Language, Action and Thought

I will outline a new idea: that the synthesis of two highly productive but distinct sets of ideas can generate an integrated paradigm for language science. First, Relevance Theory describes the fundamental principles of human communication, and the socio-cognitive capacities of mind that underpin them. Second, Construction Grammar treats grammar as being fully constituted by learned pairings between form and ‘meaning’. Both these frameworks have proved highly, and have arguably begun to supersede other frameworks (neo-Gricean approaches to pragmatics; Chomskyan generative grammar) as the dominant frameworks in their subfields. I will sketch how these two frameworks might be natural bedfellows, and hence how their synthesis might provide unified and motivated perspectives on major issues in language science.