D. Wilson and D. Sperber. The Handbook of Pragmatics, chapter Relevance Theory, pages 607–632. Blackwell, Oxford, 2004. [url]

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This article present the basic theoretical assumption of the relevance theory, developed by Sperber and Wilson. The relevance theory is based on the inferential model, where a communicator provides evidences of her/his intention to convey a certain meaning, which is inferred by the audience on the basis of the evidences provided. The goal of the inferential pragmatics is to explain how the hearer infers the speaker’s meaning on the basis of the evidences provided.

The central claim of the relevance theory is that the expectations of relevance raised by an utterance are precise enough, and predictable enough, to guide the hearer towards the speacker’s meaning. The aim is to explain in cognitively realistic terms what these expectations of relevance amount to, and how they might contribute to an empirically plausible amount of comprehension.

The authors extend this theory not only on the utterance level, but they port it to all the rest of the cognitive phenomena, like thoughts, memories and conclusions of inferences. The search for relevance is a basic feature of human cognition, which communicators may exploit.

An input is relevant to an individual when it connects with background information he has available to yield conclusions that matter to her/him. An imput is relevant when its processing in a context of available assumptions yields a positive cognitive effect: i.e., a positive conclusion. A contextual implication is a conlcusion deductible from the input and the context together, but from neither input and context alone.

Relevance is a matter of degree. Other things being equal, the more worthwile conclusions achieved by processing an input, the more relevant it will be. Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort required, the less relevant the input will be. Thus relevance may be assessed in terms of cognitive effects and processing effort.

Relevance theory treats the identification of explicit content as equally inferential, and equally guided by the communicative principle of Relevence, as the recovery of implicatures.