Relevance theory
The theory was originally inspired by the work of Paul Grice and developed out of his ideas, but has since become a pragmatic framework in its own right.
Relevance theory also attempts to explain figurative language such as hyperbole, metaphor and irony.
Other criticisms include that the theory is too reductionist to account for the large variety of pragmatic phenomena.
Relevance theory aims to explain the well-recognized fact that communicators usually convey much more information with their utterances than what is contained in their literal sense.
A relevant utterance in this technical sense is one from which many conclusions can be drawn at a low processing cost for the addressee.
[1] The addressee uses the information contained in the utterance together with his expectations about its relevance, his real-world knowledge, as well as sensory input, to infer conclusions about what the communicator wanted to convey.
Typically, more conclusions can be drawn if the utterance contains information that is related to what the addressee already knows or believes.
[3] It is characterized by two layers of intention on part of the communicator:[4] To describe the claims of relevance theory on a more rigorous level, we need to define a number of technical terms as introduced by Sperber and Wilson.
Finally, the sentence contains largely the same information as (1) but requires more effort to process, and is thus less relevant under this definition.
The relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure Follow a path of least effort in computing cognitive effects: test interpretive hypotheses in order of accessibility, and stop when your expectations of relevance are satisfied.
The inference process is based on the decoded meaning, the addressee's knowledge and beliefs, and the context, and is guided by the communicative principle of relevance.
[10] For example, take an utterance Information the addressee has to infer includes Consequently, the explicit meaning of (5) is This is called an explicature of (5).
It is used interpretively if it represents some other utterance or thought, irrespective of the truth or state of affairs, as is the case with direct or indirect quotations, summaries, quoting folk wisdom, linguistic example sentences, tentative scientific hypotheses, et cetera.
For example, if an overly cautious driver pulls into a main road which is completely clear except for a cyclist on the horizon, the co-driver might reprovingly say "There's something coming".
[18] Relevance theory only recognises three types of generic, universal speech acts: saying (that), telling (to), and asking (whether).
Stephen Levinson sees relevance theory as too reductionist, as a single principle cannot account for the large variety of pragmatic phenomena – such as implicatures – in his view.
Also, Levinson asserts that relevance theory cannot explain how we arrive at implicated premises via creative processes.
This can be visualized as follows: This is usually referred to as the code model[25] or the conduit metaphor[26] of communication.
Context almost always plays a part in communication, as do other factors such as the author's intentions, the relationship between the sender and receiver, and so forth.
