On the manifestness of assumptions

Right from the outset, relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995) 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 and Wilson (1986/1995) 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 2001; Boulat and Maillat 2017, 2023; Mazzarella et al. 2018; Bonalumi et al. 2020) and emotion (Moeschler 2009; Dezecache et al. 2013, 2015; Wharton and Strey 2019; Wilson and Carston 2019; Saussure and Wharton 2020; Wharton et al. 2021). 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.