AN INTRODUCTION TO RELEVANCE-

THEORETIC PRAGMATICS

LUQMAN AHSANUL KAROM

MADRASAH TSANAWIYAH NAHDLATUL ULAMA

1.1 Introduction

In daily lives, the communication occurs is not merely exchanges of

linguistic aspect of language. It involves signs which language is considered as

one of signs used in the communication, the user of the signs which human is one

of the users, and the context of situation in which the communication occurs. For

instance, a customer in a restaurant is ordering a plate of rice to the waitress and

says “a plate of rice, please!”. In the above circumstance, the utterance, a

linguistic aspects of language, can only be understood if the waitress finds it

relevant to her to be processed in her mind by connecting it to her background

knowlendge and the context of situation. Thus, it is obvious that the

communication requires several aspects to meet in order to understood. In

addition, the aspects of sign used in the communication are discussed in the

discipline of semiotics.

Semiotics is devided into three branches of fields. They are syntax,

semantics, and pragmatics. “First, syntax covers discussions about the relatioship

between signs and within the sign system. Second, semantics covers discussions

about the relationship between signs and the objects they refer to. Third,

pragmatics covers discussions about the relationship between signs and the

people who use them” (Renkema, 1993: 21).

Pragmatics deals with the relationship between signs and their users.

Additionally, it is also concerned with aspects of information which human, as the

user of signs, encodes and infers from the language, as a sign. Furthermore, the
aspects are seen as closely influenced by the context of situation and the

background knowledge of the human. Therefore, pragmatics also deals with some

questions as like why an individual uses a specific sign, in what circumstance an

individual uses a particular sign, and how we interpret a particular sign in a

particular context of situation.

Relevance theory, which was firstly proposed by Deirdre Wilson & Dan

Sperber, is one of theories of pragmatics that makes human’s cognition as its

central principle. It states that human’s cognitive system tends to take the most

relevant input to be processed with the least effort in term of communication.

Moreover, the notion of relevance is deeply discussed in its close relation with

human’s cognition. Blakemore (2003: 104) stated “Relevance is defined in terms

of contextual effect and processing effort.” Furthermore, both activities occur in

the human’s cognitive system in correlation with the context of situation and

background knowledge. Therefore, the relevance theory mainly deals with

human’s cognition.

Additionally, Wilson and Sperber (2002: 2) said “The relevance-theoretic

account is based on another of Grice’s central claims: that utterances

automatically create expectations which guide the hearer towards the speaker’s

meaning.” It is quite obvious that relevance theory was constructed under the

theoretical framework of Grice’s maxims. However, the theoretical framework

has been developed in such a way, so the relevance theory is said to explain a

wider scope than Grice’s.

This paper aims at explaining the principles of relevance theory. However,

the discussion presented in this chapter is in a basic level, since it is expected to

relevance theory. Hopefully, this paper wil be helpful for a beginner who are

starting to enter the very wide scope of ideas of Sperber and Wilson in their

relevance theory.
 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

2.1 The Concept of Relevance

There are abundant phenomenon of communication that cannot be

explained through linguistic analysis only. For instance, a mother who orders her

child to take a broom in a corner of their house by saying “please!” while pointing

her fingers to the broom. The utterance above does not make sense in term of

linguistic analysis. In Chomsky’s analysis, the utterance obviously cannot be

explained by both phrase structure rules and transformational rules. It does not

have noun phrase that can be generated into deep structure, so there is nothing to

be transformed into surface structure. Thus, it is considered to be meaningless

utterance based on Chomsky’s account. However, the child can understand what

his mother want and soon he takes the broom for his mother. How can it be?

Therefore, relevance theory seeks the explanation of those phenomenon in term of

cognition and its relation with context of situations.

Relevance theory is based on the work of Grice as Sperber and Wilson

(2002: 1) stated “Relevance theory may be seen as an attempt to work out in detail

one of Grice’s central claims: that an essential feature of most human

communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is the expression and recognition of

intentions.” Therefore, an utterance is seen as not only containing its linguistic

structure and meaning, but also containing the intention of its speaker or writer

that sometimes is not encoded in a complete linguistic form. In the above

example, the mother’s utterance contains more than what is uttered, it contains the
mother’s intention that can be catched by the child. This phenomena is explained

by relevance theory in term of ostensive communication that is explained in the

next sub-chapter in detail.

Furthermore, the ability of human’s cognition to understand a relevant

input is a nature of the cognition itself which is guided by the cognitive principle

of relevance and communicative principle of relevance. The further explanation

about both principles are presented in the next discussion.

2.1.1 Relevance and Cognition

Sperber and Wilson (2002: 3) stated “utterances raise expectations of

relevance … because the search for relevance is a basic feature of human

cognition, which communicators may exploit.” It can be understood from the

statement that the ability to recognize whether an input is relevant or not is the

nature of human cognition. Furthermore, it is believed there are processes occur in

the human cognition. The process can be in the form of memorizing what one has

already known about certain things, exploring the knowledge about inputs he/she

gets, answering questions he/she has in mind, etc. All of those processes

contribute significantly to the whole processes of communication.

An input is considered relevant when the input is processed by connecting

one’s background knowledge to the context of situation and yields a positive

cognitive effects. The positive cognitive effects can be resulted from the

confirmation of the input, the mental representatives of the world, and the context

of situation. For instance, Hasbul is offering a glass of coffee to his friend Syaiful

by saying “ful, coffee!” while showing up his glass of coffee to syaiful. in this
case, Syaiful may understand the intention of hasbul by processing the inputs (the

utterance and the attidtude of hasbul) with the knowledge he has already had and

the context of situation. Syaiful might have already known that someone who

calls other’s name and shows a glass of coffee means he/she is offering it to

him/her. Also, his knowledge is confirmed with the input and the context. Thus,

this confirmation yields a positive cognitive effect for him, then syaiful will

consider that the input is relevant to him.

Relevance is a matter of degree, so given some relevant inputs, one can be

more relevant than others. Sperber and Wilson (2002: 4) stated “In relevance-

theoretic terms, other things being equal, the greater the positive cognitive effects

achieved by processing an input, the greater its relevance will be.” Thus,

relevance depends on the cognitive effects. Additionally, the greater positive

cognitive effects mean the greater confirmation resulted from the process of

cognition in relationship with one’s background knowledge and the context of

situation. In the example above, Syaiful will have a greater positive effects if

Hasbul offers the coffee while saying “Ful, let’s enjoy this coffee together!” since

Syaiful will have stronger confirmation than the first example. Thus, in the

example, the second inputs are stronger than the first.

Moreover, beside releveance depends on the cognitive effects, it also

depends on the effort of cognition in deriving confirmation, conclution or another

cognitive process. Sperber and Wilson stated (2002: 4) “other things being equal,

the greater the PROCESSING EFFORT required, the less relevant the input will

be.” Intuitively, the harder an input is to perceive, infer, or conclude, the less the

input is to reward as worth-processing. Then, then the input will be considered as

and processing effort:

Relevance of an input to an individual

1. Other things being equal, the greater the positive cognitive effects achieved by

processing an input, the greater the relevance of the input to the individual at

that time.

2. Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort expended, the lower

the relevance of the input to the indi vidual at that time.

Sperber and Wilson illustrated:

“Mary, who dislikes most meat and is allergic to chicken, rings her dinner

party host to find out what is on the menu. He could truly tell her any of

three things:

(2) We are serving meat.

(3) We are serving chicken.

(4) Either we are serving chicken or (72 – 3) is not 46.

According to the characterisation of relevance in (1), all three utterances

would be relevant to Mary, but (3) would be more relevant than either (2)

or (4). It would be more relevant than (2) for reasons of cognitive effect:

(3) entails (2), and therefore yields all the conclusions derivable from (2),

and more besides. It would be more relevant than (4) for reasons of

processing effort: although (3) and (4) are logically equivalent, and

therefore yield exactly the same cognitive effects, these effects are

easier to derive from (3) than from (4), which requires an additional effort

of parsing and inference (in order to work out that the second disjunct is
 false and the first is therefore true). Thus, (3) would be the most relevant

utterance to Mary, for reasons of both effort and effect. More generally,

when similar amounts of effort are required, the effect factor is decisive in

determining degrees of relevance, and when similar amounts of effect are

achievable, the effort factor is decisive.” (Sperber and Wilson, 2002: 5)

In conclusion, it is a nature for the human cognition to maximise every

input it gets. When one is given a choice to pick some relevant inputs, he/she will

choose the most relevant among others. Therefore, those assumptions about

human cognition is made as the basis for the COGNITIVE PRINCIPLE OF

RELEVANCE which says “human cognition tends to be geared to the

maximisation of relevance.”

2.1.2 Relevance and Communication

The character of human cognition which tends to maximise every inputs or

stimulus it gets makes it possible for someone to predict what someone else thinks

as a relevant input. Therefore, when someone tries to communicate his/her

intention to others he/she will choose the most relevant way in order to make

his/her stimulus as worth-processing for the hearer. Then, he/she will make an

overt or intentional way to show that the inputs he/she wants to communicate is

relevant. The action of attracting someones else’s attention is called OSTENSIVE

STIMULI, and the communication with such kind of a way is called

OSTENSIVE-INFERENTIAL COMMUNICATION.

Specifically, what is meant with ostensive-inferential communication is

explained as follows: the speaker will use the overt way in communicating his/her
intention, that is actively helping the hearer to recognise his/her INFORMATIVE

INTENTION, the intention to inform an audience of something. Meanwhile, the

intention of informing his informative intention is called COMMUNICATIVE

INTENTION.

Furthermore, from the speaker’s point of view, it is simply not worth

engaging in such an act unless the audience pays attention to it. But equally, from

the hearer’s point of view, it is not worth paying attention to an act of

communication unless there is information worth processing – or in other words,

unless it is relevant. Therefore, the speaker’s act of ostensive stimulus creates

PRESUMPTION OF RELEVANCE which is in turn considered as the most

relevant input by the hearer. In relevance-theoretic approach, both speaker and

hearer use the most relevant way to achieve OPTIMAL RELEVANCE.

In addition, the notion of optimal relevance is explained as follows: an

ostensive stimulus is optimally rellevant to an audience if (a) it is relevant enough

to be worth the audience’s processing effort; (b) it is the most relevant one

compatible with communicator’s abilities and preferences.

Those assumptions about communication, then, became the basis of the

COMMUNICATIVE PRONCIPLE OF RELEVANCE which says “Every

ostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.”

Furthermore, this notion about communicative principle of relevance becomes the

basis of relevance theory in analyzing phenomenon of communication.

The applicatioin of relevance theory can be illustrated by an example of

exchanges of communication with its analysis. Note an example below:

A and B are both students of a university in Indonesia. They are close

friends each other.

A : Will you help me finishing my homework?

B : I have a lot to do today.

B actually intends to refuse A’s request. However, since B considers that

A is close to him, he decides to show his refusal in a polite way, an indirect

expression of refusal in Indonesian culture. Thus, based on some considerations,

B chooses the expression as the most relevant ostensive stimulus for A to inform

his intention. And equally, B’s ostensive stimuli creates PRESUMPTION OF

RELEVANCE. Thus, A will consider that B’s utterance is the most relevant input,

which is worth-processing, to him. In other words, both A and B is achieveing

what we call as OPTIMAL RELEVANCE. Also, it is guided by the COGNITIVE

PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE. in fact, A will have a POSITIVE COGNITIVE

EFFECT from the input of B’s utterance. Then in turn, A will process it in

relationship with his background knowledge and the context of situation. The

process can be generated in term of implicature and explicature:

his time helping someone else. (A’s Background Knowledge)

Premise 2 : B is having a lot to do today. (Explicature of B’s utterance)

Conclusion : B will not be able to help A finishing his homework. (implicature of

B’s utterance)

In the end, A can understand the implicit meaning of B’s utterance. Or, he

can identify the intention of B, that B is actually refusing his request. The above

model of communication is guided by the COMMUNICATIVE PRINCIPLE OF

RELEVANCE in term of relevance theory.

The relevance theory aims at explaining such kind of phenomenon as like

in the example above. Conventionally, B should simply answer the A’s request by

“yes or no” In fact, B’s utterance is not conventionally expected. Furthermore, the

example above is a simple analysis of relevance theory. In a more complex

discussion, the theory can explain such phenomenon in litarature as like in poetry,

prose, etc. Of course, it is done with more complex analysis then that is presented

in this paper.
 CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

3.1 Conclusion

Relevance theory claimed that some exchanges in human communication

contain the intention of the speaker. Thus, the communication is not only

information that is encoded in linguistic form, but also it contains implicit

meanings, that is the speaker’s intention, conveyed through the recognition

processed in the human cognition and guided by the communicative principle of

relevance (Sperber and Wilson, 1993: 2).

This claim seems identical with Grice’s central claim about the

communication. However, there are numbers of differences between the relevance

theory and Grice’s maxims. Specifically, the difference appears on the notion of

maxims and co-operative principles of communication. While Grice laid his

principle on the notion of maxims and co-operative principle of communication,

relevance theory laid his foundation on the notion of cognitive principle of

relevance and communicative principle of relevance.

Cognitive principle of relevance stated “Human cognition tends to be

geared to the maximisation of relevance.” It is a nature of human cognition to

make every inputs it gets as relevant as possible. Moreover, if an input is not

considered as relevant, the communication will not be engaged optimally.

Furthermore, communicative principle of relevance stated “Every ostensive

stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.” It is also a nature

of any ostensively conveyed input to reach its optimal relevance by its own way.
It explains why some phenomenon of communication can occur well despite its

linguistic form is not encoded in any conventianal way.

Relevance theory is also helpful to analyse some more complex

phenomenon of communication, oral/verbal or spoken/written, in human life. for

instance, it is useful when one is to analyse a phenomenon of literature with its

complex features.
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