Abstract
The article examines relevance optimization of as if/as though comparisons. These comparisons can be classified into factual and hypothetical types (Quirk et al. 1985: 1110), the former type describing real possibilities and the latter type describing comparisons based on impossibilities. The general analytical framework is relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995), and specifically, the article examines the conjunctions as if and as though in relation to the distinction between conceptual and procedural information (Blakemore 1987, 2002). In this article, the conjunctions as if and as though are viewed as procedures that combine and constrain hypothetical and comparative reasoning. The qualitative analysis is based on 35 as if/as though comparisons excerpted from two books: Historical Dictionary of Quotations in Cognitive Science: A Treasury of Quotations in Psychology, Philosophy, and Artificial Intelligence (compiled by Wagman 2000) and The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (edited by Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007). The aim is to show that the conjunctions as if and as though indicate optimal relevance since they indicate specific cognitive and communicative effects. For instance, these comparisons can be used as optimally relevant ways of describing something that looks a certain way at first sight, describing something that is intangible, representing and metarepresenting views, clarifying misinterpretations, conceptualizing fictive spaces. To sum up, the conjunctions as if and as though can be viewed as procedures that focus our attention on the conceptual field of comparison within which we make optimally relevant connections between the indicative and comparative parts of as if/as though comparisons. Since as if and as though comparisons essentially express approximate meanings, they can lead to further search for relevance, following the effects they achieve.