Relevance theory and language change

• The paper considers how ideas developed within relevance theory can be applied in accounting for semantic change.
• The paper surveys previous relevance-theoretic work on language change.
• Procedural meaning, lexical pragmatics and metarepresentation each play an important role.
• The regularisation and stabilisation of meanings is a key focus for accounts of change.
• The paper identifies a number of areas for further research.

This paper considers how ideas developed within relevance theory can be applied in accounting for language change. It briefly surveys previous relevance-theoretic work on language change and suggests that studies of procedural meaning, lexical pragmatics and metarepresentation can each play an important role in accounting for semantic change. It identifies a number of areas for further research which could help to develop understanding of both relevance theory and language change and suggests that one important line of further research would be to explore connections between work in relevance theory and approaches which adopt terms and ideas from the theory without adopting the relevance-theoretic framework overall.