Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory was developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their groundbreaking work Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1986, second edition 1995). It offers an alternative to Grice's Cooperative Principle and represents one of the most influential developments in pragmatics since Grice. For AQA A-Level, understanding Relevance Theory provides an additional analytical framework and demonstrates awareness of the theoretical debate within pragmatics.

---

The Problem with Grice

While Grice's framework is powerful, Sperber and Wilson identified several problems with it:

1. The maxim of Relation is underdeveloped. Grice simply says "be relevant" without explaining what relevance is, how it is assessed, or why it matters more than the other maxims.
2. The maxims overlap and are sometimes redundant. It is not always clear whether a particular feature of communication should be explained by Quantity, Quality, Relation, or Manner.
3. The Cooperative Principle is too strong. Not all communication is cooperative in Grice's sense.

Sperber and Wilson's response was radical: they argued that relevance alone can explain everything that Grice's four maxims were designed to explain. Their theory replaces the four maxims with a single principle: the Principle of Relevance.

---

What Is Relevance?

Sperber and Wilson define relevance in terms of two factors:

Cognitive Effects (Contextual Effects)

An input (an utterance, a piece of information, a visual stimulus) is relevant to an individual when it connects with background information already available to that individual to produce cognitive effects. There are three main types of cognitive effect:

1. Strengthening an existing assumption — The input provides evidence that confirms something the individual already believed.

   • You believe it might rain. You look out the window and see dark clouds. The visual input strengthens your existing assumption.

2. Contradicting and eliminating an existing assumption — The input provides evidence that something the individual believed is false.

   • You believe Sarah is at work. You then see Sarah in the supermarket. The visual input contradicts and eliminates your assumption.

3. Combining with existing assumptions to yield new conclusions (contextual implications) — The input, together with existing information, allows the individual to derive new information that neither source could have produced alone.

   • You know that John always brings an umbrella when it rains. You learn that John has brought an umbrella today. You conclude: it is raining (or John expects rain).

Key Definition: Cognitive effects (or contextual effects) — the changes in an individual's beliefs that result from processing new information in a context of existing assumptions. The greater the cognitive effects, the more relevant the input.

Processing Effort

Processing effort is the mental energy required to understand an input. The more effort needed to process an utterance (because of complexity, ambiguity, obscurity, unfamiliarity, or noise), the less relevant it is, all other things being equal.

Key Definition: Processing effort — the mental energy required to process and interpret an input. The greater the processing effort required, the less relevant the input (all other things being equal).

The Relevance Equation

Relevance is a trade-off between cognitive effects and processing effort:

• Greater cognitive effects = more relevant (the input tells you something important or useful)
• Greater processing effort = less relevant (the input is hard to understand)
• Maximum relevance = maximum cognitive effects for minimum processing effort

This means an utterance is optimally relevant when it achieves a significant change in the listener's beliefs with the least possible effort.

---

The Two Principles of Relevance

Sperber and Wilson formulated two principles:

The Cognitive Principle of Relevance

"Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance."

This means that the human mind is naturally oriented towards finding relevant information. We automatically pay attention to the most relevant stimuli in our environment and process them in the most efficient way.

The Communicative Principle of Relevance

"Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance."

This means that when someone deliberately communicates something (through speech, writing, gesture, etc.), they are automatically claiming that their communication is worth the listener's attention — that it will produce sufficient cognitive effects to justify the effort of processing it.

This principle replaces Grice's Cooperative Principle and all four maxims. The speaker does not need to be truthful, informative, relevant, and clear as separate obligations — they simply need to be relevant enough to justify the listener's processing effort.

Key Definition: The Communicative Principle of Relevance (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995) — every act of intentional communication carries a presumption that it is optimally relevant: that it will produce adequate cognitive effects for the listener without requiring gratuitous processing effort.

---

Ostensive-Inferential Communication

Sperber and Wilson describe communication as an ostensive-inferential process, consisting of two sides:

Ostension (The Speaker's Side)

The speaker produces a stimulus — an utterance, gesture, facial expression, written text — that is deliberately designed to attract the listener's attention and communicate an intended meaning. This is ostensive communication — it is overt, intentional, and designed to be recognised as intentional.

The speaker makes two intentions manifest:

1. Informative intention — the intention to inform the listener of something
2. Communicative intention — the intention to inform the listener that the speaker has an informative intention (i.e., to make it clear that one is trying to communicate)

Inference (The Listener's Side)