Toward a metapragmatic analysis of self-review in research grant proposals: From relevance to metarelevance

Abstract

This paper develops the notion of metarelevance—relevance of a higher order that draws attention not merely to what information may be gleaned from a given communication but also to what affordances and constraints may make the information maximally relevant in the production and reception of that information. It applies the notion to the analysis of self-reviews in research grant proposals—discourse in which a researcher reports and promotes his or her own research profile. Using metarelevance as a metapragmatic concept, the study investigates what information is interpreted as maximally relevant to self-reviews in grant proposals and why it is so interpreted. The analysis relates the notion of metarelevance to certain aspects of metapragmatics, e.g., pragmatic act, indexicality, and constraining conditions. The notion of metarelevance addresses not merely language design, but brings us one step closer to the mind and to the indexing of certain aspects of social conditioning in which pragmatic acts are performed. As such, it consolidates the socio-cognitive dimension of metapragmatics. The paper shows that the notion, like indexicality, helps illustrate the dialectical interplay between the micro-social and macro-social levels of discourse.