The Relevance theory and the irrelevances of everyday life

Abstract

The present essay presents some reflections on certain modes of everyday life communication, which in principle are marked by irrelevances from the informative perspective. Some discourse types, such as romantic conversations, chit-chat, greetings and salutations, among others, are redundant and seem to defy the communicative tendency to relevance, as understood by Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995). Evidently, to explain their existence, even if marked by low information, is relatively simple if one considers their external, social and affective benefits, among others. But, in that case, the heteromorphy of what one understands by benefit may be undesirable for an approach such as the one proposed by the Relevance theory.