Amazon.com (the US site) carries the following "customer's review"
of _Relevance_ together with the lowest possible rating. Oh well...
A problematic understanding of relevance April 28, 2000
Reviewer: birger hjørland (see more about me) from Denmark
The understanding of the concept of relevance in this book confused me. I
was therefore happy when I read the important article by Talbot (1997),
which contains a discussion of the approach suggested by Sperber & Wilson
(1995). Talbot writes, that the drawback of the model suggested by Sperber
& Wilson is that it is an asocial model, a model lacking any social
element. "Relevance presents an internationalist view of action. In it,
people are depicted as individuals who confront unique problems in
communication. In the real world, however, people are social beings who are
working within preexisting conventions. This latter view of the language
user and the nature of communication is practiced in studies of discourse
analysis, especially in certain later developments (e.g., Fairclough,
1989). In Sperber and Wilson's model, differences between people are
depicted solely as differences between individuals' cognitive environments.
These differences are assumed to stem from variations in physical
environment and cognitive ability between people. Considerations of culture
and society are notably absent in the characterization of individuals'
cognitive environments. In Relevance, the authors work with a
"commonsensical" view of all individuals sharing essentially the same
epistemological organization of the real world. . . The consequences of
such disregard are serious . . ." (Talbot, 1997, p.446).
In my own view a theory about relevance must essentially be an
epistemological theory. In a given domain, there exists differents
theories, metatheories, "paradigms" etc., which in a very strong way
implies what is relevant. In psychology, for example, there is a big
difference between what is regarded relevant by a behaviorist and by a
psychoanalyst. You cannot study relevance neglecting the different
"theories" from which human beings interact with the world. For a longer
discussion see my paper "Relevance research: the missing perspective(s).
"non-relevance" and "epistemological relevance" in Journal of the American
Society for Information Science, 2000, vol. 51, no. 2, pp.209-211.
Talbot, M. M. (1997). Relevance. IN: Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of
Language. Ed. By P. V. Lamarque & R. E. Asher. (Pp. 445-447). New York:
Pergamon.
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Dan Sperber
CREA - Ecole Polytechnique
1 rue Descartes
75005 Paris, France
email: sperber@poly.polytechnique.fr
web page: http://www.dan.sperber.com
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