What is relevance theory?

Traditional context covers a wide range, involving language context, time, topics, ways of speaking, interpersonal relationships, people's understanding of the world, mutual understanding between people, cultural society and so on. With the rise of cognitive science, many linguists set all kinds of factors that restrict discourse in the objective world on the premise of human cognition, let subjective cognition dominate the overall situation, and regard the restriction of context on discourse as the result of interaction with the communicator's intelligence, personality, emotion, belief and intention. Objective contextual factors can only play a role in the generation and understanding of discourse through cognitive filtering, and linguists put forward the concept of cognitive context. The fundamental difference between traditional context and cognitive context: the traditional context view holds that the context of understanding a text is generally fixed in advance, and understanding a text depends on language decoding. The concept of cognitive context holds that understanding discourse depends on context, and context should also form assumptions under the general principles of pragmatics, and form a new context through the process of psychological cognition, thus revealing the explicit content and implicit content of discourse.

Cognitive structure, also known as background knowledge, is an inherent cognitive ability of human beings to the assumptions and concepts of the world. The listener's assumptions about the world are stored in the brain as conceptual representations, which constitutes a person's cognitive environment. A person's cognitive environment is a set of facts or assumptions that can be reflected. Cognitive environment includes all kinds of information, which constitutes the potential cognitive environment for understanding discourse. The speaker's discourse information matches the receiver's cognitive schema, thus enjoying knowledge and providing evidence for implicit reasoning. Otherwise, the intention transmission is frustrated and communication cannot be carried out.

Cognitive context has social psychological nature, because the cognitive environment, which consists of three pragmatic categories: situational knowledge (specific occasions), linguistic contextual knowledge (working memory) and background knowledge (knowledge structure), is something that people in society enjoy. Although interpersonal differences certainly exist, similarity is the mainstream, otherwise interpersonal communication will be very difficult. Cognitive context also represents the collective consciousness of social groups, which is stored in the personal knowledge structure in the form of "social representation" to coordinate interpersonal behavior and language use and adapt it to the social, cultural and political environment.

Morris regards pragmatics as a discipline to explore the relationship between language symbols and symbol users, while Grice, Austin and others believe that there is a relationship between symbol information and communicative intention, which is a super-symbolic relationship supported by reasoning. Sperber and Wilson gradually introduced the study of language super-symbolic relationship into the cognitive track. Put forward the "relevance theory". And put forward two principles of relevance theory. The first principle (cognitive principle) holds that people's cognition tends to be the largest correlation coincidence. The second principle of relevance theory (communicative principle): it should be assumed that communicative behavior itself has the best relevance. These two principles highlight the importance of context.

Spaber and Wilson's relevance theory reasoning is a revision of Fodor's cognitive module theory, which includes a perceptual system involving a series of hypotheses, propositions or image representations and a rule processing system involving a large number of deductive logical calculations. Cognitive module theory holds that the human brain is a principle operating system that can form and transform psychological representations, and language is one of the operating objects of this system. Language use involves the interaction between language system and other psychological representations and operating series.

In his Modular Thinking, J. Fodor divided the heart and brain into two very different parts-the input system and the central system. The function of input system (the most typical ones are perceptual system and language system) is to transform the information of organ function stimulation into the representation of external objects, making it suitable for central system to process. The function of the central system is an advanced processing system specialized in reasoning, thinking and belief. Fodor didn't give the definition of module, but provided a set of clear standards to constitute a module. Among them, there are two important standards-domain specificity and information closure, in which domain specificity means that a module only processes content-specific information suitable for its specific function. As a special "calculation" mechanism, the module only calculates those constrained "bottom-up" specific inputs. Focus only on information related to its special processing power. Another important criterion is "information closure", also known as "cognitive impenetrability", which is the key feature of the system as a module. Modules cannot use anything except their own proprietary information sources. If a processing system is a module, it must process its input independently of the subject background, that is, it is closed.

According to Spober and Wilson's relevance theory, the operation of language symbols or language communication is not a single mode of "information coding-signal transmission-reception-information decoding" proposed by Shannon and Weaver in 1949. From the cognitive point of view, they define context as "a psychological structure", that is, a series of assumptions about the world in the listener's mind, including not only information about the specific communication environment and context, but also expectations for the future, scientific assumptions or religious beliefs, long-term or short-term memory, overall cultural concepts and the listener's judgment on the speaker's mental state, which all play an important role in the understanding of the discourse. In language communication, the listener's assumptions about the world are stored in the brain in the form of conceptual representation, which constitutes a cognitive context for processing new information.

Relevance theory holds that the degree of relevance of discourse depends on contextual effect and processing effort, and contextual effect is directly proportional to relevance, while processing ability is inversely proportional to relevance. The author understands processing effort as the brain power consumed by cognitive language environment. The stronger the relevance, the more direct the discourse, the less brain power consumed by cognition, and the less cognitive load brought to the listener. The weaker the relevance, the more implicit the discourse, the greater the brain power consumed, and the greater the cognitive load of the listener. In communication, the speaker's use of cognitive load is manifested as the use of a communication strategy.

As a psychological term, cognition involves people's ability and process of selecting, receiving, processing, understanding and storing information, while relevance involves a labor-saving problem. As far as language communication is concerned, it is an automatic tendency to deal with the most relevant information, and the user can always or naturally achieve the best balance between the information obtained and the efforts made here, so as to obtain the best information benefit. Their relevance theory is based on the "economic principle" of biological psychological essence, and defines relevance as cognitive relevance, (people's cognitive tendency maximizes relevance) and communicative relevance (communicative behavior conveys the assumption of optimal relevance).

In the process of verbal communication, it is these assumptions, not specific situational factors, that affect discourse understanding. Lyons also believes that context is a theoretical concept, and the factors that constitute context are abstracted by linguists from specific situations. The influence of these factors on the participants in speech activities systematically determines the form, appropriateness and meaning of speech. Xiong Xueliang's definition of cognitive context is that in order to systematically analyze the hidden content in language, we must structure the concrete or abstract contextual factors involved ... The result of this structure and cognitive contextual factors is cognitive context. Add comments

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. sdpuzh | 2009-09-08 10:28:34

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Traditional context covers a wide range, involving language context, time, topics, ways of speaking, interpersonal relationships, people's understanding of the world, mutual understanding between people, cultural society and so on. With the rise of cognitive science, many linguists set all kinds of factors that restrict discourse in the objective world on the premise of human cognition, let subjective cognition dominate the overall situation, and regard the restriction of context on discourse as the result of interaction with the communicator's intelligence, personality, emotion, belief and intention. Objective contextual factors can only play a role in the generation and understanding of discourse through cognitive filtering, and linguists put forward the concept of cognitive context. The fundamental difference between traditional context and cognitive context: the traditional context view holds that the context of understanding a text is generally fixed in advance, and understanding a text depends on language decoding. The concept of cognitive context holds that understanding discourse depends on context, and context should also form assumptions under the general principles of pragmatics, and form a new context through the process of psychological cognition, thus revealing the explicit content and implicit content of discourse.

Cognitive structure, also known as background knowledge, is an inherent cognitive ability of human beings to the assumptions and concepts of the world. The listener's assumptions about the world are stored in the brain as conceptual representations, which constitutes a person's cognitive environment. A person's cognitive environment is a set of facts or assumptions that can be reflected. Cognitive environment includes all kinds of information, which constitutes the potential cognitive environment for understanding discourse. The speaker's discourse information matches the receiver's cognitive schema, thus enjoying knowledge and providing evidence for implicit reasoning. Otherwise, the intention transmission is frustrated and communication cannot be carried out.

Cognitive context has social psychological nature, because the cognitive environment, which consists of three pragmatic categories: situational knowledge (specific occasions), linguistic contextual knowledge (working memory) and background knowledge (knowledge structure), is something that people in society enjoy. Although interpersonal differences certainly exist, similarity is the mainstream, otherwise interpersonal communication will be very difficult. Cognitive context also represents the collective consciousness of social groups, which is stored in the personal knowledge structure in the form of "social representation" to coordinate interpersonal behavior and language use and adapt it to the social, cultural and political environment.

Morris regards pragmatics as a discipline to explore the relationship between language symbols and symbol users, while Grice, Austin and others believe that there is a relationship between symbol information and communicative intention, which is a super-symbolic relationship supported by reasoning. Sperber and Wilson gradually introduced the study of language super-symbolic relationship into the cognitive track. Put forward the "relevance theory". And put forward two principles of relevance theory. The first principle (cognitive principle) holds that people's cognition tends to be the largest correlation coincidence. The second principle of relevance theory (communicative principle): it should be assumed that communicative behavior itself has the best relevance. These two principles highlight the importance of context.

Spaber and Wilson's relevance theory reasoning is a revision of Fodor's cognitive module theory, which includes a perceptual system involving a series of hypotheses, propositions or image representations and a rule processing system involving a large number of deductive logical calculations. Cognitive module theory holds that the human brain is a principle operating system that can form and transform psychological representations, and language is one of the operating objects of this system. Language use involves the interaction between language system and other psychological representations and operating series.

In his Modular Thinking, J. Fodor divided the heart and brain into two very different parts-the input system and the central system. The function of input system (the most typical ones are perceptual system and language system) is to transform the information of organ function stimulation into the representation of external objects, making it suitable for central system to process. The function of the central system is an advanced processing system specialized in reasoning, thinking and belief. Fodor didn't give the definition of module, but provided a set of clear standards to constitute a module. Among them, there are two important standards-domain specificity and information closure, in which domain specificity means that a module only processes content-specific information suitable for its specific function. As a special "calculation" mechanism, the module only calculates those constrained "bottom-up" specific inputs. Focus only on information related to its special processing power. Another important criterion is "information closure", also known as "cognitive impenetrability", which is the key feature of the system as a module. Modules cannot use anything except their own proprietary information sources. If a processing system is a module, it must process its input independently of the subject background, that is, it is closed.

According to Spober and Wilson's relevance theory, the operation of language symbols or language communication is not a single mode of "information coding-signal transmission-reception-information decoding" proposed by Shannon and Weaver in 1949. From the cognitive point of view, they define context as "a psychological structure", that is, a series of assumptions about the world in the listener's mind, including not only information about the specific communication environment and context, but also expectations for the future, scientific assumptions or religious beliefs, long-term or short-term memory, overall cultural concepts and the listener's judgment on the speaker's mental state, which all play an important role in the understanding of the discourse. In language communication, the listener's assumptions about the world are stored in the brain in the form of conceptual representation, which constitutes a cognitive context for processing new information.

Relevance theory holds that the degree of relevance of discourse depends on contextual effect and processing effort, and contextual effect is directly proportional to relevance, while processing ability is inversely proportional to relevance. The author understands processing effort as the brain power consumed by cognitive language environment. The stronger the relevance, the more direct the discourse, the less brain power consumed by cognition, and the less cognitive load brought to the listener. The weaker the relevance, the more implicit the discourse, the greater the brain power consumed, and the greater the cognitive load of the listener. In communication, the speaker's use of cognitive load is manifested as the use of a communication strategy.

As a psychological term, cognition involves people's ability and process of selecting, receiving, processing, understanding and storing information, while relevance involves a labor-saving problem. As far as language communication is concerned, it is an automatic tendency to deal with the most relevant information, and the user can always or naturally achieve the best balance between the information obtained and the efforts made here, so as to obtain the best information benefit. Their relevance theory is based on the "economic principle" of biological psychological essence, and defines relevance as cognitive relevance, (people's cognitive tendency maximizes relevance) and communicative relevance (communicative behavior conveys the assumption of optimal relevance).

In the process of verbal communication, it is these assumptions, not specific situational factors, that affect discourse understanding. Lyons also believes that context is a theoretical concept, and the factors that constitute context are abstracted by linguists from specific situations. The influence of these factors on the participants in speech activities systematically determines the form, appropriateness and meaning of speech. Xiong Xueliang's definition of cognitive context is that in order to systematically analyze the hidden content in language, we must structure the concrete or abstract contextual factors involved ... The result of this structure and cognitive contextual factors is cognitive context.