Relevance theory

There are two ways to conceive of how thoughts can be communicated from one person to another. The first way is through the use of strict coding and decoding, which makes explicit use of symbols, rules, and language. The second way is by making interpretive inferences, which communicate to the hearer information that is left implicit. Relevance theory is a proposal (by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson) that seeks to explain the second method of com... more

There are two ways to conceive of how thoughts can be communicated from one person to another. The first way is through the use of strict coding and decoding, which makes explicit use of symbols, rules, and language. The second way is by making interpretive inferences, which communicate to the hearer information that is left implicit. Relevance theory is a proposal (by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson) that seeks to explain the second method of communication: implicit inferences. It argues that the human mind will instinctively react to an encoded message by considering information that it conceives to be relevant to the message. By "relevance" it is meant whatever allows the most new information to be transmitted in that context on the basis of the least amount of effort required to convey it. Sperber and Wilson’s theory begins with some watershed assumptions that are typical of pragmatic theories. Namely, it agrees that all utterances are encountered in some context, frequently make... less