Relevance Theory

In the fields of pragmatics and semantics (among others), relevance theory is the principle that

the communication process involves not only encoding, transfer, and decoding of messages, but also
numerous other elements, including inference and context. Also called the principle of relevance.

The foundation for relevance theory was established by cognitive scientists Dan Sperber and Deirdre
Wilson in Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1986; revised 1995).

Since then, as noted below, Sperber and Wilson have expanded and deepened discussions of
relevance theory in numerous books and articles.

Examples and Observations

 "Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal

relevance."
(Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford
University Press, 1986)
 "Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986) can be defined as an attempt to work out in
detail one of [Paul] Grice's maxims of conversation. Even though relevance theory departs
from Grice's vision of communication on a number of fundamental issues, the main point of
convergence between the two models is the assumption that communication (both verbal and
nonverbal) requires the ability to attribute mental states to others. Sperber and Wilson do
not completely reject the idea that communication requires a code model, but reassess its
scope by the addition of an inferential component. According to Sperber and Wilson, the
code model only accounts for the first phase of linguistic treatment of an utterance that
provides the hearer with the linguistic input, that is enriched through inferential processes in
order to obtain the speaker's meaning."
(Sandrine Zufferey, Lexical PragmaticsandTheory of Mind: The Acquisition of Connectives.
John Benjamins, 2010)

Intentions, Attitudes, and Contexts

 "Like most pragmatists, Sperber and Wilson emphasize that understanding an utterance is
not simply a matter of linguistic decoding. It involves identifying (a) what the speaker
intended to say, (b) what the speaker intended to imply, (c) the speaker's intended attitude to
what was said and implied, and (d) the intended context (Wilson 1994). Thus, the intended
interpretation of an utterance is the intended combination of explicit content, contextual
assumptions and implications, and the speaker's intended attitude to these (ibid.). . . .

 "The role of context in communication and understanding has not been studied in detail in
Gricean approaches to pragmatics. Relevance theory makes it a central concern, raising
fundamental questions such as: How is the appropriate context selected? How is it that from
the huge range of assumptions available at the time of utterance, hearers restrict themselves
to the intended ones?"
(Elly Ifantidou, Evidentials and Relevance. John Benjamins, 2001)
Cognitive Effects and Processing Effort

 "Relevance theory defines cognitive effects for an individual as adjustments to the way an

individual represents the world. Seeing a robin in my garden means that I now know that
there is a robin in my garden so I have changed the way in which I am representing the
world. Relevance theory claims that the more cognitive effects a stimulus has, the more
relevant it is. Seeing a tiger in the garden gives rise to more cognitive effects than seeing a
robin so this is a more relevant stimulus.
"The more cognitive effects a stimulus has, the more relevant it is. But we can assess
relevance not only in terms of the number of effects derivable from a stimulus. Processing
effort also plays a role. Sperber and Wilson claim that the more mental effort involved in
processing a stimulus the less relevant it is. Compare (75) and (76):

 (75) I can see a tiger in the garden.(76) When I look outside, I can see a tiger in the garden.

Assuming that the tiger is the most significant thing to notice in the garden and that nothing
significant follows from the suggestion that I need to look to see the tiger, then (75) is a more
relevant stimulus than (76). This follows because it will enable us to derive a similar range of
effects but with less effort needed to process the words."
(Billy Clark, Relevance Theory. Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Underdeterminacy of Meaning

 "Sperber and Wilson were among the first to explore the idea that linguistically encoded
material in an utterance typically falls short of the proposition expressed by the speaker. In
such cases, it is not clear whether 'what is said' is what the words say or the proposition the
speaker expressed. Sperber and Wilson, therefore, coined the term explicature for
assumptions explicitly communicated by an utterance.

"A lot of recent work in relevance theory and elsewhere has focused on the consequences
of this linguistic underdeterminacy of meaning. One recent development is an account of
loose use, hyperbole, and metaphor in terms of occasion-specific broadening and narrowing
of the concept expressed in a word.

"Sperber and Wilson also have a radical theory of irony, partly put forward before the
publication of Relevance. The claim is that an ironic utterance is one which (1) achieves
relevance through semblance to a thought or another utterance (i.e. is 'interpretive'); (2)
expresses a dissociative attitude toward the target thought or utterance, and (3) is not
explicitly marked as interpretive or dissociative.

"Other aspects of relevance theory's account of communication include its theory of context
selection, and of the place of indeterminacy in communication. These aspects of the account
rest on the notions of manifestness and mutual manifestness."
(Nicholas Allott, Key Terms in Pragmatics. Continuum, 2010)

Manifestness and Mutual Manifestness

 "In relevance theory, the notion of mutual knowledge is replaced by the notion of mutual
manifestness. It is enough, Sperber and Wilson argue, for the contextual assumptions needed
in interpretation to be mutually manifest to communicator and addressee in order for
communication to take place. Manifestness is defined as follows: 'a fact is manifest to an
individual at a given time if and only if he is capable of representing it mentally and accepting
its representation as true or probably true' (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 39). The
communicator and addressee do not need to mutually know the contextual assumptions
required for interpretation. The addressee does not even have to have these assumptions
stored in his memory. He must simply be able to construct them, either on the basis of what
he can perceive in his immediate physical environment or on the basis of assumptions
already stored in memory."
(Adrian Pilkington, Poetic Effects: A Relevance Theory Perspective. John Benjamins, 2000)