Wilson and Sperber--Relevance Theory(7)

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Relevance Theory 253

b. Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort expended, the lower the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.

Here is a brief and artificial illustration of how the relevance of alternative inputs might be compared in terms of effort and effect. Mary, who dislikes most meat and is allergic to chicken, rings her dinner party host to find out what is on the menu. He could truly tell her any of three things:

(2) We are serving meat.

(3) We are serving chicken.

(4) Either we are serving chicken or (72 – 3) is not 46.

According to the characterisation of relevance in (1), all three utterances would be relevant to Mary, but (3) would be more relevant than either (2) or (4). It would be more relevant than (2) for reasons of cognitive effect: (3) entails (2), and therefore yields all the conclusions derivable from (2), and more besides. It would be more relevant than (4) for reasons of processing effort: although (3) and (4) are logically equivalent, and therefore yield exactly the same cognitive effects, these effects are easier to derive from (3) than from (4), which requires an additional effort of parsing and inference (in order to work out that the second disjunct is false and the first is therefore true). Thus, (3) would be the most relevant utterance to Mary, for reasons of both effort and effect. More generally, when similar amounts of effort are required, the effect factor is decisive in determining degrees of relevance, and when similar amounts of effect are achievable, the effort factor is decisive.

This characterisation of relevance is comparative rather than quantitative: it makes clear comparisons possible in some cases (e.g. (2)–(4)), but not in all. While quantitative notions of relevance might be worth exploring from a formal point of view5, it is the comparative rather than the quantitative notion that is likely to provide the best starting point for constructing a psychologically plausible theory. In the first place, it is highly unlikely that individuals have to compute numerical values for effort and effect when assessing relevance ‘from the inside’. Such computation would itself be effort-consuming and therefore detract from relevance. Moreover, even when For some suggestions about how this might be done, see Sperber & Wilson (1986a): 124-32. Formal notions of relevance are currently being explored by Merin (1997), Blutner (1998) (which brings together ideas from Horn 1984, 1992, Levinson 1987, 2000, Hobbs et al. 1993, and Sperber & Wilson), van Rooy (1999, 2001). For some alternative notions of relevance, see references in Sperber & Wilson (1986b), Wilson (1999). 5

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