A Relevance-Theoretic Analysis of Implicature in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Abstract

Relevance theory (henceforth RT) is one of the modern pragmatic theories which combines both pragmatics and cognition. It tackles the pragmatic phenomena differently from other theories. One of these phenomena is implicature. The focus of this study is to discuss the idea of implicature from RT's perspective, using relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure as a model adapted from Moeschler (2007) version of Wilson and Sperber's (2004) model of comprehension procedure to analyze implicature in Arthur miller's Death of a Salesman This paper is divided into two parts; the first is the theoretical discussion of RT and a detailed explanation of implicature and its kinds, and the second is the analysis of Arthur miller's Death of a Salesman according to RT's model. The analysis begins with presenting the selected text, then the context, lastly the derivation of implicature.