Reviewed by Zhen-qiang Fan, Zhejiang Gongshang University

Based on examples in Spanish, the book addresses issues concerning the theories and applications of contemporary pragmatics, especially the inference-oriented line of pragmatic research. Specifically, it discusses the problems of Gricean pragmatics and introduces relevance theory (RT) as an alternative pragmatic framework which offers a more unified account of human communication by integrating cognition and context, with special attention paid to the addressee’s processing effort and cognitive effects. The two overall aims include (i) seeking ‘to establish the nature and goals of pragmatics as the study of verbal communication, particularly in relation to Spanish’ (6) and (ii) arguing that ‘the remit of pragmatics is (a) the conveyance of intentions in overt verbal communication and (b) how those intentions can be successfully communicated by linguistic means’ (6).

The book is divided into three parts. The first part (Ch.1–3) deals with traditional pragmatics and its problems; the second part (Ch.4–7) is devoted to key theoretical issues of RT; and the third part (Ch.8–11) examines applications of RT. Ch. 1 provides a snapshot of the three parts and reviews major approaches in Spanish pragmatics. Ch. 2 explains the nature and goals of pragmatics, arguing that there is a gap between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the bridging of which, by hearers, involves risk. Ch. 3 discusses the transition from the traditional code model of communication to Grice’s inferential approach, pointing out the shortcomings of each and laying a foundation for an alternative approach of RT, which is the main topic of the second part.

 Chs. 4 and 5 focus on the two principles of RT, i.e. the cognitive principle of relevance and the communicative principle of relevance, the difference being that the former aims at the maximization of the trade-off between effects and effort in information processing while the latter is aimed at optimization. Ch.6 explores the consequences of the communicative principle of relevance, and Ch. 7 investigates the distinction between explicit and implicit communication. Chs. 8–10 show the application of RT to various linguistic phenomena in Spanish, including disambiguation (Ch. 8), irony (Ch. 9), and metaphor (Ch. 10). Finally, Ch.11 offers a conclusion to the ideas presented in the book.

 One of the aims of the book is ‘to make a contribution to the development and application of relevance theory to Spanish pragmatics’ (7), and this book can be used as a systematic and positive introduction to RT. The book highlights the use of Spanish examples to test the explanatory power of RT, but only a limited number of phenomena are examined in detail (i.e. disambiguation, irony, and metaphor). A strength of the book lies in its drawing on findings from other areas, such as psycholinguistics (191–98) and artificial intelligence (198–200), to make the account ‘psychologically real and compatible with what is known about human cognition’ (49).