Handout: Relevance Theory 11/21/2011 Seite 1 von 2

Handout: Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory was developed by Sperber and Wilson and tries to unify the Gricean conversation maxims and cooperative principle. Relevance Theory deals with conversational implicature and inference. Principle of relevance Sperber and Wilson formulate the principle of relevance as follows: [e]very act of ostensive communication 1 communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance. The Gricean cooperative principle the communicator has communicative intent, i.e. he wants to convey a message to the hearer and incorporate the hearer into the communicative situation the hearer presumes the communicators communicative intent, which influences the way the hearer communicates the communicator presumes that the hearer presumes the communicators communicative intent he calculates the relevance of his utterance with the hearers role in mind cooperation between communicator and speaker Sperber and Wilsons further development of the Gricean cooperative principle the communicator calculates a balance between communicative profit and loss from the hearers point of view o communicative profit: extent to which the communication produces cognitive effects (e.g. through communication, the hearer learns something new) o communicative loss: effort it takes to assimilate the new information to existing knowledge the hearer presumes that the communicator calculates a balance between communicative profit and loss cooperation between communicator and speaker

Inferential processes
common assumption: inferential processes play a leading role in getting from the basic meaning to the implicature(s) o Blakemore goes even further: he says that implicatures do not only play a leading role when getting from the basic meaning of an utterance to the implicature(s), but also when getting from the utterance to the basic meaning in the first place

ostensive communication ordinary conversation; the communicator wants to convey something and incorporate the hearer into the communicative situation, which is recognized by the hearer(s)

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Interpretations of the original underspecified linguistic input (utterance) are called explicatures. Implicated premises and implicated conclusions When Sperber and Wilson speak of implicatures, they differenciate between implicated premises and implicated conclusions. Example: Peter: Would you drive a Saab? Mary: I wouldnt drive ANY Swedish car. (Marys implicated conclusion: I would not drive a Saab.) implicated premise: A Saab is a Swedish car. implicated conclusions: not directly stated (implicated) inferential support for final implicature does not need to be known by the hearer Exercise Find the implicated premises and conclusions for the following examples! (a) (b) (c) A: Have you read the new Dan Brown book yet? B: I dont like thrillers. A: Have you been to China? B: Ive never been to Asia. A: Who ate the sausages I left on the kitchen table? B: Im a vegetarian. implicated premises: not directly stated (implicated) what are traditionally called conversational implicatures

Bibliography Saeed, John I. 2003. Semantics. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 208-210