Linguistic pragmatics has traditionally focused on the ways in which speaker-intended meanings are contextually inferred in solid communicative contexts. In this paper, I explore the possibility that all linguistic utterances necessitate (at least some) pragmatic processing, even when they are not transparently embedded in a speaker's overt communicative behavior. Following a relevance-theoretic rationale, I argue that, being externalized objects with special characteristics which set them apart from their internalized mental counterparts – most notably the linguistic underdeterminacy of their propositional form, linguistic utterances automatically trigger the dedicated mental module that is responsible for pragmatic inference, because they would otherwise not have evolved to invariably pre-empt our attention, as they typically do. In this picture, external language's evolutionary advantage lies precisely in its unique ability to reveal meaning with an amount of precision that cannot be reached through the use of other types of stimuli, while at the same time avoiding unnecessary expressive prolixity. Viewed in this way, contextual inference becomes an underlying feature of the way in which external languages link up with our internalized linguistic capacity, in an approach that reinforces the possibility of incorporating it in the study of meaning over and above the remit of overt communication.

语言语用学传统上侧重于在坚实的交际语境中根据语境推断说话者意图的含义的方式。在本文中，我探讨了所有语言话语都需要（至少某些）语用处理的可能性，即使它们没有透明地嵌入到说话者的公开交际行为中。根据相关性理论的基本原理，我认为，作为具有特殊特征的外化对象，它们与内化的心理对应物区分开来——最明显的是它们的命题形式的语言不确定性，语言话语自动触发了负责语用的专用心理模块。推论，因为否则它们不会像通常那样进化成总是抢占我们的注意力。在这张图片中，外部语言的进化优势恰恰在于其独特的能力，能够以使用其他类型的刺激无法达到的精确度来揭示意义，同时避免不必要的表达冗长。从这个角度来看，语境推断成为外部语言与我们内在语言能力相联系的方式的一个潜在特征，这种方法加强了将其纳入意义研究的可能性，超出了公开交流的范围。