Relevance theory and the problem of content sharing
Jan-Fredrik Braseth · NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives · 2010
When a speaker communicates with someone, she wants to convey some kind of content to the hearer. For the communicational act to be successful, the hearer will have to grasp this content. Human communication seems, in this way, to rely on content sharing. Relevance Theory is a pragmatic theory aiming at giving an account of the mechanisms underlying human communication. Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore have argued that Relevance Theory implies that content sharing is impossible. This thesis is an attempt to defend Relevance Theory against this claim. I start by arguing that Cappelen and Lepore's argument is imprecise, and suggest a modification of their claim. Specifically, I make some adjustments to what they call 'The Non-Shared Content Principle'. According to Cappelen and Lepore, it is the commitment to this principle that makes Relevance Theory imply that content sharing is impossible. I then show that Cappelen and Lepore's argument relies on the idea that the proposition expressed must be given by the semantics of the language alone, without any intrusion from the context. I argue that this is impossible; The hearer needs some contextual guidance to be able to grasp the proposition expressed. With that in mind, I argue that even though the proposition expressed is not determined by semantics alone, this does not mean that a hearer will be unable to grasp it. Finally, I argue that one does not necessarily need to grasp the same proposition for communication (and content sharing) to be possible. In most cases, people can understand each other without grasping the same proposition, as long as they grasp propositions that are similar to a certain extent. I argue that this is because communication is not about conveying one specific proposition, but about conveying a 'point'.