CAJ | 학술논문

Relevance theory, an inferential approach to pragmatics, claims that the hearer is expected to pick out the input of op-timal relevance from a mass of alternative inputs produced by the speaker in order to interpret the speaker ’s intentions. The de-gree of the relevance of an input can be assessed in terms of cognitive effects and the processing effort. The input of optimal rele-vance is the one yielding the greatest positive cognitive effect and requiring the least processing effort. This paper attempts to as-sess the degrees of the relevance of a mass of alternative inputs produced by an imaginary speaker from the perspective of her cor-responding hearer in terms of cognitive effects and the processing effort with a view to justifying the feasibility of the principle of relevance in pragmatic inferences.