Sperber Dan, Wilson Deidre. Relevance Communication and Cognition

2nd edition. — Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. — 331 p. — ISBN: 0-631-19878-4In this book, first published nine years ago, we present a new approach to the study of human communication. This approach (outlined in chapter 1) is grounded in a general view of human cognition (developed in chapters 2 and 3). Human cognitive processes, we argue, are geared to achieving the greatest possible cognitive effect for the smallest possible processing effort. To achieve this, individuals must focus their attention on what seems to them to be the most relevant information available. To communicate is to claim an individual's attention: hence to communicate is to imply that the information communicated is relevant. This fundamental idea (developed in chapter 3), that communicated information comes with a guarantee of relevance, is what in the First Edition we called the principle of relevance and what we would now call the Second, or Communicative Principle of Relevance (see the Postface to this Second Edition). We argue that this principle of relevance is essential to explaining human communication, and show (in chapter 4) how it is enough on its own to account for the interaction of linguistic meaning and contextual factors in utterance interpretation. Here is how this book came about. In 1975, Deirdre Wilson published Presuppositions and Non-Truth-Conditional Semantics and Dan Sperber published 'Rudiments de rhetorique cognitive', a sequel to his Rethinking Symbolism. In these works, we were both turning to pragmatics - the study of contextual factors in verbal communication - but from different perspectives: Deirdre Wilson was showing how a number of apparently semantic problems could be better solved at a pragmatic level; Dan Sperber was arguing for a view of figures of speech rooted in pragmatics. We then formed the project of writing, in a few months, a joint essay which would cover, at least programmatically, the ground between our two vantage points and show the continuities and discontinuities between semantics, pragmatics and rhetoric. Work did not proceed according to plan. We got involved in carrying out the programme we had merely intended to outline. The months became years. The projected essay became a series of papers and the present book.Preface to Second Edition
List of symbolsCommunicationThe code model and the semiotic approach to communication
Decoding and inference in verbal comprehension
The mutual-knowledge hypothesis
Grice’s approach to ‘meaning’ and communication
Should the code model and the inferential model be amalgamated?
Problems of definition
Problems of explanation: Grice’s theory of conversation
Cognitive environments and mutual manifestness
Relevance and ostensión
Ostensive-inferential communication
The informative intention
The communicative intentionInferenceNon-demonstrative inference
Logical forms, propositional attitudes and factual assumptions
Strength of assumptions
Deductive rules and concepts
The deductive device
Some types of deduction
Contextual effects: the role of deduction in non-demonstrative inferenceRelevanceConditions for relevance
Degrees of relevance: effect and effort
Is the context given or chosen?
A choice of contexts
Relevance to an individual
The relevance of phenomena and stimuli
The principle of relevance
How relevance theory explains ostensive-inferential communicationAspects of verbal communicationLanguage and communication
Verbal communication, explicatures and implicatures
The identification of propositional form
The identification of implicatures
Propositional form and style: presuppositional effects
Implicatures and style: poetic effects
Descriptive and interpretive dimensions of language use
Literalness and metaphor
Echoic utterances and irony
Speech actsPostfaceNotes to First Edition
Notes to Second Edition
Notes to Postface