Cognitive pragmatics: relevance-theoretic methodology

Early work in relevance theory followed Grice’s approach in being based mainly on evidence from introspection. Ideas were developed and tested mainly by reference to the intuitions of researchers about examples, often invented for the purposes of the investigation, thought experiments, logical argument and conceptual analysis. Sometimes, choices between competing ideas were made based on theoretical simplicity. In the 1990s, there was a significant increase in work based on data from experiments, leading to the development of what is now referred to as the field of ‘experimental pragmatics’. Experimental work since then has included questionnaire-based work (which often focuses on the intuitions of participants), data from reading and response times, and, more recently, evidence from electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the use of eye-tracking technology. Other ways of testing and developing ideas have included the use of data from corpora and other observational work, and applications of the theory in clinical work, developmental pragmatics, language acquisition, first and second language learning and teaching, and stylistics. Applications vary in the extent to which they restrict their focus to understanding phenomena in the light of the ideas being applied or aim also to test theoretical ideas. While current research uses a wider range of techniques, introspection and experimentation are still the most used methods