Basic concepts of RT

The concepts considered below are context, inference, optimal relevance and descriptive and interpretive dimensions of language use.

4.2.2.1 The inferential nature of communication

According to Sperber and Wilson (1995: 54), ostensive-inferential communication consists in ostension4 (by the communicator) and inference (by the audience) where the communicator produces a stimulus and the addressee should infer the communicator’s communicative intention from a set of other possible assumptions more often with the help of ‘procedural’ elements (such as discourse connectives, prosody, modals, markers of coordination and subordination, etc.) that put constraints on relevance, thus guiding hearers to the correct/relevant context for processing the new information, which will enable them to infer the intended interpretation (cf. Blakemore 1987; Wilson and Sperber 1993; Setton 1999: 8/11). Ostensive-inferential communication is thus defined as

the communicator produces 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 (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 63).

3 _{See Blakemore (1992) for a more detailed presentation of basic concepts of RT and pragmatics in general.} 4 _{Sperber and Wilson (1995: 49) define ostensive behaviour or ostension as ‘behaviour which makes manifest}

Consider the following exchange:

(4) Jad: Will the exam be difficult?

Sarah: John will prepare the questions (Al-Zahran 2003: 11).

In this example, Sarah does not answer Jad directly, but provides an indirect answer that communicates and makes manifest a set of assumptions. In this case, the set of assumptions contains at least three assumptions that give rise to three possible yet different interpretations. Depending on Jad and Sarah’s ‘mutual cognitive environment’ (see context below), Jad has to infer the strongest/correct assumption out of the possible three. The first is that the exam will be difficult if Sarah and Jad share the idea that John’s questions are usually difficult. The second interpretation is that the exam will be easy if both Sarah and Jad know that John usually prepares easy questions. The last assumption is that Sarah does not know whether the exam will be difficult or easy if the communicators share the context that John is a new teacher and the exam they are talking about will be prepared for the first time by John whose questions are yet to be discovered.

For communication to succeed between Jad and Sarah, they must share a cognitive environment. In order for Jad to be able to infer the assumption Sarah wants him to choose, Sarah must have knowledge of his cognitive environment and consequently the assumption he is likely to entertain (cf. Sperber and Wilson 1995: 46). In this case, that Jad knows, depending on the situation, that John’s questions are difficult, easy or that he does not know the nature of John’s questions because John is a new teacher. In other words, there is little importance for the hearer to identify the proposition expressed by an utterance unless he/she can realise its effect on what he/she already believes. Equally, there is little reason for the speaker to offer the hearer information unless the former has a strong basis to think that it will have some effect on the latter’s existing assumptions (Blakemore 1988: 239). Otherwise, Jad might just infer the wrong assumption by bringing another context that is not envisaged by Sarah, which most probably will lead to misunderstanding and possibly a communication failure (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 16) because utterance interpretation depends not only on the semantic representation of the utterance but also on the inferential combination of the utterance and context, which explains why some utterances can have contradictory interpretations such as Sarah’s reply in (4) above (Gutt 1998: 42).

4.2.2.2 Context

From a relevance-theoretic perspective, context has the following essential characteristics. The first is that it is

a psychological construct, a subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world. It is these assumptions, of course, rather than the actual state of the world, that affect the interpretation of an utterance. A context in this sense is not limited to information about the immediate physical environment or the immediately preceding utterances: expectations about the future, scientific hypotheses or religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general cultural assumptions, beliefs about the mental state of the speaker, may all play a role in interpretation (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 15f).

All this is part of what Sperber and Wilson (1995: 38) call the ‘cognitive environment’ which is ‘a set of assumptions which the individual is capable of mentally representing and accepting as true’ (ibid: 46). Thus, an individual’s cognitive environment consists in the external or physical world, the stored or memorised information and inferences made from the two (ibid: 39). Moreover, they call any shared cognitive environment in which it is manifest which people share it a ‘mutual cognitive environment’ (ibid: 41).

The second characteristic of context is that it is selected from a number of other potential contexts because such cognitive environmental factors as memory and encyclopaedic contents and inferences yield a range of potential contexts (ibid: 141).

The third characteristic of context is that since in any environment some assumptions are more accessible than others (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 40) and not all layers of encyclopaedic information are accessible at any certain moment of time (ibid: 138), what determines the selection of the right context from the range of available contexts is ‘the search for relevance’ (ibid: 141) which can be explained by the fact that humans usually try to spend the smallest possible amount of effort for achieving a certain task and at the same time expect benefits for the effort they spend (ibid: 123-132/141f). Sperber and Wilson call these benefits ‘contextual effects’ which have three types (‘contextual implications’, ‘contradictions’ and ‘strengthenings’) and affect the context by modifying and improving it as a result of the interaction between new and old information (1995: 108-117). Using relevance as a means to an end, the audience will be motivated to choose the most easily reached context to maximise relevance for the assumption being processed (ibid: 142).

4.2.2.3 Optimal relevance

According to Sperber and Wilson (1995: 156ff), the most important factor that contributes to the success of communication is the search for optimal relevance by the communicator and addressee. The presumption of optimal relevance of any act of ostensive communication can be achieved when:

(a) The set of assumptions […] which the communicator intends to make manifest to the addressee is relevant enough to make it worth the addressee’s while to process the ostensive stimulus. (b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one the communicator could have used to

communicate [the set of assumptions] (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 158).

The presumption of optimal relevance can be achieved by the principle of relevance which stipulates that: ‘Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance’ (ibid). This principle can be explained in terms of a ‘cost-benefit’ relation (ibid: 123) where the cost is the least processing effort and the benefit is the greatest possible contextual effects (ibid: 141f/147). In other words, the communicator forms his/her utterance in such a way that it provides the greatest possible contextual effects (because the more contextual effects an assumption provides, the more relevant the assumption is) in return for the addressee’s least processing effort (because the lesser the effort required to process an assumption, the more relevant the assumption is). Accordingly, a communicator ‘guarantees’ that what he/she communicates is supposed to be optimally relevant to the addressee who will consider as the communicator’s intended interpretation the first interpretation that conforms to the principle of relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 157f; 1998: 192-197).

4.2.2.4 Descriptive and interpretive dimensions of language use

According to Sperber and Wilson (1995: 231), there are two dimensions of language use, descriptive and interpretive. A mental representation of a state of affairs can be used descriptively when its propositional form is true of that state of affairs, a description of a state of affairs in the real world, or a description of a desirable state of affairs.

It can be used interpretively when it is a representation of some other thought or representation with a propositional form because of a resemblance between the two propositional forms, when it is an interpretation of some ascribed thought or utterance, or

when it is an interpretation of some thought which is or will be desired to be entertained in a certain way (see also Wilson and Sperber 1988). Consider the following example:

(5) (a) Sarah: ‘Jad is a brilliant CCIr’.

(b) Nasr: ‘Sarah said, “Jad is a brilliant CCIr”’.

The utterance ‘Jad is a brilliant CCIr’ is included in both (5a) and (5b). In (5a), Sarah

describes what she sincerely believes to be true, that Jad is a brilliant CCIr. It can therefore be said that Sarah uses the utterance descriptively. Consequently, Sarah can only be wrong if Jad is not that brilliant CCIr. In (5b), however, Nasr only reports what Sarah has said or maintained to be true. In other words, Nasr does not necessarily maintain that Jad is a brilliant CCIr. He thus uses the utterance interpretively. Consequently, Nasr can only be wrong if Sarah has not produced this utterance.

4.2.2.4.1 Interpretive resemblance

According to Gutt (1998: 44f), interpretive resemblance between a certain utterance and its representation is a key element in interpretive use. Wilson and Sperber define interpretive resemblance as a relationship between propositional forms where

two propositional forms P and Q (and, by extension, two thoughts or utterances with P and Q as their propositional forms) interpretively resemble one another in a context C to the extent that they share their analytic and contextual implications in the context C (Wilson and Sperber 1988: 138).

However, Gutt (2000: 46) suggests that interpretive resemblance between utterances be defined in terms of assumptions shared between the intended interpretations of these utterances since the main purpose of utterances is to convey the set of assumptions which the communicator intends to convey. Since the set of assumptions intended by an utterance consists of explicatures and/or implicatures5, Gutt argues that two utterances interpretively resemble each other to the extent that they share their explicatures and/or implicatures.

In (5b) above, the direct quotation demonstrates the highest degree of resemblance to the original utterance provided that it is interpreted in the context of the original as demanded by the above definition of interpretive resemblance. Moreover, as Wilson and Sperber

5 _{An explicature is an assumption that is ‘explicitly communicated’ and one which is ‘a development of a}

logical form’ encoded by an utterance (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 182). An implicature is ‘a contextual assumption or implication which a speaker, intending her utterance to be manifestly relevant, manifestly intended to make manifest to the hearer’ (ibid: 194f).

(1988: 137) argue, (5b) shows that interpretive resemblance is not a guarantee of truthfulness as much as of faithfulness. They (ibid) argue that when producing an utterance, the speaker ‘guarantees that her utterance is a faithful enough representation of the original: that is, resembles it closely enough in relevant respects’. As discussed above, what Nasr maintains is not a true description of the state of affairs (Jad is a brilliant CCIr), but a report of Sarah’s belief. Nasr’s utterance is thus intended to be not a description of the state of affairs but a faithful enough representation of what Sarah believes or maintains to be true.

Furthermore, the degree of faithfulness embedded within the notion of interpretive resemblance is governed by the principle of relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 229). Consider the following two exchanges where two employees (E1 and E2) ask the manager about the latest meeting of the company’s board of directors. The context in (6) is the company’s announcement of redundancies among some employees to cut spending, and E1 fears being one of those who will be made redundant while the context in (7) is E2’s new plan which he has recently suggested for attracting new customers. The manager, already aware of the two contexts, gives different answers to the same question:

(6) E1: What’s happened at the meeting?

Manager: Don’t worry, you won’t be made redundant. (7) E2: What’s happened at the meeting?

Manager: You’ve just been promoted to Head of the Customer Services Department.

From the perspective of RT, the manager’s reply in (6) can be viewed as a faithful enough representation of the discussion of redundancies at the meeting because it ‘resembles it closely enough in relevant respects’. Obviously, what E1 is interested in is whether he will be made redundant. The manager has communicated the most relevant information E1 wants to hear in return for E1’s least processing effort as the manager has not conveyed to E1 the details of the meeting which clearly include more, but irrelevant, information to E1. The same holds true for the exchange in (7).