The relevance of Relevance to the study of metacommunicative cause

A class of causal meaning that has so far received little attention in pragmatic research is that of ‘metacommunicative’ cause introduced by Kalokerinos (2004). In fact, the specific notion has been explicated in terms of the causal marker γiati picking up “elements of the communicative setting to justify not an illocutionary act but a higher-order act of communication” (Kalokerinos 2004: 37). We will argue that the view of metacommunicative aspects of meaning is wanting in two important respects for rigorous descriptions of causality. For one thing, it seems to be insensitive to linguistic underspecificity considerations. Moreover, we will argue that the notion at hand appears underdefined and, in this light, is not expected to constitute a constant point of reference in prospective accounts of relevant causal data. Ultimately, we will put forward the claim that all cases thought of as metacommunicative are analyzable in the procedural terms stipulated in relevance theory at no extra cost. In the same vein, cases of underspecification are accounted for procedurally, too, in an economical fashion.