Relevance Theory

Misunderstandings are one of the outcomes of unsuccessful communications. It occurs when the addressee does not realize that the interpretation he derived from an utterance was not the one intended by the speaker. In this paper, misunderstanding is analyzed through the lens of Relevance Theory. It occurs as a result of failures in the pragmatics processes that take place from the moment the addressee hears an utterance until he reaches the interpretation that satisfies his expectation of relevance. The pragmatic processes presented in this paper are saturation (e.g. pronoun assignment), disambiguation, enrichment, ad hoc concepts, accessing explicatures, and deriving implicatures. It will be shown that even if one of the processes is not properly followed, misunderstanding may occur.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of usage of sequential teaching method on the academic achievement and retention level of students. Three student groups of biology students in University “Goce Delcev”, Faculty of Natural and Technical Sciences, Institute of Biology, - Stip, R. Macedonia were offered a topic on general characteristics of Proteins: Their Biological Functions and Primary Structure with different sequences of 3 teaching methods. The teaching methods were Laboratory method (student experiment), slide demonstration and lecture method. The first group started to course with experiments in the laboratory, then the relevant theory of proteins was given lecture method, and then the slides was shown (Group I). The sequence of these three teaching methods used in the first group was changed in both second and third group as follow: The lecture methods, slide show and experiment in Group II, and slide show, experiment and lecture method in Group III, respectively. Laboratory method used in the study was focused on the topic of This diversity and abundance reflect the central role of proteins in virtually all aspects of cell structure and function. An extraordinary diversity of cellular activity is possible only because of the versatility inherent in proteins, each of which is specifically tailored to its biological role. The pattern by which each is tailored resides within the genetic information of cells, encoded in a specific sequence of nucleotide bases in DNA proteins activity, a student experiment was designed for this reason, and including to examine its features, effective factors, and relation between the structure and function of the proteins. This experiment was carried out by students. Slide demonstration method included slides about protein structure and function. The slides were shown by teachers. Lecture method was performed by teachers as usual. Effectiveness of different sequential teaching methods was measured quantitatively by an achievement test. Achievement test contained 20 questions, testing the knowledge of facts as well as the ability to transfer the knowledge and problem solving ability. This test was used as pre-test before methods’ application, post-test after the methods’ application and retention test after 30 days from methods’ applied.

We propose Bayesian inference in hazard regression models where the baseline hazard is unknown, covariate effects are possibly agevarying (non-proportional), and there is multiplicative frailty with arbitrary distribution. Our framework incorporates a wide variety of order restrictions on covariate dependence and duration dependence (ageing). We propose estimation and evaluation of age-varying covariate e¤ects when covariate dependence is monotone rather than proportional. In particular, we consider situations where the lifetime conditional on a higher value of the covariate ages faster or slower than that conditional on a lower value; this kind of situation is common in applications. In addition, there may be restrictions on the nature of ageing. For example, relevant theory may suggest that the baseline hazard function decreases with age. The proposed framework enables evaluation of order restrictions in the nature of both covariate and duration dependence as well as estimation of...

Even though pun translation has been subject to several discussions over many years, studies in pun translation as part of audiovisual translation (AVT) are limited to only the last four decades due the gradual advancements in translation technology. Bearing the growing interest in this rather new field in mind, a cognitive approach towards translation developed by Ernst-August Gutt (1991) has been adopted as the macrostrategy of this study extracted from the MA thesis for the analysis of pun translation from English source texts to Turkish target texts in the American TV show Modern Family (2009). By a relevance theoretical glance at the audiovisual texts, the amount of processing effort spent to produce high cognitive and humorous effects for the achievement of optimally relevant dialogues has been analysed in the translated puns of the first season of the afore-mentioned TV show. As a result, several types of pun have been detected and defined as the homonymous pun has ranked as the most frequently used one. The study also answers the degree of impact of the use of pun translation strategies by Dirk Delabastita (1993) in obtaining optimal relevance in translation. Furthermore, the current translator of this show, nazo82, has been interviewed to understand the role of the translator’s decision in the process of translating puns. The analytical part and the results of the case study have been evaluated on the basis of a mixed method composed of the use of both qualitative and quantitative data. Ultimately, this study claims to contribute to the study of puns under translation studies as it offers an audiovisual perspective. It is also presumed that the use of relevance theoretical approach as a theory based on cognitive explanations holds reliability in the evaluation of the translation of puns and other humorous elements. 

Key words: puns, pun translation strategies, Relevance Theory, audiovisual translation, AVT

Visual and multimodal discourse becomes an ever-more popular object of research. This is a welcome development, since the proliferation of communication that is not (exclusively) verbal makes the need for an academic discipline focusing on images and multimodal texts highly pertinent. However, while many studies in this fledgling field are concerned with exposing supposedly hidden ideologies, considerably less work attempts to systematically chart how it is that we understand the non-verbal and multimodal in the first place. In this chapter I argue that the new discipline will benefit from adopting Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory as the basic model for analysis. This will require adaptation of the model – which has hitherto been mainly used to analyse verbal, face-to-face communication – to multimodal mass-communication. The chapter mounts tentative proposals how this can be done. Adopting the model will moreover help provide insight into different modes’ affordances and limitations to communicate and persuade.

With focus on Facebook, this paper contributes to the scholarly discussion that draws from Marxist concepts to examine “labour relations” between social media organizations as capitalist enterprises and users as both free labour and unwitting commodities sold to advertisers. This critical stream of research has not yet paid much attention to the ​ideological processes that may be facilitating the establishment and maintenance of such exploitative relations. We adopt a discursive perspective and draw on linguistic pragmatics to shed light on these processes. In particular, we employ the notions of ‘relevance’ and ‘cognitive illusion’ to explore in detail the discourse that influences how the user­platform relationship is, firstly, constructed in and by Facebook’s organizational communication, and secondly, understood by social media users. We introduce a discursive process we call​context manipulation​; it is an analytical concept that helps bring to focus the discursive obscuring of...

This paper argues that positing a Theory of Mind and mind-reading abilities in particular is necessary in order to be able to account for the development and possible impairments of communication in normally developing children and individuals with autism. To account for the different impairments that people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit, what is needed is a refinement of the levels or degrees of mind-reading abilities that are usually posited in the literature. Instead of the two-tiered system of first-and second-order mind-reading abilities, there is a need to propose several other layers of meta-representation to account for the comprehension of different communicative events, such as metaphors, under-and overstatements, direct and indirect speech acts, lies, deceits, humour, jokes, irony and sarcasm. This paper assumes a relevance-theoretic perspective to explain deficits in communicative abilities in individuals with ASD. It suggests that the pragmatic impairments specific to autism can be accounted for by the role of context retrieval in the comprehension and production process, especially those related to knowledge about the speaker. Language is the basis of what makes us human in terms of the cognitive, social, psychological, as well as cultural 'make-up' of humankind. Children face an enormous task in acquiring language—a feat that is only appreciated when one looks closely at what is involved in the task. The basics of the language system (phonology, morphology and syntax) are acquired within the first four to five years. However, knowledge of the underlying system (competence) is not sufficient for what language is essentially used for:

Relevance and irrelevance, it is argued, is constitutive to our access to “information objects” on three interconnected levels: (1) access to the information object itself, (2) the information gained from it, (3) the use of that information. Relevance selectively shapes our experience and action, but the “irrelevance” of what is left out is not simply the opposite or absence of relevance. The complex relation between relevance and irrelevance expresses itself in different shades of knowledge and ignorance, and in a fuzzy border between information we do not want to access and information we cannot access. This implies both chances and risks for communication as a process of producing and exchanging information objects. In a second step, previous research on relevance and irrelevance is sketched with respect to different traditions and approaches: (1) Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch; (2) Paul Grice, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson; (3) library and information science; (4) signs and language; and (5) epistemology and logic. Finally, the role of the word “relevance”, which is not found in all languages, is briefly considered after distinguishing the explicit reflection of relevance from the constitutive role of relevance, which often remains implicit.

Abstract The analysis takes up the conjunction of semiotics and cybernetics as a problem in theory construction in the human sciences. From a philosophical per- spective, this is also the ontological problem of communicology: the disciplinary study of human communication. My analysis suggests current conceptions of “semiotics” and “cybernetics” are misunderstood because “information” is assumed as synonymous with “communication” and that the axioms of “mathematics” are identical to those of “logics”. The evidence contained in the misunderstandings is a conflation of reductionist ecology ideas about the “environment” differentiation of (1) human beings [apperceptive organic life], (2) animals [perceptive organic life], and machines [inorganic and constructed mechanisms]. The communicological view argues that a correct understanding of these issues requires a competence in logics and linguistics to determine the metatheory criteria for choosing evidence among humans, animals, and machines. The domain thematic is the phenomenological synergism of human embodiment as expression and perception. In this context, my criterion for evidence is the structure or form of a pure concept of reason (choice making judgment) that is given a priori in consciousness, the notion demonstrated by Immanuel Kant: A notion is a rule that you know before you experience it as a result.

A health education program toward smoking prevention was developed, based on four relevant theories (Social Cognitive Theory, Theory of Planned Behavior, Health Belief Model and Persuasion Theory). For the assessment of the program, 8 intervention studies were carried out. The total number of participants was 1230 students for in 9 different elementary, junior and senior high schools. This review shows that the pro- gram was more effective in elementary school than in junior and senior high school. The program was effec- tive in senior high school, when elements about smoking cessation were included. In all intervention studies, knowledge about smoking was improved. Results are discussed according to the effectiveness of the rele- vant psychological theories used in this program. Future directions and implications are discussed.

These lecture notes codify extensive recent research on economic forecasting. When a forecast- ing model coincides with the mechanism generating the data (DGP) in an unchanging world, the theory of economic forecasting is well developed. Forecasts are the conditional expectation, are un- biased, and no other predictor has a smaller mean-square forecast error matrix. Cointegration does not markedly alter that

Seeking to learn more about the interpreter’s profession and highlight useful information on improving the professional interpreter’s performance, the theme “Conference Interpreting Strategies” was selected for this paper. While reading various studies and theories about interpreting performance (both in simultaneous and consecutive modes), what stood out was the importance of the Efforts Models Theory, the role of relevance (as defined by Relevance Theory) and the filter afforded by performance psychology to better capture the profession’s praxis. Understanding of these concepts guided the search for strategies which might help improve the quality of an interpretation. In the texts, the importance of relevance theory and context as bases from which one can achieve great quality in interpreting became evident. In the same way, the concept of the expert was valuable in this investigation of information on the best possible performance. This paper presents a typology of strategies related to the role of memory, performance psychology and relevance found in specialized literature and which might prove useful to interpreters who seek improvement. Also included were readings of texts on interpretation in non-European languages, wherein the enormous difference in linguistic structures and cultures requires a great effort on the interpreter’s behalf when transposing into European languages. These readings were done in the belief that the strategies used in these cases might facilitate interpretation between more closely related languages. In conclusion, we evaluate the contribution that the strategies collected might be able to make and present topics of interest for future research.

Oversupply of information, irrelevance, and repetition in political and administrative text and talk have received considerable scholarly attention, but the tendency to date has been to analyse these phenomena separately. In this article, I argue that it would be fruitful to explore these aspects in combination, as constitutive dimensions of calculated overcommunicative behaviour in public administration.

Based on a multidisciplinary review of literature on cognitive manipulation, prolixity, (ir)relevance, discourse repetition, and administrative behaviour, I propose an original ‘overcommunication framework’ for explicating certain discursive macro-strategies of positive self-presentation used by public officeholders. In particular, I discuss how governments may use calculated overcommunication to avoid or deflect blame, to signal democratic openness, and to perform swiftness.

By problematising the notion of ‘overcommunication’ and introducing it into discourse studies, I seek to open up new avenues of understanding and investigating political and organisational communication.

For the past few decades, relevance theory has been a significant area of study within the fields of pragmatics and semantics. It proposed a new line of thinking about communication; it took into consideration the cognitive aspect of communication, with the underlying assumption that communicators draw attention to what they deem as most relevant in a given context. In their relevance theory, Sperber and Wilson laid emphasis on the fact that the code model of verbal communication is hugely limited and stressed the importance of context for understanding and interpretation of utterances. The following paper will summarise Sperber and Wilson’s take on the code and inferential models of verbal communication, and present the ostensive-inferential model devised by them.

This chapter offers a way of understanding the effects of poetic images (metaphorical or literal). It employs and extends the notion of ‘emergent properties’, as well as relevance theory’s account of how communicative acts can ‘show’ as much as they mean. The images examined are from poems by Mary Oliver (‘Wings’, ‘Wild Geese’, and ‘Mindful’). The chapter suggests that such poetry is particularly in need of a new theoretical approach capable of engaging with its focus on embodied experience and ‘merging’ with nature. It shows how ‘emergent properties’—for example, a complex sense of what continuity with nature might feel like—can result from engaging in a range of imaginary sensorimotor experiences. The final section of the chapter turns to an abstract painting by Natalia Wróbel which dialogues with Oliver’s poetry, and fleshes out the relevance theory account of communicative showing to articulate differences between artistic genres and media.

The notion of schema has been given a major role by Recanati within his conception of primary pragmatic processes, conceived as a type of associative process. I intend to show that Recanati’s considerations on schemata may challenge the relevance theorist’s argument against associative explanations in pragmatics, and support an argument in favor of associative (versus inferential) explanations. More generally, associative relations can be shown to be schematic, that is, they have enough structure to license inferential effects without any appeal to genuine inferential processes. Associative processes are thus able to explain a number of pragmatic and linguistic phenomena which have instead been thought to require specialized inferential processes.

Sustainable development is prompting a re-assessment of innovation and technological change. This review paper contributes three things towards this re-assessment activity. First, it considers how the history of innovation studies for sustainable development can be explained as a process of linking broader analytical frameworks to successively larger problem framings. Second it introduces an emerging framework whose allure rests in its ability to capture the bigger picture: the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP). Whilst burgeoning researcher networks and literature suggests this policy-relevant theory is attractive, it is not without its challenges. The third purpose of this paper is to elaborate these challenges as areas for further research and development. We do this by drawing upon contributions to this special section and the wider literature.

This paper aims to contribute to the burgeoning area of investigation into cinematic discourse with special attention devoted to the discrepancies in the comprehension process which is consequent upon the level of perception of humorous intention by different TV recipients. To accomplish the ultimate objective, the division of television discourse into the two communicative layers, viz. characters’ and recipients’, is taken as a starting point. More specifically, the meaning gleaned by the viewers is based on verbal and visual communication established between fictional characters. It is argued that three types of recipients, namely a regular viewer, metarecipient and fanrecipient, may construct different interpretations, with the regular recipient sometimes being oblivious to humorous intention. The study is pivoted on the claim that the production crew devises dialogues and monologues in such
a way to enable the audience find funniness.

This dissertation explores the use of catchphrase in communication, mainly within the framework of Relevance Theory developed by Sperber and Wilson (1995). I argue that some of the catchphrases, and the variant “snowclones”, can present their meaning at the level of explicature, while some of them may not have an explicitly communicated proposition, and what is communicated goes to the implicature level. More importantly, apart from the basic levels of explicature and implicature, the use of catchphrase always indicates the appearance of allusional content, which is crucial for the hearer to fully construct the mental representations of the speaker.

In the digital environment, memes embody a distinct type of implied humorous meaning as they are formed under the interaction of two different semiotic modes. The aim of this study is to investigate how the humorous content of memes is structured in terms of multimodality within the relevance theoretic framework. Interactional analysis was conducted to a selected corpus of Ancient memes to define the ways multimodality contributes to humorous effects whereas relevance in relation to humour was tested through interviews. The results suggest that although multimodality functions as an instrumental factor in the realisation of humour, the relevance factor determines cognitively the interpretation as jocular. Future research on the manifestation of humour in computer-mediated discourse might benefit from weaving together semiotic and cognitive approaches.

The present paper explores the contextual effects involved in the processing of the cognitivemechanisms used to achieve humor in interaction. We argue that the use of ostensive stimuli(Sperber and Wilson, 1988) emphasize the speaker’s humorous intention. An ostensivestimulus can be represented by a specific gesture or the speaker’s attitude and tone of voiceand allows the hearer (here, the audience) to achieve the target interpretation of an utterance.In particular, we illustrate how ostension identifies with humorous mechanisms such as irony,metaphor, hyper-understanding or repetition and allows turning the tables on an opponent bya manipulation of the discourse space (cf. Veale et al, 2006). Our approach is based on acorpus analysis of staged interactions in two contemporary American series - House M.D. andThe Big Bang Theory - and will focus on those key elements (verbal and non-verbal) thatcreate an optimal interpretation of the humorous message. We analyze this message usingClark’s layering model and Fauconnier’s mental space theory, but also drawing on relevancetheory and salience. In doing so, we highlight the close connection between explicature –whatis explicitly communicated by an utterance, and implicature, as discussed by Grice (1975) –assumptions that are not explicit and that the hearer has to infer from the contextualenvironment (the message that is echoed via the speaker’s attitude or use of gestures). Ingeneral, we show how ostension is used in interaction as a guarantee of relevance for thehumorous message and focus on the contextual effects used in communication.

This paper extends the notion of presupposition to inferences providing grounds for relevance or meaningfulness; it is claimed that such presuppositions get accommodated quite in the same way as presuppositions proper, and that they have a particular efficiency in persuasive situations. It is argued that they bypass controls of relevance and that they relate to a wider set of cognitive processes which concern various kinds of old or given knowledge. Their link with other cognitive biases is studied. It is suggested that their persuasive power is tied to the fact that given and allegedly given information tend to be processed the same way.

Abstract
The objective of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the negotiation of meaning between the participants of a bilingual interpreter-mediated interaction by analysing the effects of the verbalization of the inferences by the interpreter. The conceptual tools of Relevance Theory were applied to three interpreted excerpts of Russian-French psychotherapeutic interactions. The results suggest that by verbalizing inferences, the interpreter co-creates a shared cognitive environment, reinforces intra- and inter-discursive coherence, diminishes the cognitive efforts of the recipient, and encourages primary parties to cooperate. The analysis of the cognitive processes at work in the excerpts tends to show that what has so far been treated as the interpreter’s “additions” or “expanded renditions” enables the latter to exercise cooperative coordination of interaction, and could therefore be more precisely called “collaborative renditions”.

Keywords: dialogue interpreting; Relevance Theory; cognitive processing; verbalization of inferences; collaborative renditions; cooperative coordination of the interaction

El déficit cognitivo es una de las causas de fracaso escolar o en los casos más graves de la necesidad de una educación especial.
Las distintas soluciones que se proponen en los países europeos pueden ser insuficientes o incluso vaciarse de contenido si no se hace un abordaje técnico del déficit cognitivo. Se hace
necesario, por lo tanto, un diagnóstico especializado que permita una orientación terapéutica a la vez que didáctica.
En la presente comunicación se propondrán dos ejemplos: los trastornos de la representación mental visual y los del establecimiento de la relevancia en función de la atención selectiva y la formación del significado.
Con todo ello se propone un modelo de intervención pluridisciplinar en el déficit cognitivo para el tratamiento de los alumnos con necesidades educativas especiales.