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LINGUISTIC FORM AND RELEVANCE
Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber
[Published in Lingua 90 (1993): 1-25]
1. Introduction
Our book Relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986) treats utterance interpretation as a two-phase
process: a modular decoding phase is seen as providing input to a central inferential phase in
which a linguistically encoded logical form is contextually enriched and used to construct a
hypothesis about the speaker's informative intention. Relevance was mainly concerned with the
inferential phase of comprehension: we had to answer Fodor's challenge that while decoding
processes are quite well understood, inferential processes are not only not understood, but
perhaps not even understandable (see Fodor 1983). Here we will look more closely at the
decoding phase and consider what types of information may be linguistically encoded, and how
the borderline between decoding and inference can be drawn.
It might be that all linguistically encoded information is cut to a single pattern: all truth
conditions, say, or all instructions for use. However, there is a robust intuition that two basic
types of meaning can be found. This intuition surfaces in a variety of distinctions: between
describing and indicating, stating and showing, saying and conventionally implicating, or
between truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional, conceptual and procedural, or
representational and computational meaning. In the literature, justifications for these distinctions
have been developed in both strictly linguistic and more broadly cognitive terms.
The linguistic justification goes as follows (see for example Recanati 1987). Utterances
express propositions; propositions have truth conditions; but the meaning of an utterance is not
exhausted by its truth conditions, i.e. the truth conditions of the proposition expressed. An
utterance not only expresses a proposition but is used to perform a variety of speech acts. It can
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thus be expected to encode two basic types of information: truth-conditional and non-truth-
conditional, or propositional and illocutionary - that is, information about the state of affairs it
describes, and information indicating the various speech acts it is intended to perform.
The cognitive justification goes as follows (see for example Sperber & Wilson 1986,
Blakemore 1987, 1992). Linguistic decoding provides input to the inferential phase of
comprehension; inferential comprehension involves the construction and manipulation of
conceptual representations. An utterance can thus be expected to encode two basic types of
information: representational and computational, or conceptual and procedural - that is,
information about the representations to be manipulated, and information about how to
manipulate them.
It is tempting to assume that these two approaches are equivalent, and classify the data in
identical ways. This would be so, for example, if any construction which contributed to the truth
conditions of an utterance did so by encoding concepts, while all non-truth-conditional
constructions encoded procedural information. We want to argue that this assumption is false.
The two distinctions cross-cut each other: some truth-conditional constructions encode concepts,
others encode procedures; some non-truth-conditional constructions encode procedures, others
encode concepts. This raises a more general question. What is the relation between the two
approaches? Is the set of distinctions drawn by one approach somehow more basic than the
other? This would be so if it was possible to predict whether a given construction was truth-
conditional or non-truth-conditional, say, on the basis of some systematic interaction between
the type of information it encoded and other linguistic or cognitive factors. We will touch briefly
on these issues towards the end.
These internal questions about the decoding phase of comprehension are mainly of
interest to linguistic semantics. Pragmatic theorists are more interested in an external question:
how is the borderline between decoding and inference to be drawn? Linguistic decoding is not
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the only source of input to inferential comprehension. When Peter notices Mary's accent and
decides that she is Scottish, this information is not encoded in her utterance, any more than it is
encoded by the fact that she is drinking malt whisky or wearing a Black Watch tartan kilt. These
are facts about her which Peter may notice, and from which he may draw inferences. How do
these inferences interact with linguistically encoded information? How do we decide, as
theorists, which information was decoded and which was inferred?
In Relevance we tried to answer some of these questions; answers to others will be
attempted here. In Figure 1, we have tried to draw the threads together and give a general picture
of the various types of information, decoded and inferred, that an utterance can convey.
FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
This paper is organised around the distinctions drawn in the diagram. We will start at the top,
with the inferential phase of comprehension, and work down through external questions about
the borderline between decoding and inference, to end with internal questions about the
decoding phase.
2. Conveying and ostensively communicating
An utterance makes manifest a variety of assumptions: the hearer attends to as many of these as
seem relevant to him. All these assumptions are conveyed by the utterance. Not all of them are
ostensively communicated, as the following examples will show:
(a) Mary speaks to Peter: something in her voice or manner makes him think that she is sad. As
she speaks, he is wondering about the reasons for her sadness. This is not what Mary wanted:
she was trying to hide her feelings from him. In the terms of Relevance, Mary had neither an
informative nor a communicative intention. The case is one of accidental information-
transmission.
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(b) Mary speaks sadly to Peter. She intends him to notice her sadness, but to think she is
bravely hiding her pain. In the terms of Relevance, she intends to inform Peter of her sadness,
but she wants her informative intention to be fulfilled without being recognised. Some form of
covert (and hence non-ostensive) communication is taking place.
(c) Mary speaks sadly to Peter. She intends him to notice her sadness, and to realise that she
intended him to notice it, but to think she wanted this higher-order intention to remain hidden
from him. In the terms of Relevance, Mary intends to inform Peter of her sadness, and she wants
her informative intention to be recognised but not to become mutually manifest. Again, some
form of covert communication is taking place.
(d) Mary speaks sadly to Peter. She intends to inform him of her sadness, and she wants her
informative intention to be not merely recognised, but to become mutually manifest. In the terms
of Relevance, Mary has both an informative and a communicative intention. Ostensive
communication is taking place.
In Relevance, we showed how examples (a)-(d) all fall within the scope of a relevance-
based theory of cognition. As Mary speaks, Peter will pay attention to any aspect of her
behaviour that seems relevant to him. Sometimes, to explain her behaviour, he will be led to
attribute to her an informative intention. What distinguishes ostensive communication from
other forms of intentional or unintentional information transmission is that the hearer has special
help in recognising the speaker's informative intention. Ostensive communication creates a
presumption of relevance and falls under the principle of relevance. Of all accessible hypotheses
about the speaker's informative intention, the hearer should accept the first one tested and found
consistent with the principle of relevance. Having recognised the speaker's informative intention
by use of this criterion, he is entitled to treat it as not only manifest but mutually manifest.
3. Linguistic and non-linguistic communication
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When Mary speaks sadly to Peter, intending to communicate that she is sad, his knowledge of
language does not help him to recognise her informative intention. Mary communicates her
sadness to Peter, but she does not linguistically communicate it. For an assumption to be
linguistically communicated, the linguistic properties of the utterance must help with its
recovery. In this example, they do not.
This is not to say that paralinguistic clues such as tone of voice or manner play no role at
all in linguistic communication. Consider the exchange in (1):
(1) a. Peter: Can you help?
b. Mary (sadly): I can't.
Suppose that in saying (lb), Mary expected Peter not only to notice that she is sad, but to ask
himself why she is sad, and to come to the conclusion in (2):
(2) Mary is sad that she can't help Peter.
Suppose, moreover, that Mary intended not merely to inform Peter of (2) but to communicate it
ostensively. Then in the terms of Relevance, (2) would be an explicature of (lb).
An utterance typically has several explicatures. Mary's utterance in (lb) might include
those in (3):
(3) a. Mary can't help Peter to find a job.
b. Mary says she can't help Peter to find a job.
c. Mary believes she can't help Peter to find a job.
d. Mary regrets that she can't help Peter to find a job.
The explicatures of an utterance are constructed by enriching a linguistically encoded
logical form to a point where it expresses a determinate proposition, such as (3a), and optionally
embedding it under a higher-level description: for example, a speech-act description such as
(3b), or a propositional attitude description such as (3c) or (3d). Let us call (3a) the proposition
expressed by the utterance and (3b-d) its higher-level explicatures. Then not only the proposition