The road sign examples (reading small details in a film) do not follow
Sperber and Wilson's principle of relevance (outlined below), because
they are not the most relevant information in the image to process. When
academics read these small details, they are (deliberately?) working
against the principle of relevance.

The problem being discussed in this debate concerns WHERE to locate
meaning ? in the film itself, or in the reading strategies of
spectators. If we locate meaning in the film, we adhere to a semantic
theory of meaning. If we locate it in spectators (in their shared
schemata, as cognitivists argue), we adhere to a pragmatic theory of
meaning.

The pragmatic theory of meaning is based on the premise of
non-communication, on the premise that failure in communication is the
norm, and what needs to be explained is how successful communication
takes place. By contrast, semantics describes successful communication
as an automatic process regulated by a system of codes.

Sperber and Wilson's theory of relevance is a pragmatic theory of
meaning. The basis of Sperber and Wilson's principle of relevance lies
in the relation between what they term 'contextual effect' and
'processing effort'. The addressee will process information only if it
creates contextual effects - i.e. if it is new and relates to
information already acquired by the addressee. But the new information
will not be processed at all unless the processing effort is small.

If the new information has a large contextual effect and if, at the same
time, its processing effort is small, then it is what Sperber and Wilson
call 'relevant'. More specifically, they define relevance in terms of
two extent conditions:

Extent condition 1: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent
that its contextual effects in this context are large.
Extent condition 2: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent
that the effort required to process it in this context is small. (Dan
Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition, p.
125)

Relevance is therefore a comparative concept, involving a balancing of
input (processing effort) against output (contextual effects).
Furthermore, Sperber and Wilson argue that their principle of relevance
is a universal cognitive-psychological principle of information
processing, rather than a principle that originates in socio-cultural
norms.

Only if the addressee generates the relevant inference will
communication take place. But because the principle of relevance is a
universal cognitive-psychological principle of information processing
(or 'naturalistic'), then we are hard-wired to generate the most
relevant inference. That is, for Sperber and Wilson, then, the principle
of relevance can be assumed to be mutually manifest to both sender and
addressee. This is because it is in the interest of the sender to
communicate her message by producing an utterance that will yield in the
addressee the optimal contextual effect with only a small amount of
processing effort. This, of course, is also in the interest of the
addressee, who will thus automatically generate the inference in which
such a result can be achieved, which is precisely the inference
corresponding to the sender's message.

This, then is how Sperber and Wilson define how communication takes
place. As I said above, the 'road sign' examples are working against the
principle of relevance, because they do not create the optimal
contextual effect with only a small amount of processing effort. In
fact, they seem to do the opposite - we are using a large amount of
processing effort to create a small contextual effect.


Warren Buckland
Associate Professor, Film Studies
Chapman University
School of Film and Television
One University Drive
Orange
CA 92866
USA.
phone: (714) 744 7018
fax: (714)  997 6700
Editor, "New Review of Film and Television Studies":
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17400309.asp
 
 

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