A relevance-theoretic approach to weak explicatures as a means to understanding poetic effects

Abstract What makes the indeterminacy in poetic language so alluring, or at times, frustrating for some readers? How do we take pleasure in not being able to reach an ultimate meaning while reading poetry, in other words, from the impossibility of fully clarifying the message conveyed by the poet? In order to answer these questions and account for cognitive processes behind achieving poetic effects, most pragmaticians employing the lens of Relevance Theory mainly rely on the notion of ‘weak implicature’ (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995). However, taking the view held by Sperber and Wilson (2005) that explicatures can too be ‘stronger or weaker’ further, this paper argues that poetic effects on the basis of indeterminacy can similarly be triggered by weak explicatures. Poems by Turkish poet Özdemir Asaf (2020a, 2020b, 2020c) will be employed to provide relevant underpinnings—in terms of reference assignment and enrichment—for our claim.