Relevance Theory—Basics

Abstract

After showing how relevance theory is rooted in Grice’s “communicative principles,” the chapter explains the most important dimensions of “classic,” spoken language-oriented relevance theory and introduces the terminology used to label these dimensions, defining them for an audience of non-experts. Examples are used throughout to facilitate readers’ comprehension. The terms and concepts discussed are the Cognitive Principle of Relevance (generally referred to as the First, Cognitive Principle of Relevance) and the Communicative Principle of Relevance (generally referred to as the Second, Communicative Principle of Relevance); the communicative and the informative intention; recognizing and fulfilling intentions; positive cognitive effects/rewards and mental effort; decoding and inferring; the logical form; reference assignment, disambiguation, and enrichment; explicatures and implicatures; strong and weak communication; relevance to an individual; descriptive and interpretive utterances; symptomatic communication; loose talk; babbling and lying; optimal stimuli; relevance and trust; relevance and altruism; and the falsifiability of relevance theory. The chapter ends with a paragraph in which relevance theory’s fundamental tenets are summarized in non-technical terms.