Guidelines and criticisms of the relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson

Abstract

The purpose of the Relevance theory is to offer a distinct way to observe the studies of human communication, starting from a general vision of knowledge and taking the human cognitive processes as a gear whose function is to produce the maximum cognitive effect with a minimum of processing energy, starting from the more relevant information to which the subject has access and accepting that the process of communication consists in assuming that the inference being communicated is relevant. Our purpose is to offer a general vision of the guidelines on which such theory is based on and point out some critics to it as well.