Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication

Robyn Carston
Copyright 2002 by Robyn Carston

Appendix 1:
Relevance Theory Glossary

accessibility (of an assumption): the ease or difculty with which an assumption

can be retrieved (from memory) or constructed (on the basis of clues in the
stimulus currently being processed); accessibility is a matter of degree and is in
a constant state of ux depending on, among other things, what is occupying
attention at any given moment.
cognitive effects: contextual effects in a cognitive system (e.g. an individual). (See
also contextual effects and positive cognitive effects.)
cognitive environment (of an individual): the set of assumptions that are manifest
to an individual at a given time. (See also mutual cognitive environment.)
communicative intention: a higher-order intention to make it mutually manifest
to audience and communicator that the communicator has a particular informative intention. (See also manifestness and informative intention.)
computation: a transformation of a set of symbols into another set of symbols in
accordance with some mapping, rule or procedure, which is dened over syntactic (formal) properties of the input symbolic representation.
conceptual address: a mental label or node connecting and providing access to
information of various sorts pertaining to a single concept (for example, cat,
love, or and): logical or computational rules and procedures, encyclopaedic
information about the denotation of the concept and linguistic information about
the natural-language counterpart of the concept. Some concepts may have only
one or two of these types of information.
conceptual semantics: the category of linguistic semantics whose domain is those
linguistic forms whose encoded meaning contributes concepts (or conceptual
addresses or concept schemas) to the logical form (propositional schema) of an
utterance, for example, cat, sing, silent. (See also procedural semantics.)
context: that subset of mentally represented assumptions which interacts with
newly impinging information (whether received via perception or communication) to give rise to contextual effects. In ostensive communication, this set is
not pre-given but is selected by the hearer on the basis of the utterance and his
bid for an interpretation consistent with the second principle of relevance.

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contextual effects: the result of a fruitful (i.e. relevant) interaction between a newly
impinging stimulus and a subset of the assumptions already in the cognitive
system; there are three main kinds of contextual (cognitive) effects: supporting
and so strengthening existing assumptions, contradicting and eliminating assumptions, combining inferentially with them to produce new conclusions. (See also
contextual implication.)
contextual implication: a conclusion inferred on the basis of a set of premises
consisting of both contextual assumptions and new assumptions derived from the
incoming stimulus (for instance, the proposition expressed by an utterance) and
not derivable from either of these alone.
descriptively used representation: a representation (whether mental or public)
which represents a state of affairs (that is, something non-representational). It is
truth-based representation; that is, the representation describes a state of affairs
that makes it true. (Compare with representation by resemblance and interpretively used representation.)
echoic use (of a representation): the use of a representation (mental or public) to
attribute another representation (mental or public) to someone else (or to oneself
at some other time) and, crucially, to express an attitude to it. The representation represented may be linguistic/formal (e.g. phonological, syntactic) or semantic/conceptual and the relation between the two representations is one of
resemblance.
explicature: an ostensively communicated assumption which is inferentially developed from one of the incomplete conceptual representations (logical forms)
encoded by the utterance. (Compare with implicature.)
higher-level explicature: a particular kind of explicature (see above) which involves
embedding the propositional form of the utterance or one of its constituent propositional forms under a higher-level description such as a speech-act description,
a propositional attitude description or some other comment on the embedded
proposition.
implicature (conversational): an ostensively communicated assumption which is
not an explicature; that is, a communicated assumption which is derived solely
via processes of pragmatic inference. An alternative characterization: a contextual assumption or contextual implication intended (communicated) by the
speaker; hence an implicature is either an implicated premise or an implicated
conclusion. (Compare with explicature.)
indeterminacy (of implicature or explicature): a property of those communicated
assumptions whose propositional content as recovered by the hearer does not
specically fall within the speakers informative intention, though her utterance
encouraged the hearer to derive some assumptions, of which these are possible
cases, among a restricted conceptual range.
informative intention: an intention to make manifest or more manifest to an audience a set of assumptions. (See also manifestness and communicative intention.)
interpretively used representation: a representation (whether mental or public)
which represents another representation (whether mental or public) and resembles it in content (logical, semantic, conceptual). (See also representation by
resemblance and loose use, and compare descriptively used representation.)

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irony: a use of language by which a speaker tacitly communicates a mocking or,

at least, dissociative attitude to a thought or view which she tacitly attributes to
someone other than herself at the time of utterance. (See also echoic use.)
loose use: a use of a representation (whether mental or linguistic) to represent
another representation (whether mental or linguistic) with which it is in a relation of non-literal resemblance (i.e. it does not have some of its logical or dening properties, but does have a range of its salient encyclopaedic properties); for
instance, France is hexagonal. (See also interpretively used representation and
metaphor.)
manifestness (of an assumption to an individual): the degree to which an individual is capable of mentally representing an assumption and holding it as true or
probably true at a given moment.
metaphor: a kind of loose use in which, typically, the logical properties of the
representation (mental or public) are inapplicable but which gives rise to a range
of weak implicatures and other cognitive effects. (See also representation by
resemblance and strong (vs. weak) communication.)
metarepresentation: the use of a representation to represent (through a relation of
resemblance) another representation (including, possibly, itself).
mutual cognitive environment: a cognitive environment which is shared by a group
of individuals and in which it is manifest to those individuals that they share it
with each other; every manifest assumption in a mutual cognitive environment is
mutually manifest. (See also manifestness and cognitive environment).
non-demonstrative inference: an inference to the best explanation, which is not
strictly valid (as opposed to a deductive inference which is valid); also known as
hypothesis formation and conrmation. An interpretive hypothesis is made (it
might be delivered by decoding or by a least-effort strategy for accessing assumptions) and subsequently conrmed or disconrmed (for instance, by whether or
not it leads to a satisfactory range of cognitive effects).
ostensive-inferential communication: communication which involves a stimulus which makes it mutually manifest to communicator and audience that
the communicator intends, by means of this stimulus, to make manifest or
more manifest to the audience a set of assumptions. It should be distinguished
from accidental information transmission and various covert means of communication, where what is missing is the element of overtness characteristic
of ostensive communication. (See also manifestness and communicative
intention.)
ostensive phenomenon: a stimulus or behaviour that makes manifest an intention
to make an assumption or assumptions manifest; that is, a behaviour backed by
a communicative intention (see also communicative intention).
positive cognitive effects: cognitive effects that contribute positively to the fullment of cognitive functions or goals.
presumption of optimal relevance:
1. 1986 denition:
(a) The set of assumptions I which the communicator intends to make manifest to the addressee is relevant enough to make it worth the addressees
while to process the ostensive stimulus.

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(b)

The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one the communicator could
have used to communicate I.
2. 1995 denition:
(a) The ostensive stimulus is relevant enough for it to be worth the
addressees effort to process it.
(b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the
communicators abilities and preferences.
(See also relevance-theoretic comprehension strategy.)
principles of relevance:
1. First (cognitive) principle of relevance:
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).
2. Second (communicative) principle of relevance:
Every act of ostensive communication (e.g. an utterance) communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance.
procedural semantics: the category of linguistic semantics whose domain is those
linguistic forms whose encoded meaning does not contribute a concept but rather
provides a constraint on, or indication of, the way some aspect of pragmatic
inference should proceed. Subtypes are (a) constraints on pragmatic inferences
involved in deriving the explicit content of the utterance, for example, pronouns
and tense; (b) constraints on the derivation of implicatures (intended contextual
assumptions and contextual implications), for example, discourse connectives
such as moreover, after all, but, so. (See also conceptual semantics.)
processing effort: this is the effort which a cognitive system must expend in order to
arrive at a satisfactory interpretation of incoming information (involving factors
such as the accessing of an appropriate set of contextual assumptions and the inferential work involved in integrating the new information with existing assumptions).
proposition expressed (by an utterance or speaker): that propositional form which
is developed by pragmatic inferences building on the incomplete logical form
decoded from the linguistic form employed in the utterance (hence it is an
amalgam of decoded conceptual content and of pragmatically inferred concepts).
The pragmatic inferences achieve disambiguation, the recovery of intended referents, and conceptual completion and enrichment, in accordance with the second
principle of relevance. The proposition expressed may either be ostensively communicated itself (hence an explicature) or be merely a vehicle to enable the recovery of assumptions which are ostensively communicated (as in cases of loose use
according to the standard relevance-theoretic treatment, pre-1996).
relevance in a context:
classicatory denition:
An assumption is relevant in a context if and only if it has some contextual effect
(cognitive effect) in that context.
comparative denition:
extent condition 1: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that its
contextual (cognitive) effects in this context are large.

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extent condition 2: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that the

effort required to process it in this context is small.
relevance to an individual:
classicatory denition:
An assumption is relevant to an individual at a given time if and only if it has
some positive cognitive effects in one or more of the contexts accessible to him
at that time. (See also positive cognitive effects.)
comparative denition:
extent condition 1: an assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that
the positive cognitive effects achieved when it is optimally processed are large.
extent condition 2: an assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that
the effort required to achieve these positive cognitive effects is small.
relevance of a phenomenon:
classicatory denition:
A phenomenon is relevant to an individual at a given time if and only if one or
more of the assumptions it makes manifest is relevant to him.
comparative denition:
extent condition 1: a phenomenon is relevant to an individual to the extent
that the positive cognitive effects achieved when it is optimally processed are
large.
extent condition 2: a phenomenon is relevant to an individual to the extent that
the effort required to achieve these positive cognitive effects is small.
relevance-theoretic comprehension strategy:
(a) construct interpretations in order of accessibility (i.e. follow a path of least
effort);
(b) stop when your expectation of relevance is satised.
(Note: expectations of relevance may vary across different situations of utterance and with the relative developmental level of the hearer, from an expectation
of actual optimal relevance, to more sophisticated and realistic expectations that
allow for speakers fallibility and/or deceptiveness; for detailed discussion, see
Sperber 1994a.)
representation: anything used in such a way that it can be construed as being about
something (as having meaning) as opposed to just being itself; aboutness may be
truth-based or resemblance-based (see also descriptively used representation and
interpretively used representation.)
representation by resemblance: the representation of one thing by another, based
not on a relation of truth between the representation and the represented, but on
a relation of similarity or resemblance between them; for instance, maps, pictures,
gestural mimicry and utterances when they are used to represent other linguistic
or propositional representations which they resemble either in formal features or
in propositional content.
strong (vs. weak) communication: a communicated assumption (explicature or
implicature) is strongly communicated when the informative intention to make
manifest that particular assumption is made highly mutually manifest; the degree
of strength with which an assumption is communicated varies on a continuum

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through to cases of very weak communication, where there is some indeterminacy regarding which specic assumptions within some conceptual range fall
under the speakers informative intention.
weak implicatures: implicated assumptions which are weakly communicated; in
cases of evocative metaphor, for instance, rather than a few assumptions being
made highly manifest, a wide range of assumptions is made weakly manifest and
the interpreter must take a great measure of responsibility for the specic assumptions he represents as part of his interpretation. (See strong (vs. weak)
communication.)