Concluding Remarks

Abstract

The final chapter first recaptures the most important claims made in the book and outlines issues and dimensions within RT that deserve further thought in the service of improving the theory. Next, suggestions are presented for how an RT analysis of modes, media, and genres not addressed in this book might be developed. The book ends with a recapitulation of why it is useful to adopt RT as the overall model for the analysis of visual, multimodal, and other forms of communication—although it will always have to be complemented by insights from other theories and models. Given that the relevance principle inextricably links communication to perception and cognition in all living species, RT’s insights may feed into experiments both with humans and with other primates, and even non-primates, and may help theorize robotic communication.