Understanding Relevance Theory: Visual Metaphors & Communication

Posted on Apr 6, 2025 in English, Linguistic and Literary Studies

Relevance Theory and Communication

1) Steps and Comprehension According to Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory is a pragmatic theory within cognitive pragmatics. Its main objective is to identify the underlying mechanisms in human psychology that explain how humans communicate. Comprehension, according to Relevance Theory, involves answering three key questions to identify the speaker’s meanings:

  • What was the intended explicit context?
  • What was the intended implicit context?
  • What was the intended context that the speaker expects us to access and use to obtain the answers to the previous questions?

Contextual information is needed to determine the intended explicit interpretation of an utterance. To answer these questions, we follow these steps:

  1. Linguistic Decoding: The language module apprehends a grammatical sequence.
  2. Identify Logical Form: Determine the logical form of the utterance (no context required).
  3. Inferential Pragmatic Enrichment: This requires context and involves:
    • Reference Assignment: Finding the reference for pronouns.
    • Disambiguation: Selecting the correct meaning of a word from multiple possibilities.
    • Free Enrichment: Filling in missing gaps based on context.
    • Conceptual Narrowing: Understanding that the speaker’s intended meaning is narrower than the literal meaning of the words used.
  4. Determine Proposition: Find the proposition expressed by the utterance, which can be explicit (explicature) or implicit (implicature).

2) Relevance in Relation to Visual Metaphor

  1. The literal (explicit) meaning of the utterance is communicated but requires the adjustment of concepts.
  2. The literal (explicit) meaning is part of the speaker’s intended metaphoric interpretation.
  3. The metaphoric interpretation is mainly communicated as a (strong or weak) implicature.

3) Misunderstandings

Misunderstandings can be defined as follows:

  1. When the hearer picks up an interpretation [A] from a choice of interpretations in a certain context, which differs from the interpretation [B] that the speaker intended to communicate through verbal or nonverbal cues.
  2. When a person incorrectly interprets information from the surrounding world without a prior communicative intention (not covered by Pragmatics).

4) Types of Non-Verbal Communication

  1. Physical Appearance: Attributes of image, such as attractiveness, race, height, weight, body shape, hairstyle, dress, and artifacts (necklaces, rings, etc.).
  2. Kinesics: Bodily movements, excluding touching another person. Commonly referred to as “body language,” encompassing posture and movement styles. Includes emblems, illustrators, affect displays, regulators, and adaptors.
  3. Oculesics: Intensification, masking, and neutralization occur in the facial area, with the eyes as “windows to the soul.” Gaze behavior is extensively studied. Most emotions and feelings communicated through our eyes are universal.
  4. Paralanguage: Non-verbal cues in a speaker’s voice (intonation, tone of voice, pitch, etc.).
  5. Proxemics: The study of the use of personal space. Hall (1968) classified space based on its use in interactions: public, social, personal, and intimate.
  6. Haptics: The study of touching behavior. Touch indicates details about the nature of the relationship.
  7. Environmental Details: The appearance of one’s surroundings provides contextual cues for interactions and potential personality attributions.
  8. Chronemics: The study of the use and perception of time, which varies widely across cultures.