A Relevance Theoretic Analysis of O. Henrys’ The Last Leaf

Abstract

The current research is intended to explore, with the aid of Relevance Theory, how characters in Henry’s ‘The Last Leaf’ interact and comprehend each other’s intended messages, or a message conveyed by an image, via the contextual effects produced in the process of communication. Analyzing some extracts from ‘The Last Leaf’ reveals that relevance is behind the characters’ capability of interpreting messages, images, and any other communicative signals. That is, their understanding of the intended meaning, behind an utterance or an image, mainly depends on the contextual effects caused by that utterance or image. Apart from the introduction, the paper exhibits three sections to dwell on topics such as: pragmatic competence, as the study tackles a pragmatic issue in a literary work; an overview of Relevance Theory; and a relevance-perspective analysis of ‘The Last Leaf’. Some of the conclusions the paper has arrived at are: apart from utterances, images and imageries can function as ostensive inferential acts via which literary writers can unravel their intentions; The Last Leaf shows how communication usually involves more than just explicit words; according to Relevance Theory principles, even nonverbal means of communication, such as the use of silence or a landscape, can sometimes be utilized by short story writers to reveal the communicative and psychological aspects of characters in a given literary work, they can sometimes communicate even much richer meaning than the verbal ones.