The Influence of Contextual Variation in Communication: The Context Grafting Hypothesis Based on Relevance Theory
Abstract
While Relevance Theory posits that intent recognition necessitates positive cognitive effects (inference, enhancement, and replacement), which means changes in assumptions, everyday observations suggest that assumptions have long-term stability. This paper resolves the paradox by arguing that, in the pursuit of optimal relevance, listeners often receive only a portion of the implicated premises and fill in the gaps with assumptions from their own context, resulting in the incomplete transmission of the set of assumptions. This process is described in this paper as the Context Grafting Hypothesis. Process above leads to misinterpretations of intent, a weakening of evidence, and, consequently, negative cognitive effects, which classified as Assimilation Bias and Rejection bias in this article. The paper further proposes "the completeness of the transmission of the set of assumptions" as a criterion for measuring positive cognitive effects and, based on this, research directions were proposed that involve experimentally verifying and directly applying the aforementioned standards across multiple fields.
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