Reading Beyond the Code

A Book at Lunchtime Seminar with Terrence Cave, Deirdre Wilson, Ben
Morgan (Worcester College, Oxford), Professor Robyn Carston
(Linguistics, UCL). Chaired by Professor Philip Bullock (TORCH
Director). Is language a simple code, or is meaning conveyed as
much by context, history, and speaker as by the arrangement of
words and letters? Relevance theory, described by Alastair Fowler
in the LRB as 'nothing less than the makings of a radically new
theory of communication, the first since Aristotle's', takes the
latter view and offers a comprehensive understanding of language
and communication grounded in evidence about the ways humans think
and behave. Reading Beyond the Code is the first book to explore
the value for literary studies of relevance theory. Drawing on a
wide range of examples-lyric poems by Yeats, Herrick, Heaney,
Dickinson, and Mary Oliver, novels by Cervantes, Flaubert, Mark
Twain, and Edith Wharton-nine of the ten essays are written by
literary specialists and use relevance theory both as a broad
framing perspective and as a resource for detailed analysis. The
final essay, by Deirdre Wilson, co-founder (with Dan Sperber) of
relevance theory, takes a retrospective view of the issues
addressed by the volume and considers the implications of literary
studies for cognitive approaches to communication. Edited by
Terence Cave, Emeritus Professor of French Literature, University
of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow, St John's College, Oxford, and
Deirdre Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, UCL and Research
Professor in Philosophy, IFIKK, University of Oslo. Terence Cave is
recognized as a leading specialist in French Renaissance
literature, but has also made landmark contributions to comparative
literature and the history of poetics. His most recent work focuses
on cognitive approaches to literature. Deirdre Wilson's book
Relevance: Communication and Cognition, co-written with Dan
Sperber, was described in Rhetoric Society Quarterly as 'probably
the best book you'll ever read on communication.' Translated into
twelve languages, it has had a lasting influence in philosophy,
psychology, and linguistics and is now regarded as a classic.
Contributors: Kathryn Banks, Elleke Boehmer, Guillemette Bolens,
Terence Cave, Timothy Chesters, Neil Kenny, Raphael Lyne, Kirsti
Sellevold, Wes Williams, Deirdre Wilson.