A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC FRAMEWORK FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

In relation to the present interest in discourse analysis this article aims to formulate a general theoretical framework for analyzing various types of discourse. The framework is based on the theory of relevance as one of the theories enabling thorough discourse analysis. The aspects of discourse taken into account range from analyzing explicatures and implicatures including a precise classification of the type of knowledge activated for the processes of metarepresentation and covert communication. The unified framework for discourse analysis creates an ability to compare different types of discourse including comparison with everyday speech, which is the most neutral type of discourse. With such ability, different types of discourse can be compared with one another to discover more of their unique properties as well as interesting similarities.