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Article published In: Concepts and Context in Relevance-Theoretic Pragmatics: New Developments
Edited by Agnieszka Piskorska and Manuel Padilla Cruz
[Pragmatics 33:3] 2023
► pp. 460–485

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On the manifestness of assumptions

Gaining insights into commitment and emotions

ORCiD logo with link | University of Fribourg
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 27 July 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21069.mai
Abstract
Right from the outset, relevance theory (Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986/1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) tried to define 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 in the cognitive environment. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986/1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar define them as a function of the processing history of an assumption for the former and the 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, Elly. 2001. Evidentials and Relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Boulat, Kira, and Didier Maillat. 2023. “Strength is Relevant: Experimental Evidence of Strength as a Marker of Commitment.” Frontiers in Communication 81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2023. “Strength is Relevant: Experimental Evidence of Strength as a Marker of Commitment.” Frontiers in Communication 81. ; Mazzarella, Diana, Robert Reinecke, Ira Noveck, and Hugo Mercier. 2018. “Saying, Presupposing and Implicating: How Pragmatics Modulates Commitment.” Journal of Pragmatics 1331: 15–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bonalumi, Francesca, Thom Scott-Phillips, Julius Tacha, and Christophe Heintz. 2020. “Commitment and Communication: Are We Committed to What We Mean, or What We Say?” Language and Cognition 12 (2): 360–384. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and emotion (Moeschler, Jacques. 2009. “Pragmatics, Propositional and Non-Propositional Effects: Can a Theory of Utterance Interpretation Account for Emotions in Verbal Communication?” Social Science Information 48 (3): 447–464. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Dezecache, Guillaume, Hugo Mercier, and Thom Scott-Phillips. 2013. “An Evolutionary Approach to Emotional Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 591: 221–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Dezecache, Guillaume, Pierre Jacob, and Julie Grèzes. 2015. “Emotional Contagion: Its Scope and Limits.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19 (6): 297–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Wharton, Tim, and Claudia Strey. 2019. “Slave of the Passions: Making Emotions Relevant.” In Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation, ed. by Kate Scott, Billy Clark, and Robyn Carston, 253–266. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2019. “Pragmatics and the Challenge of ‘Non-Propositional’ Effects.” Journal of Pragmatics 1451: 31–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Saussure, Louis de, and Tim Wharton. 2020. “Relevance, Effects and Affect.” International Review of Pragmatics 121: 183–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Wharton, Tim, Constant Bonard, Daniel Dukes, David Sander, and Steve Oswald. 2021. “Relevance and Emotion.” Journal of Pragmatics 1811: 259–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). My goal will be to show how these two dimensions of manifestness, as they were developed in the very early days of RT, can provide us with new 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 other phenomena like commitment and emotions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Intentions and context
  • 3.Contextual assumptions in relevance theory
  • 4.Manifestness, accessibility, salience, and strength
  • 5.Strength and commitment
    • 5.1Empirical evidence
  • 6.Accessibility and emotions
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (29)
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