Relevance Communication and Cognition Second Edition DAN SPERBER and
DEIRDRE WILS0N'
I] BLACI...
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Relevance Communication and Cognition Second Edition DAN SPERBER and
DEIRDRE WILS0N'
I] BLACI<WELL Oxford UK &- Cambridge USA
Copyright © Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, 1986, 1995 The right ofDan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 1986 Reprinted 1986, 1988, 1990, 1993 Second edition 1995 Reprinted 1996 (twice) Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 IJF, UK Blackwell Publishers Inc. 238 Main Street Cambridge, MassacllUSetts 02142, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library o/Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sperber, Dan. Relevance: communication and cognitionJDan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-631-19878-4 (pbk: alkpaper) 1. Oral communication-Psychological aspects. 2. Relevance. 3. Inference. 4. Cognition. 1. Wilson, Deidre. IT. Title. BF637.C45S655 1995 95-21627 302.2-dc20 CIP
Printed and bound in Great Britain by T. J. Press Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper
Contents
Preface to Second Edition List of symbols
1 Communication The 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 ostension Ostensive-inferential communication 11 The informative intention 12 The communicative intention 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 Inference 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Non -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 inference
3 Relevance 1 Conditions for relevance 2 Degrees of relevance: effect and effort 3 Is the context given or chosen?
vu IX
1 3 9 15 21 24 28 31 38 46 50 54 60 65 65 71 75 83 93 103 108 118 118 123 132
Contents
VI
4 5 6 7 8
A choice of contexts Relevance to an individual The relevance of phenomena and stimuli The principle of relevance How relevance theory explains ostensive-inferential communication
4 Aspects of verbal communication 1 Language and communication 2 Verbal communication, explicatures and implicatures
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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 acts
137 142 151 155 163 172 172 176 183 193 202 217 224 231 237 243
Postface
255
Notes to First Edition
281
Notes to Second Edition
293
Notes to Postface
295
Bibliography
299
Index
321
Preface to Second Edition
In 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 discontinUlt1es between semantics, pragmatics and rhetoric. Work did not proceed according to plan. We got involved in carrying out the
VUl
Preface to Second Edition
programme we had merely intended to outline. The months became years. The projected essay became a series of papers and the present book. This Second Edition preserves the text of the original, except for the correction of typographical errors, removal of obvious mistakes and inconsistencies, updating of existing references, and addition of a few explanatory notes. In a new Postface, we sketch the main developments in the theory since the First Edition was published, and argue for some revisions both of formulation and of substance. A number of people, who have helped us by their encouragements and criticisms, bear part of the responsibility for our failure to stick to our original plan of writing a short, programmatic sketch: Scott Atran, Regina Blass, Michael Brody, Sylvain Bromberger, Annabel Cormack, Martin Davies, Sue George, Paul Grice, Ernst-August Gutt, Sam Guttenplan, Jill House, Pierre J acob, PhilJ ohnson-Laird, Aravind J oshi, Jerry Katz, Stephen Levinson, Rose MacLaran, George A. Miller, Dinah Murray, Stephen Neale, Yuji Nishiyama, Ellen Prince, Anne Reboul, Fran