Speakers of languages are sensitive to registers of language and can feel solidarity with people who speak in a register with which they are most familiar, or alienation from one with which they are not. Two possible registers within some cultures would be those of the sophisticated elite and the common working class. Compare Jargon . Return to Index Relevance Theory Relevance theory is a relatively new branch of linguistics developed by the British linguists Sperber and Wilson. It focuses on coherence in communication which derives from explicit and implicit information which pertains to a speech situation.
Relevance theory builds upon insights in pragmatics .
A guide to successful communication in translation, by Ernst-August Gutt, 1992. Rhetorical impact refers to the effect some utterance has upon its hearer. Rhetorical impact has to do with the total bundle of semantics , pragmatics , and speaker intention . Rhetorical impact is sometimes rather different from the normal impact expected from use of a particular language form. This is always true of rhetorical questions, which have the grammar of questions but the meaning of strong statements or rebuke.