In the Mind and across Minds: A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective on Communication and Translation

The present volume demonstrates the multifaceted potential of Relevance Theory, which, for more than two decades now, has been inspiring studies of the relationship between human communication and cognition. In the Mind and across Minds reflects the main strands of relevance-theoretic research, by expanding, evaluating and revising the researchers' ideas in a collection of papers by an international array of scholars. The papers explore various aspects of communication including such issues as non-literal meaning with the focus on irony and metaphor, the construction of ad hoc concepts, the conceptual-procedural meaning distinction, metarepresentation, context and politeness as well as test the applicability of Relevance Theory to the domain of translation. A set of readings on varied linguistic and sociocultural phenomena, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students investigating meaning in natural language and an insightful reference for those interested in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, or pragmatics in general, semantics, sociolinguistics and Translation Studies. Ewa Walaszewska, Marta Kisielewska-Krysiuk and Agnieszka Piskorska work at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw as Assistant Professors. They pursue their individual research connected with Relevance Theory and jointly organise a biennial conference Interpreting for Relevance: Discourse and Translation.