PRAGMATICS 5

RELEVANCE THEORY

Relevance: Cognitive notion crucial for communication. Technical term to describe the degree of cognitive effort required to achieve an understanding.
Grice´s central claims
1- Essential feature of most human communication, is the expression and recognition of intentions
2- Utterances automatically create expectations which guide the hearer toward the speakers meaning in terms of cooperative principle and its maxims (Quality, Quantity,
Relation and Manner).
Sperber and Wilson agree with #1 but add to #2 that principle of Relevance is sufficient for interpreting and understanding utterances, then Relevance is the only principle
that matters. Speakers have intuitions of relevance (they can distinguish relevant from non- relevant) –
The greater the difficulty in working out the meaning of an utterance, the less relevance.
PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE: Common sense assumption, we intend to be relevant in all our exchanges.
FACTORS THAT GOVERN THE DEGREE OF
RELEVANCE OF AN OSTENSIVE ACT
Has to do with linguistic communication and complex cognitive processes.
1. Contextual effects. Hearer process a
1. Cognitive Principle of Relevance: Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance.
2. Communicative Principle of Relevance: Every ostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance. number of assumptions as the discourse
proceeds.
a. Adding new information
# Act of ostensive communication: Act of deliberate, overt communication (actively helping the hearer).
b. Strengthening old information
# Acts of inferential communication: The other side of the same process. c. Weakening old information
The use of an ostensive stimulus creates a: d. Cancelling old information
2. Processing effort: The less effort it takes to
# Presumption of optimal relevance
recover a fact, the greater its relevance.
a. The ostensive stimulus is relevant enough to be worth the audience´s effort. Ex: Tickets, please!
b. The most relevant one compatible with communicator´s abilities. (less effort=the officer wants to check is paid, most rel.)
(more effort= the officer wants to buy tickets, less rel.)
As the speaker wants to be understood it is his/her interest to make the ostensive message as easy as possible.
Ex: Next week I will be giving you an exam covering WWII (a. info about exam contents b. Optimal relevance, only content is WWII).
 RELEVANCE AND COGNITION

Any type of inputs is relevant to an individual when its processing yields a “positive Cognitive effect”

Contextual implication: The most important, a conclusion deducible from input a context together.

Relevance of an input to an individual

a. The greater the positive cognitive effects achieved by processing an input the greater the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.
b. The greater the processing effect expended, the lower the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.

Ex: A: I´m free in Friday, yes – Most relevant (great positive effect)

B: I don’t have to work on Friday – Less relevant (works on an implicature)

Cognitive tendency of maximizing relevance is universal. IS possible to predict and manipulate the mental states of others when engaged in communication.

COMMUNICATION AND CONTEXT

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION

1. Accidental communication: Speaker overwhelmed, fails to conceal.

2. Covert communication: Intended intentions are backgrounded.
3. Overt communication: Planned to draw someone´s attention
a. Coded behaviour: Purely linguistic Ex: I invite you to my house for dinner.
b. Coded behaviour that needs to be assisted by inference: Indirect language, pragmatic behaviour.
c. Pure inference: Does not resort to language., pragmatic behaviour. Ex: someone on a remote meeting signs to someone else in the office to the
headphones indicating he cannot talk at the moment.

CONTEXT: Inferential process is a matter of creating a context in which the communication act achieves relevance, the role of linguistic form is to limit the possible contexts
that the addressee considers. Ex: She is as ugly as her mum (wrinkling) – informative intentions: Both are beautiful.

Understanding is achieved not only when the information is given, but when the communicative intention is fulfilled.
 COMPREHENSION PROCESS

Concept: Inference process embedded in the overall process of constructing a hypothesis about speakers meaning. Subtasks:

a. Constructing an appropriate hypothesis about explicit content. EXPLICATURES.

b. Constructing an appropriate hypothesis about intended contextual assumptions. IMPLICATED PREMISES.
c. Constructing an appropriate hypothesis about intended contextual implications. IMPLICATED CONCLUSIONS.

IMPLICATURE AND EXPLICATURE: Distinctions between the assumptions explicated (explicitly communicated), and those implicated (implicitly communicated).

EXPLICATURE: Enrichment of the information that is explicitly encoded in a fully elaborated propositional form.

Utterance: Explicature: Hypothesis:

Tickets, please! Could you show me your tickets, please? The inspector wants to see my proof of payment of the trip

Aspects of explicatures:

1. Disambiguation: Not detection of ambiguities. Because the context and the relevance principle guide the process.
I feel like eating a fruit. Give me a date, please! (fruit)
Tim took Lisa out on a date (appointment).
2. Reference assignment: Identifying the referents. Context is crucial.
(After arriving home from exam) How was it?
3. Enrichment: “fleshing out” skeletal propositions to make an utterance complete
a. Recovering the missing element (Tickets, please? – is completed as in: Can I have your tickets, please?)
b. Resolution of semantic incompleteness (Coca- cola is worse – the explicature will provide an answer if we ask: Than what?)
4. Higher order explicatures: Related to the speech act of utterance in question
a. Communicated speech acts: Thanking and promising (can´t function without the existence of appropriate constitutive rules)
5. Non communicated speech acts: Don´t need to be identified successfully. Ex: Think before you act, John! (reprimanding or advising)

IMPLICATURE: The hearer enriches the semantic representation of an utterance by constructing the explicature he derives the implicatures from it.

A: Do you love me? B: No, I don’t (smiling and hugging). Interpreted as teasing.

1. Implicated premises: constructed by developing assumption schemas from memory.

2. Implicated conclusions: Deduced from the explicatures of the utterance and the context.

A: Have you read It? B: No, I don’t like Stephen King´s books. (1) It is a S. K.´s book. (2) B would not read a S. K´s book, therefore he hasn´t read It.
 CONCEPTUAL VS PROCEDURAL MEANING

Intro: Some words encode concepts, others, procedures.

CONCEPTUAL MEANING:

# Nouns, verbs and adverbs. Conceptual representation system. They affect the conditions under which an utterance is true.

# Easy to understand, can be explained though synonyms

PROCEDURAL MEANING:

# Discourse markers of connectives (but, this, so…) Contributes to the structure. Don´t affect the truth conditions of utterances (pronouns, mood indicators, interjections,
intonations).

# Complex to understand, difficult to explain. Don´t have synonyms counterparts.

RELEVANCE AND GRAMMAR

RT impacts on pragmatics and grammar. Modal verbs analysed as polysemous.

CAN:

My 3 years old can write her name (ability). You can enter with a ticket (permission). It surely can´t rain tomorrow (probability).

AND/OR as threat:

Put down the knife or I´ll have to shoot you. Serve another steak like this and you´ll be fired.

# Elusive

# Don´t have synonymous conceptual counterpart

# Not semantically complex – Orient the hearer

 SALIENCE AND INFERENCE

The most relevant interpretation of an utterance is the most salient

a. Explicature
b. Implicature
c. Higher order explicature

PRINCIPLE OF SALIENCE: Helps us choice the most relevant interpretation of an utterance.

A: I need to buy olive oil (oil made from olives, not for olives)

B: I need to buy babies oil (Oil made for babies, not from babies)

Most salient explicature = Most relevant. Most contextual effects, involving less processing effort.

IMAGES AND RELEVANCE THEORY

Pictorial Communication = Multimodal communication

# Combination of language and Pictures. Essential for illiterate readers or who don’t know the language.

# It is multimodal as it involves more than one mode of ostensive communication. The reader can process the linguistic stimulus of the pictorial one.

# Pictures without text can trigger explicatures. Non- verbal behaviour can be understood as having coded meanings.

# It includes an element of coding as well.

Image of exit: Most relevant explicature - This is the way out of the building.

Shadow in image: process of fleshing out (characteristic of explicatures)