The Principles of Relevance

Pragmatic relevance is a property of utterances as a particular case of inputs to cognitive processes: “An input is relevant to an individual when it connects with available contextual assumptions to yield positive cognitive effects: for example, true contextual implications, or warranted strengthenings or revisions of existing assumptions [8, p. 7].

The relevance of an input for an individual is a matter of degree. In general, the greater those positive cognitive effects with the smaller mental effort to get them, the greater the relevance of the input for the individual. Sperber and Wilson conjecture that the cognitive architecture of human beings tends to the maximization of relevance. This is what their first (cognitive) principle of relevance states: Human cognition is geared towards the maximization of relevance (that is, to the achievement of as many contextual (cognitive) effects as possible for as little processing effort as possible).

This is the general cognitive principle that serves as background for communication in general and linguistic communication in particular. This applied to linguistic communication involves the following: for a communicative act to be successful, the speaker needs the addressee's attention; since everyone is geared towards the maximization of relevance, the speaker should try to make his utterance relevant enough to be worth the addressee's attention. This leads us to the second (communicative) principle of relevance: Every act of ostensive communication (e.g. an utterance) communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance.

By ‘ostensive’ relevance theorists make reference to the ‘overt’ or ‘public’ nature of the speaker's communicative intentions in acts of communication. Communication will be successful (i.e., understanding will occur) when the addressee recognizes those intentions. This process is mostly inferential and it has costs. So, the addressee would not start the inferential process without a presumption that it will report his some benefits, that is, without a presumption that the input is not only relevant, but as relevant as it can. Then, when someone utters something with a communicative purpose, he does it, according to relevance theory, with the presumption of optimal relevance, which states that

1. The utterance is relevant enough to be worth processing.

2. It is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator's abilities and preferences.

Implicated Premises and Conclusions

Although the principles of relevance account for near-side and far-side inferences, relevance theory acknowledges a fundamental distinction. On the near side, ambiguities, references, and issues of vagueness will be resolved so as to make the ‘explicature’ — the relevance theoretic replacement for ‘what is said,’ or ‘the proposition expressed’ — maximally relevant. A somewhat more complex sort of reasoning then derives implicatures. But these processes are not sequential. The ‘choice’ of explicature will be affected by the need to come to an understanding of everything that is communicated, explicature and implicature, as maximally relevant.

The addressee's understanding process starts then when he perceives an ostensive stimulus and stops when his expectations of relevance are satisfied, that is, when he has the most relevant hypothesis (the one with the most positive cognitive effects at the least processing costs) about the speaker's communicative intention. After decoding the sentence uttered and getting at the proposition expressed, the hearer will built a ‘context’ of ‘implicated premises' or assumptions for getting the cognitive positive effects that make the utterance relevant. Remember that those effects can be the reinforcement or revision of those assumptions but also conclusions obtained deducing then from the proposition expressed plus the context of premises. This context building will also be highly constrained by relevance, looking for as many positive effects as possible with the fewer inferential steps as possible. In addition, the hearer has to look for the contents or assumptions the speaker ostensively intends him to consider.

Consider the following exchange between A and B:

1. Have you seen The Da Vinci Code?

2. I don't like action movies.

It is reasonable to think that in B's response has the following implicatures, as implicated premise and conclusion, respectively:

• Premise: That The Da Vinci Code is an action movie.

• Conclusion: That B has not seen it and, maybe, does not intend to see it.

A retrieves the premise that together with the content of B's response allows him to deduce a conclusion that is reasonable to think B intends him to make, given that it seems the most relevant (the one with more cognitive positive effects — as implicatures in this case — with low processing costs).

This is how relevance theory re-interprets the Gricean notion of particularized conversational implicatures: they are treated as implicated premises and conclusions, communicated beyond what the speaker says. On the other hand, relevance theorists abandon the category of generalized conversational implicatures. The phenomena Grice took to be as generalized conversational implicatures belong on the near side according to relevance theorists. They are not part of what is implicated by the speaker in making him utterance, but part of the explicature.

According to this view, pragmatics in general and the principle of relevance in particular have a lot to say about what happens on the near side of the explicature. It is probably fair to say that relevance theorists are mainly responsible for contemporary pragmatics focusing not only on what is conveyed beyond saying but also on saying itself, and for the fact that, as we shall see below, contemporary philosophical pragmatic theory tends to focus on the extent to which pragmatics ‘intrudes’ upon the traditional turf of semantics.