple assumptions: (i) that every utterance has a variety of possible interpretations, al1 compatible with the information that is linguistically encoded; (ii) that not al1 these interpretations are equally accesible on any given occasion; (iii) that hearers are equipped with a single, very general criterion for evaluating interpretations as they occur to them; and (iv) that this criterion is strong enough to exclude al1 but at most a single possible interpretation, so that the hearer is entitled to assume that the first interpretation that satisfies the criterion is the only one. Al1 this is spelt out in the principle of relevance, which claims that every act of communication creates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. An utterance, then, on a given interpretation, is optimally relevant if it has enough contextual effects and if it puts the hearer to no unjustifiable processing effort. For example, suppose that someone walks into the room you are in now and says: 1. Inferential communication involves the formation and evaluation of hypotheses about the communicator's intentions. Reviews Links & Lerters 3, 1996 153 (1) 1 have to te11 you that the building's on fire. aThe building)) is a referential expression, and different assignrnents of referente will lead to different levels of contextual effect. In the circurnstances, the first hypothesis to come to al1 our minds will be that cthe building)) rneans the building we are in. Clearly, the utterance, on this interpretation, would have enough effects to be worth our attention. The three ways in which information can have contextual effects are clearly exernplified in the book: by cornbining with the context to yield contextual irnplications, by strengthening existing assurnptions, and by contradicting and elirninating existing assurnptions. Secondly, the notion of processing effort is a psychological one: a speaker who wants to avoid any risk of misunderstanding should make the intended representation as easy as posible for the hearer to recover. Chapter 3, Prapatics, linpistics and literature, addresses the dichotomy between sernantics and pragrnatics and shows how the principle of relevance explains the interaction between linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge in the interpretation of utterances. The author takes a generative, and hence modular view of language. In this respect, the interpretation of utterances involves the linguistic forrn of the utterance, contextuai assurnptions and the assumption that the speaker is being relevant. The important question raised in this chapter is which aspects of the interpretation of an utterance are deterrnined by semantic factors and which are determined by pragmatic factors. Part 11, Explicature, deals with the recovery of the explicit content of utterances. In chapter 4, Explicating and implicating, the author distinguishes between those assumptions that are explicated (explicitly cornmunicated) by an utterance and those that are irnolicated (implicitly cornrnunicated). Sperber and Wilson cal1 the result of fleshing out the sernantic re~resentation of an utterance an explicature. Under this approach, and as shown in chapter 5, Theproposition expressed, pragrnatics plays an important role in determining what is explicitly said. Semantics proper gives the linguistic meaning of the words; if referents must be assigned, if words must be disambiguated or vague terms enriched, the principle of relevance allows the hearer to determine the exolicit content of the I utterance (i.e., the proposition expressed). In other words, under Relevance Theory, pragrnatics plays an irnportant role in the process of reference assignrnent, disarnbiguation and enrichment. Chapter 6, Higher-leve1 explicatures: Attitudes and speech acts, focuses on the role of utterances in relation to the behavior of speakers and hearers in interpersonal communication. Following Sperber and Wilson, the author suggests that understanding utterances does not necessarily involve the recovery of a speechact description as it defined in the traditionai speech-act framework (Austin (1 962); Searle (1 969)). Utterances are relevant in virtue of what they represent. In this sense, there are various ways in which an utterance rnay represent, and, correspondingly, be relevant. An ordinary assertion is relevant as a (descriptive) representation of a state of affairs. An order is relevant as a representation of a desirable state of affairs. The relevance of a question derives frorn its indication that its answer would be relevant. In other words, linguistic indicators like declarative, imperative and interrogative mood serve onlv to ((indicate the direction in which the relevance of the utterance lies)). Since utterance interpretation is not simply a rnatter of identifying the pro- 154 Links & Letters 3, 1996 Reviews position expressed, the final part, Implicature, is concerned with the recovery of irnplicit rneaning, that is, everything that an utterance cornrnunicates in context and which is not part of the explicit content. Chapter 7, Types of implicature, suggests that irnplicatures rnay be more or less determinate, or as Sperber and Wilson put it, more or less strong. The strongest irnplicatures are those fully determinate implicated conclusions and prernises that the hearer is forced to derive in order to obtain an inrerpretation consistent with the principle of relevante. The rnain goal of chapter 8, Constraints on implicatures, is to show how speakers rnay use linguistic expressions to indicate the way an utterance is to be interpreted as relevant. The chapter presents sorne of the discourse connectives which indicate and constrain the kind of contextual irnplications the hearer is expected to derive. Chapter 9, Implicatures and style, is concerned with the interpretation of stylistic effects and figurative utterances, with special reference to rnetaphor and irony. Under Relevance Theory the recovery of rnetaphoric and ironic utterances dernands extra processing effort, which encourages the hearer to look for additional weak or strong irnplicatures. Metaphors are considered less-than-literal representations of a speaker's thought, whereas irony is a variety of echoic2 interpretive use in which the proposition expressed represents a belief attributed by the speaker to sorneone else. Understanding Utterances offers the reader a useful introductory coverage of Sperber and Wilson's relevance-theoretic approach to cornrnunication and cognition. As the author states in the preface, the airn of the book is not to present an overview of current pragrnatic theories, but rather to focus on this particular approach to pragrnatics. As a consequence, the book contains both a general introduction to the frarnework and detailed discussions of specific pragrnatic phenornena. In this respect, and given the introductor~ nature of the textbook, sorne readers rnight find a glossary, or more clarifying notes on terrninology to be rnissing. On the whole, Blakernore's work is a rnost welcorne addition to the literature and can be recornrnended to specialist and student alike. Montserrat Capdevila i Batet Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Gerrnanística Universitat Autbnorna de Barcelona References AUSTIN, J.L. (1 962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon. GRICE, H. P. (1975). ((Logic and Conversation~. In Cole, P. and Morgan, J. (eds.), p. 41-58. LEVINSON, S. (1989). ((Review of Sperber and Wilson)). Relevance. Journal of Linguistics, 25: 455-72. -(1989). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SEARLE, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SPERBER, D. and D. Wilson (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. WILSON, D. and SPERBER, D. (1986). ~Inference and Implicature)). In Travis, C. (ed.), p. 45-76. -(1990). ((Linguistic form and Relevante)). UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 2: 95-112. 2. Ir irnplicitly expreses the speaker's attitude -one of disapproval in ironic utterances - to the beliefs being expressed.