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Overview

Relevance theory aims to explain the well recognised fact that communicators usually convey much more information with their utterances than what is contained in their literal sense. To this end, Sperber and Wilson argue that addressees expect utterances directed at them to be "relevant" in a technical sense. A relevant utterance in this sense is one from which many conclusions can be drawn at a low processing cost for the addressee.

The addressee uses the information contained in the utterance together with his expectations about its relevance, his real-world knowledge about the circumstances and the communicator, and sensory input, to infer conclusions about what the communicator wanted to convey. Typically, more conclusions can be drawn if the utterance contains new information that is somehow related to what the addressee already knows or believes. In this inference process, the "literal meaning" of the utterance is not so much... as a piece of evidence among others.

Definitions

To describe the claims of relevance theory on a more rigorous level, we need to define a number of technical terms as introduced by Sperber and Wilson.

Ostension

Contextual effect

Manifestness

A fact is manifest to an individual if he is capable of accepting it as true or probably true at the given time.

Cognitive environment

The set of all facts that are manifest to an individual. This comprises everything they can perceive, infer or remember, including facts that they are not currently aware of.

Cognitive effect

A contextual effect on an individual's cognitive environment. This includes increase or decrease of the confidence in existing beliefs. Typically, an utterance has more cognitive effects if it contains new information that is somehow related to the addressee's current cognitive environment, so that he can draw conclusions from the combined old and new data.

Positive cognitive effect

A cognitive effect that is helpful rather than hindering for the individual (e.g. providing true information as opposed to wrong information). More technically: a cognitive effect that contributes positively to the fulfilment of the individual's cognitive functions and goals.

Relevance

An utterance – or any other observed phenomenon – is relevant to an individual to the extent that its positive cognitive effects on the individual are large and the mental processing effort to achieve these effects is small.

Relevance is a comparative property: the more positive cognitive effects and the less processing effort, the more relevant the utterance.

Relevance of an utterance

Here are some examples to illustrate the concept of relevance. If we're planning to go on a trip next weekend and I tell you

(1) Next weekend the weather will be really awful.

this is highly relevant to you, as you can draw a host of conclusions, such as: I want us to rethink our plans and want to inform you of this wish; you agree – or you don't agree and just want to bring oilskins; I want to know your opinion on that matter; etc. By contrast, saying

(2) The weather was really awful on 19 October 1974 in Cumbria.

gives you just one piece of new information and is thus hardly relevant; and

(3) The weather is really awful right now.

doesn't tell you anything new, as you can see for yourself. Finally, the sentence

(4) On the weekend 2643 weeks after 19 October 1974 the weather will be really awful.

contains exactly the same information as (1) but requires more effort to process, and is thus less relevant under this definition.

The principles of relevance

The first or cognitive principle of relevance says that human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance (because of evolutionary pressure).

More importantly for the issue at hand, the second or communicative principle of relevance says that every utterance conveys the information that it is

a. relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee's effort to process it. (If the utterance contained too few positive cognitive effects for the addressee in relation to the processing effort needed to achieve these effects, he wouldn't bother processing it, and the communicator needn't have taken the trouble to utter it.)

b. the most relevant one compatible with the communicator's abilities and preferences. (Otherwise the communicator would have chosen a more relevant utterance – e.g. one that needs less processing effort and/or achieves more positive cognitive effects on part of the addressee – to convey her meaning. After all, she wants to be understood as easily and reliably as possible.)

We say that every utterance conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance. If I tell you something – anything –, you are entitled to expect that I wanted my utterance to be consistent with the principle of relevance. Consequently, if I tell you something that does not seem to be worth your processing effort, such as sentences (2) or (3) above, or something that seems to be less relevant than I could have put it, such as (4), you will automatically search for alternative or additional interpretations. The most easily accessible interpretation that is consistent with the principle of relevance is the one you accept as the right one (because any further interpretations would cost you more processing effort and would thus violate condition b). Your conclusion for utterance (4) might be that I want to test your math skills, or (more likely in these circumstances) that I want to illustrate a point about relevance theory.

The constraint that utterances are compatible with the communicator's abilities and preferences accounts for suboptimal communication, such as when the communicator is unable to think of a better phrasing at the moment, as well as for stylistic and cultural preferences (e.g. politeness considerations), withholding information, and lying.

Inferences

Further information: Explicature and Implicature § Implicature in relevance theory

On hearing or reading a piece of ostensive communication, the addressee first concludes that the presumption of optimal relevance is met. He then decodes the utterance, which however yields only very incomplete information.

explicatures, time dependency, implicated premises, implicated conclusions

To include from de:Relevanztheorie

1. Den Weg der geringsten Verarbeitungskosten einschlagen
2. Hypothesen über den Input in Zugänglichkeitsreihenfolge testen
3. Anhalten, wenn Relevanzerwartungen erfüllt sind