Towards Evaluation Of Discourse Coherence--A Relevance-theoretical Account

There is a long history of studying coherence and there are many different interpretations on coherence. The paper has no intention to discuss the nature of coherence. But instead the paper is intended to discuss how to evaluate discourse coherence—how a reader or listener can evaluate a discourse as coherent or incoherent. The paper is intended to use relevance theory to evaluate discourse coherence. It is because evaluation of discourse coherence involves cognition and relevance theory is named cognitive pragmatics. The paper is divided into four parts:The first part is introduction. In this part, a hypothesis is proposed: two intuitions function to help a reader or listener evaluate a discourse as coherent or incoherent. They are intuitions of discourse well-formedness and discourse appropriateness. Satisfaction of the intuition of discourse well-formedness relies on formal devices or linguistic means in the domain of the very discourse. Satisfaction of the intuition of discourse appropriateness does not just rely on linguistic forms within discourse but rather on some knowledge beyond discourse. When evaluating a discourse it is the intuition of discourse well-formedness that comes first. If that intuition is satisfied, the discourse can be evaluated as coherent. If not, the reader or listener will resort to satisfy the intuition of discourse appropriateness. If the intuition of appropriateness is satisfied, the discourse can still be evaluated as coherent but the degree of coherence is not as high as the one guaranteed by the satisfaction of discourse well-formedness. If still failed, the discourse would be evaluated as incoherent.The second part is an overview of studies on discourse coherence. The paper holds that studies on discourse coherence can be classified as two types: one is to study coherence from the intuition of discourse well-formedness; the other is from the intuition of discourse appropriateness. In addition, there is not a theory or study that accounts for discourse coherence from both the two intuitions. Since Wilson has accounted for the intuition of discourse appropriateness from the perspective of relevance theory, the paper is intended to use relevance theory to account for discourse coherence from the intuition of discourse well-formedness.The third part is an elaborate account of discourse coherence from the intuition of discourse well-formedness and justification of the account with analysis of data. According to relevance theory, relevance refers to the relevance between an assumption and a context. In the process of evaluation of a discourse, a reader or listener will get many assumptions that are relevant to some context. The context can be the context restricted by the discourse itself, or the context beyond the discourse. Therefore, assumptions can be classified as two kinds: one is relevant to the context restricted by the discourse; the other is relevant to the context beyond the discourse. Among those assumptions, one may be the key assumption that helps the reader or listener comprehend the discourse. When evaluating a discourse, a reader or listener will get an assumption. If that first-got assumption is the key assumption that can help him comprehend the discourse, he will stop to find out another assumption. If the first-got assumption failed to help him evaluate the discourse as coherent, he would have to find out another assumption. If the second-got assumption still is not the key assumption, he will search more until he gets one. So, in the process of searching the key assumption, the degree of well-formedness declines. That is to say, the degree of discourse well-formedness is in direct proportion with assumptions that are relevant to the context restricted by the discourse. If the key assumption is not relevant to the context restricted by the very discourse but relevant to the context beyond the discourse, the degree of well-formedness of the discourse is the lowest. If a reader or listener cannot find the key assumption, the discourse can...