Relevance theory and textual interpretation: an illustration through texts of humor

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present the basic concepts of Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson (1995) on text interpretation. Humor texts were chosen to do the analyses for didactic reasons, since they are normally shorter than other kinds of texts, the possible blanks presented during the interpretative process are more evident and can be easily completed. On these analyses, under Relevance prism, the fundamental importance of cognitive context is emphasized on inferential process construction to comprehension, remembering that interpretation, beyond explicit text, requires cognitive and perceptual abilities. These analyses represent possible ways to go along on teaching textual interpretation, since many teachers presume students know these ways, what in most of the cases is a wrong idea thus; they don’t treat this subject in a significant way, configuring one of the hardest problems of present-day education.