Context Selection and Relevance

Stavros Assimakopoulos

Relevance Theory (Sperber &Wilson 1986, 1995) has been widely accepted as one of the most comprehensive theories in pragmatics. However, as in the case of most theories, it has faced criticism on several occasions. On one of them, Chiappe & Kukla (1996) argued against the relevance-theoretic framework on the grounds that it provides no solution to the Fodorian view of the Frame Problem (Fodor 1987) and accused Sperber & Wilson of disregarding the essential issue of context selection in communication. Sperber & Wilson's response to Chiappe & Kukla (1996) was that relevance does not provide a solution to this problem because it does not need to do so: in their view, Fodor was wrong to formulate the frame problem in the first place. In my talk, I intend to revise this view and present an argumentation against the Fodorian thesis on the matter. I will suggest that his idea on the irrationality of the human cognitive system when it comes to context selection was rightly formulated; yet, relevance theory can help address this problem and account for a rational pattern of context selection that complies with its principles. I will, thus, argue that, following from the theory of implicatures that the framework of relevance employs, a rational pattern of the cognitive processing involved in context selection can be spelled out. I propose that such an account has implications for possible patterns of utterance interpretation within the relevance-theoretic framework.