Cognitive Relevance Involved in Verbal Communication: A Perspective of the Personal Experience Theory

Abstract

This paper is intended to interpret, from a perspective of the Personal Experience (PE) Theory, the cognition and relevance involved in verbal communication. The process of verbal communication, based upon personal experience (PE), consists of two sub-processes that are heterogeneous in nature: the sub-process of the formation of the communicative notion (CN), which is non-linguistic in nature, and the sub-process of verbal expression of the CN, which is linguistic in nature. The speaker’s PE enables him to turn an external context into an internal context, and develop a CN and an utterance image, which is then verbally expressed. In contrast, the listener’s PE enables him to intelligently associate the verbal form with its meaning, form an utterance image, associate the image with his conceived context, and finally infer the speaker’s CN. This theory of cognitive relevance involved in verbal communication from the perspective of PE Theory enjoys considerable advantages of powerful interpretation over other theories.