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Reading purpose in a psycholinguistics-pragmatics interface

The following article aims to demonstrate a possible construction of an interface between Psycholinguistics and Pragmatics in order to explain the inferential process in reading. For this purpose, the object of study arises from the observation of reality: high-school students seem to prefer reading summaries than reading the original literary text. We argue that this choice is lead by lower cost and not greatest cognitive benefit, which goes against the Cognitive Principle proposed by Relevance Theory (SPERBER & WILSON, 1995). Furthermore, the purpose of reading and the type of evaluation might influence the choice of what is more relevant (in terms of effort-benefit). Finally, we show that this interface is an interesting theoretical perspective to explain the inferential processes in reading.

psycholinguistics; pragmatics; reading purpose


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