The Principles of Relevance

Pragmatic relevance is a property of utterances as a particular case of inputs to cognitive processes: “An input is relevant to an individual when it connects with available contextual assumptions to yield positive cognitive effects: for example, true contextual implications, or warranted strengthenings or revisions of existing assumptions [8, p. 7].

The relevance of an input for an individual is a matter of degree. In general, the greater those positive cognitive effects with the smaller mental effort to get them, the greater the relevance of the input for the individual. Sperber and Wilson conjecture that the cognitive architecture of human beings tends to the maximization of relevance. This is what their first (cognitive) principle of relevance states: Human cognition is geared towards the maximization of relevance (that is, to the achievement of as many contextual (cognitive) effects as possible for as little processing effort as possible).

This is the general cognitive principle that serves as background for communication in general and linguistic communication in particular. This applied to linguistic communication involves the following: for a communicative act to be successful, the speaker needs the addressee's attention; since everyone is geared towards the maximization of relevance, the speaker should try to make his utterance relevant enough to be worth the addressee's attention. This leads us to the second (communicative) principle of relevance: Every act of ostensive communication (e.g. an utterance) communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance.

By ‘ostensive’ relevance theorists make reference to the ‘overt’ or ‘public’ nature of the speaker's communicative intentions in acts of communication. Communication will be successful (i.e., understanding will occur) when the addressee recognizes those intentions. This process is mostly inferential and it has costs. So, the addressee would not start the inferential process without a presumption that it will report his some benefits, that is, without a presumption that the input is not only relevant, but as relevant as it can. Then, when someone utters something with a communicative purpose, he does it, according to relevance theory, with the presumption of optimal relevance, which states that

a. The utterance is relevant enough to be worth processing.

b. It is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator's abilities and preferences.

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