Francisco Yus Ramos

A decade of relevance theory

In this paper I provide an insight into Sperber and Wilsons relevance theory, an analysis of its situation after ten years, and comments on the theory and its wide implications for the study of communication. The analysis of the theory that is supplied, together with the account of its main applications, is basically intended to provide bibliographical sources for those analysts who, one way or another, are interested in Sperber and Wilsons proposal for communication or in any of its aspects, and would like to access further material related to the theory.

Relevance theory and media discourse: A verbal-visual model of communication

Abstract In 1986 Sperber and Wilsons Relevance theory emerged in pragmatic analyses as an ambitious attempt to provide a thorough explanation of how addressees pick up one single interpretation (based on nondemonstrative inference) that is consistent with the addressers intention. In the application of this theory to media discourse, some problems arise associated with the correct attribution of the addressers (author or character) communicative intention. One reason can be found in the lack of physical, face-to-face co-presence of both ends of media communication: author and spectator. The aim of the present article is to propose a Model for verbal-visual media discourse extracted from Sperber and Wilsons ideas which comprises the interpretive possibilities of media communication in sixteen categories with four basic qualifying parameters: addressee, verbal or nonverbal discourse, intentionality, and the outcome of the addressees interpretation. The article ends with an exemplification of some categories of this Model using English comics as one of the verbal-visual discourses that can be analysed under the perspective of this Model .