Relevance Researchers’ Network Conference 2025

23 May 2025

This free one-day online conference will bring scholars together to share their latest work in relevance theory across different fields. By showcasing a wide range of topics, we aim to provide a platform for fruitful discussions to reconfirm the explanatory power of the theory and its potential.

Conference topics: We welcome all and any contributions grounded in relevance theory. There is no limit on specific topics, but we welcome ideas that engage fully with relevance theory, as well as interdisciplinary contributions.

The conference will consist of two plenary lectures and a programme of full papers. Full papers will be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for discussion.

Submissions: We invite original submissions that fully engage with relevance theory or apply relevance theory in pragmatics and other related areas. We also welcome interdisciplinary contributions from researchers of various disciplines. Submissions should be 300 words or less and fully anonymised. Please email your submission to relevance.researchers@gmail.com by 16 December 2024.

Important dates:

• Deadline for Submission of abstracts: 16 December 2024
• Notification of acceptance: Mid-February 2025
• Registration from 1 April 2025

Abstracts of all accepted papers and recordings of all presentations will be made available online through RRN’s website.

Organising committee: Ryoko Sasamoto (Nara Women’s University, Japan) and Kate Scott (Kingston University, UK)

Please use the following email address to contact the organisers: relevance.researchers@gmail.com

In this online session, Sperber and Wilson discussed their new paper “Rethinking Ostensive Communication in an Evolutionary, Comparative, and Developmental Perspective”. A preprint of a paper can be downloaded from https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zp3fx

A playlist with recordings of the session is available via our YouTube channel

Eriketti Metaxa (NKUA)

Jasmina Pasic (Northumbria)

Mat Smith (Brighton).

Abstract

Speakers:

Rongyu Wang (Dublin City)

Chara Vlachaki (Brighton)

Marianna Vraka (NKUA)

Abstract

In lieu of a presentation, I will be sharing with you some ideas that I have been considering in relation to the place of relevance theory – and its associated account of utterance comprehension – within the domain of linguistic pragmatics, in the hope that this will lead to an open discussion about the remit (and perhaps limits) of the framework in this vein. More specifically, I will focus on the distinction between comprehension and interpretation and its implications for the study of the territory beyond the communicator’s intended import. On this basis, I will then turn to the thorny question of what – if anything – an account of cognitive pragmatics can tell us about the very nature of human language and the evolution of externalised languages into efficient semiotic systems that underlie communication. 

Abstract

The notion of critical thinking (CT) has attracted intensive research interest over the years in a number of scientific fields. However, due to its multidirectional orientation, it has proven hard to pin down. More recently, it has realistically been viewed as a notion that can be organized into types or sub-skills, each of which can be duly considered relative to the distinctive details of a specific subject. The current work observes the type of CT exercised in playing adventure games, particularly in solving puzzles. Importantly, the obvious link of CT to inferential reasoning notwithstanding, the prospect of a pragmatic description of the notion at hand is overlooked in the relevant literature. In order to compensate for this oversight, the current work draws on the insights of relevance theory, securing a unifying framework of pragmatic analysis.

Abstract

Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) is a model that illustrates the assumptions and processes that addressees employ to interpret verbal communication. Placing Relevance Theory at the core of human communication, Forceville (2020) extends the model’s applicability to multimodal texts, specifically to combinations of written and visual media. Forceville’s contribution has not only opened a new avenue of research for scholars interested in multimodal communication, it has also brought a new challenge to Relevance Theory studies: to describe creative uses of language within the framework for multimodal texts. One such use is irony. Drawing upon the notions of collapsed contexts  (Scott, 2022), genre and mass audience (Forceville, 2020), the echoic account of irony (Wilson & Sperber, 2012), and the use of alternating capital letters (e.g. the title) in written texts, this paper argues that Internet Memes (IMs) can be used to convey a sense of irony in multimodal communication. By doing so, this paper introduces both a Relevance Theoretical description of irony in multimodal communication and the use of alternating capital letters to mark a specific attitude in written medium. Additionally, a typology of the IM template named Mocking Spongebob is presented.

Keywords: Multimodal Communication, Relevance Theory, Internet Memes, Irony

References Cited

Forceville, C. (2020). Visual and multimodal communication: Applying the relevance principle. Oxford University Press.

Scott, K. (2022). Pragmatics Online (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/b22750

Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition, 2nd ed. (pp. viii, 326). Blackwell Publishing.

Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2012). Meaning and Relevance: Explaining irony.

Abstract

Right from the outset, Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1987/1995) tried to express interpretation as a process of context elaboration. Interpretation is seen as a path of least effort leading to the selection of a set of most accessible assumptions. One of the central aspects of this context elaboration process lies in the fact that contextual assumptions are not randomly scattered in the hearer’s cognitive environment. Instead, Relevance Theory claims that there are some organising principles ordering contextual assumptions and determining which will be accessed first and, therefore, which will be retained as part of the optimally relevant interpretation.

The main organising principle is captured by the notion of manifestness, which combines two distinct properties of contextual assumptions: their accessibility and their strength. Sperber & Wilson (1987/1995) define them as a function of the processing history of an assumption for the former and of the degree of confidence with which an assumption is held for the latter.

In this paper, I will explore the explanatory potential of manifestness by putting the notions of strength and accessibility to work on two current trends in pragmatic research, namely commitment (Ifantidou 2001; Mazzarella et al. 2018; Boulat and Maillat 2017, forthcoming) and emotion (Wilson & Carston 2019; Wharton et al. 2021; Saussure and Wharton 2020) research.

My goal will be to show how these two dimensions of manifestness, can provide us with interesting theoretical insights in the study of human communication. In this paper, I will argue that, beyond their usefulness in providing a guiding principle for the comprehension procedure, the strength and accessibility of contextual assumptions can also advantageously shed light on epiphenomena like commitment and emotions. The first main claim consists in arguing that strength opens new experimental perspectives in the measure of commitment attribution. While the second claim raises the possibility of envisaging a new range of cognitive effects triggered by emotional states.