RELEVANCE AND SPEECH ACTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF …

PAIDEUMA JOURNAL

Vol XII Issue 10 2019

RELEVANCE AND SPEECH ACTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATIONS BY 2nd

YEAR IRAQI EFL LEARNERS AT AL- NISOUR UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

Aalaa Yaseen Hassan (1) and Mahasin Abdulqadir Hasan (2)

(1), (2) College of Languages, Al-Nisour University College, Baghdad/Iraq

Email: alaa.y.english@nuc.edu.iq

Email: mahasin11@

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the type of difficulties faced by Iraqi EFL learners at Al-Nisour University College in their quest for the most appropriate utterance to express their ideas. One of the problems that face learners of language is that they do not use the language in real-life situations outside the classroom. The teachers must have the ability to convey the language as close to the native speaker's as possible by being aware of the necessity of being relevant when they communicate with their students who are not in direct contact with native speakers. Actually, to convey the idea effectively and with least mental effort, the learners of the language have to understand how to use direct and indirect way to get the right meaning when learning English as a second language.

Keywords: relevance theory; relevant utterance; direct speech; indirect speech.

1. Introduction

The major concern of this study is to examine the type of difficulties faced by learners in deciding the most appropriate utterance to convey their ideas. In order express the idea with more contextual effects and with less mental effort, the learners of the language need to understand the concept of relevance which is introduced by Sperber and Wilson (1986) who state that "human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance". Direct and indirect speech acts are used in this study as the principles that have to be used by the learners in order to solve the decision problem when they choose the relevant utterance. The test revealed that most learners used the direct way to determine the appropriate choice. Still, most learners face difficulties in saying what exactly is inside their minds as relevant as possible when they give the reason behind choosing the right alternative. To the best of the researcher's knowledge, no previous research has ever tackled the topic of relevance and speech acts in the analysis of conversations by EFL learners from the perspective of a relevance-based approach to speech acts. Hence, this study is intended to close a gap between second language knowledge and communicative needs.

2. Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory (henceforth RT) is propounded by Sperber and Wilson (1986) which is regarded as one of the significant theories. Sperber and Wilson reduced Grice's four maxims into one principle, namely the principle of relevance.

"Grice's maxims can be replaced by a single principle of relevance - that the speaker tries to be as relevant as possible..." (1986: 381).

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For them, the principle of relevance is the only main principle needed for communication to function effectively (Leonardi, 2010: 99; Gast, 2008: 2; and T. L. Dadbe, Forthcoming: 1). Sperber & Wilson's principle of relevance differs from Grice's conversational maxim in being a quantitative not a qualitative. Grice argues that there are a number of norms which the speaker has to follow in order to guide the hearer to his intentional meaning. In contrast, Sperber & Wilson argue that human central cognitive systems are the only way to guide the hearer to observe the speaker's communicative meaning (Wang, 2014: 247). In fact, the principle of relevance is not like Grice's theory because it is neither maxim nor a convention nor a theorem but a: "generalisation about ostensive communication" (Hirst, 2007: 3).

Sperber & Wilson's approach is based on the assumptions that human cognition is geared to the hearer's search for relevance (the maximization of relevance). According to this framework, the utterance must be conveyed with more contextual effects, at the same time, it has to be understood with less processing effort to ensure successful communication. In addition, the speaker's utterance has to be relevant enough to be worth the addressee's attention (Osunbade 2013: 145). RT is based on two principles. The first is the Cognitive Principle, and the second is the Communicative Principle. The first part is related to the cognition while the second one is concentrated on the communication, or more precisely on the utterance interpretation (Allot 2013, 59).

2.1 Cognitive Principle of Relevance

Sperber and Wilson's (1995: 261) cognitive principle of relevance:

"Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance."

The major part in this theory is the human cognition which has advanced a variety of deductive (innate or acquired) mental mechanisms or biases that tend to give attention to inputs with greatest expected relevance and to process them in the most relevance-enhancing way (Wilson, 2009: 394). Relevance is defined here as the property of inputs to cognitive systems: the input is more relevant when we have more cognitive (or contextual) effects, and it is less relevant when it needs more mental (or processing) effort. The conclusion is that that relevance is an arrangement between effort (i.e. cost) and effects (i.e. reward) (Allott, 2013: 59-60). The degree of relevance of an input to an individual between cognitive effects and processing effort will be explained as follows:

i) Reward: Cognitive effects

"Other things being equal, the greater the positive cognitive effects achieved by processing an input, the greater the relevance of the input to the individual at that time" (Wilson & Sperber, 2004: 604; the original formulation, at Sperber & Wilson, 1986: 153).

In agreement with the above quotation, the communicator tries to affect the individual's cognitive environment (5) by any act of communication where the cognitive environment of the audience is defined as a set of assumptions that is manifest to the hearer and the communicator herself. The hearer connects the new information with the old information (the information that already exists in the cognitive environment of the individual) to get the contextual implications (Forceville, 1996: 86). There are different kinds of cognitive effects plainly discussed in RT, and they are as follows:

a) from the old and new information, the hearer derives further assumptions, but not from either the old information or new information alone, which is known as "contextual implications";

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b) he adds certain new assumptions to the store of information that already exists in his cognitive environment;

c) he discards certain assumptions about the world and replaces by some new information;

d) he may strengthen or weaken certain degree of assumptions which are regarded as part of his cognitive environment (Forceville, 1996: 86).

Even if the new information is true, it is not regarded as a cognitive effect if it does not have any relation with any previously held assumption. This is what known as a positive cognitive effect which is a worthwhile difference to the individual's representation of the world (Wilson & Sperber, 1986: 48).

In the processing effort and contextual effects of optimal relevance, the addressee has to get a positive cognitive effect which means a truth content conclusion (referring to as contextual effects). On the other hand, false conclusions are not worthwhile because they give cognitive effects but not a positive one. More accurately, a contextual effect is neither the new information in the utterance alone, nor the context alone (the old information), but a combination of the context and new information. For example, the teacher may give his/her students a lecture, and the students find it relevant, as it causes a lot of changes in their cognitive environment (i.e. in their awareness). This lecture may help the students to strengthen some of their existing assumptions (a positive one), and to weaken or neglect some irrelevant assumptions (negative one) (Zhonggang, 2006: 44-45).

ii) Cost: Processing Effort

Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort expended, the lower the relevance of the input to the individual at that time. (Wilson & Sperber 2004, 604; the original formulation, at Sperber & Wilson 1986, 153).

According to this definition of relevance, the claim is that the human cognitive systems work with the input to save the mental effort of an individual at least as possible (Allot, 2013: 61). Simms (2009: 194) states that processing effort is the process that the hearers take to understand the speaker's meaning, and this process depends on the speaker's utterance and the hearer's inference of that utterance, as well as the effort that must be expended by the hearer to compute the cognitive effects of the utterance. In other words, 'processing effort' is the effort that requires processing input to the point that its cognitive effects are derived. In addition, Wilson argues that effort is "to represent the input, access contextual information and derive any contextual effects." In fact, RT does not aim to define sources of processing effort, but it tries to study perception, memory and inference, and these are the results of the fields of psychology (Wilson, 2009: 394). According to processing effort, understating an utterance depends on two factors:

a- The form of the utterance (how the information is presented, e.g., complex, familiar, etc.). b- The effort needed to understand the utterance and to construct a suitable context (Noh, 2000: 63).

Generally, different stimuli (utterances) will require different amounts of processing effort. For instance, longer sentences require more processing effort than shorter ones. Also, uncommon words or ambiguous words require more effort to process than common ones (Allott, 2013: 66). Another brilliant point is that the same stimulus in different contexts will, in general, require different amounts of processing effort. The stimuli in different contexts may be more or less salient (easy to perceive); the contextual assumptions may be more or less accessible to process (easy to restore from memory or infer). In fact, the implication will depend on the context that supports inferences (Wilson & Sperber, 2004: 609). Furthermore, the one must

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not only understand the physical objects, but also the source of information like utterances created by other human beings, books, the internet, advertisements etc. (Todd & Gigerenzer, 2000: 729-730).

From the two facts of cognitive effects and processing effort, the utterance has to have a large number of contextual effects, and these effects have to be understood with less effort in order to be relevant enough to the audience, i.e., the producing utterance has to be understood with more effect and least effort (Cruz 2001, 201).

2.2 Communicative Principle of Relevance

Before going into the details of the second principle, Sperber and Wilson differentiate between two separate models of communication: a conventional and non-inferential one, known as the code model (PreGricean), and a non-conventional one, which is called by Grice and his followers as the inferential model (M?rquez, 2006: 42).

i) The Code Model

The theory of code model has developed by Shannon and Weaver (1949). The main idea of Shannon and Weaver is the transmission of a message where the sender conveys his message as a signal (whether spoken words, electric signals, gestures, or written words) through various channels which can be affected by noise whilst the addressee receives them and tries to decode the sender's message to understand it (Gordon, 2009:6). According to the code model, misinterpretation of the provided evidence will result from some failures in communication, whereas understanding the intended meaning of the utterance by the audience will lead to effective communication (Wilson and Sperber, 1995: 88-89). Certainly, Sperber & Wilson do not deny the importance of this process, but they state that it is not enough to understand the utterance; therefore they develop the Grice's notion of inferential comprehension (Yus, 2011: 4).

ii) The Inferential Model

The central claim in Grice's Theory is the expression and recognition of intentions which is regarded as the fundamental feature of most human cognition whether verbal or non-verbal, and this claim may be regarded as the main concern in RT (Loukusa, 2007: 43). For Grice, the speaker may say something and at the same time he means another thing and this depends on the speaker's intention, i.e. what the speaker intends to say (Allott, 2013: 71). So, Grice emphasizes on the importance of the recognition of the sender's intention by the receptor. This process of recognition is achieved by inference, not by deciphering. He asserts that "Communication is successful not when hearers recognize the linguistic meaning of the utterance, but when they infer the speaker's 'meaning' of it." Sperber states that the hearer can infer the speaker's meaning without using code (rules or conventions) (Gordon, 2009:10). Inferential model is called by Sperber & Wilson as the 'Ostensive Model' (or Ostensive-Inferential Communication), which has two steps: ostension and inference (M?rquez, 2006: 43). This new term, 'ostensive-inferential communication', is explained by Sperber and Wilson as follows:

(a) the informative intention: the intention to inform an audience of something;

(b) the communicative intention: the intention to inform the audience of one's informative intention. (Wilson and Sperber, 2004: 611).

According to the former, a set of assumptions have to be manifest or more manifest to the audience, whilst the second one aims to make the set of assumptions mutually manifest to audience and communicator

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when the communicator has an informative intention (Yi-bo, 2015: 602-603). Perry (2015: 25) states that "communication will be successful when the addressee recognizes those intentions."

These two models, coding and ostension, are carried out by the speaker because they are involved in a productive process, whilst decoding and inference are carried out by the addressee because they are involved in an interpretation process (M?rquez, 2006: 43). After explaining the two models, Sperber and Wilson (1995: 260) have presented the communicative principle as:

"Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance".

For Sperber & Wilson, the most important role in this theory is to specify the interpretation of the ostensive stimulus where it should be communicated by the presumption of optimal relevance. Sperber & Wilson (1987: 704) claim that the speakers and the addressee only need to know the communicative principle of relevance to communicate with each other rather than knowing the principles of genetics to reproduce.

3. Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory is usually attributed to the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin. The basic ideas, which were formed by him in the late 1930s were presented in his lectures given at Oxford in 1952?1954, and later in his William James Lectures delivered at Harvard in 1955. These lectures were finally published posthumously as How to do things with words in 1962. After his death in 1960, Austin's ideas were refined, systematized, and advanced, especially by his Oxford pupil, the American Philosopher John R. Searle (Austin, 1962: 3).

According to Searle (1979), when the assertive sentence form is used to make a statement or the interrogative form to ask for information, it is called a direct speech act. When a polite request is made in the form of an interrogative statement, it is called indirect speech acts.

3.1 Direct Speech Acts

Nozar Niazi (2002: 28) says:

"A direct speech act has only one function, whereas an indirect speech act performs more than one function simultaneously".

According to this, an interrogative structure such as Did you...?, Are they...? or Can we...? is used with the function of a question, it is described as a direct speech act. For example, when we don't know something and we ask someone to provide the information, we usually produce a direct speech act such as Can you ride a bicycle? (Yule, 2010: 134).

3.2 Indirect Speech Acts

Searle (1969) first proposed the notion of indirect speech acts, a work that he substantially revised in Searle (1979). According to Searle, a speaker may utter the sentence:

(1) Can you pass the salt?

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