Lexical Pragmatic Approaches: Relevance Theoretic and Bidirectional Optimality

Abstract

The goal of lexical pragmatic approaches; relevance theoretic and bidirectional, is to give a systematic and explanatory account of word meanings that are adjusted in use. As the two approaches account for this lexical phenomenon based on conversational implicature, the present paper investigates the contribution of the two approaches in lexical word meanings adjustment in children’s interpretation referring to the role contextual factors would play. It basically aims at identifying how these approaches deal with word meanings adjustment, underlying some of the problems with each approach, and show how they are utilized in analyzing the selected data. The study concluded that to obtain a systematic and explanatory account of word meanings adjustment, the two approaches should be combined in one eclectic model.