The Relevance Theory

Abstract

The aim of the paper is a popularization of a book by Dan Sperber and Deirde Wilson, which is not as well-known among logicians and philosophers as it should be. It is, apart from the famous book by Lakoff and Johnson, probably the most important work on cognitive linguistics in the last two decades. All more extensive works on pragmatics and the philosophy of language written later contain references to this book. „The relevance theory” is now a term of art, explicitly and forever associated with the names of the authors. It would be very easy to criticise this work, since from the logical point of view it contains many inaccuracies and dubious ideas, some of which are simply logically fallacious. However, it is a very deep and inspiring work at the same time - also for a logician. In my paper there are no supplements nor critical remarks. It is exclusively a faithful summary of the original ideas of Sperber and Wilson.