Relevance of communicative acts

Why do we speak? Because we want to influence each other's behavior. The relevance of a speech act can measure its usefulness. In this paper I argue that (i) the relevance of a speech act depends on the 'language game' one is involved in; (ii) notions of relevance can be defined using decision, information and game theory, and can be used for linguistic applications; and (iii) the strategic considerations of participants in a conversation deserve our attention, especially when we consider mixed-motive games of imperfect information, for instance, to establish the common ground.

[1]  Arthur Merin.  Algebra of elementary social acts , 2002 .

[2]  D. Blackwell.  Equivalent Comparisons of Experiments , 1953 .

[3]  A. Michalos.  Rational Behavior and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations , 1982 .

[4]  Roger B. Myerson,et al.  Communication, correlated equilibria and incentive compatibility , 1994 .

[5]  Arthur Merin,et al.  Information, relevance, and social decisionmaking: some principles and results of decision-theoretic semantics , 1999 .

[6]  R. Rooij.  Questioning to resolve decision problems , 2003 .

[7]  Douglas Walton,et al.  Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation , 1989 .

[8]  R. Lakoff.  SOME REASONS WHY THERE CAN'T BE ANY some-any RULE , 1969 .

[9]  Howard Raiffa,et al.  Applied Statistical Decision Theory. , 1961 .

[10]  J. Sobel,et al.  STRATEGIC INFORMATION TRANSMISSION , 1982 .

[11]  J. Bernardo.  Expected Information as Expected Utility , 1979 .

[12]  R. Radner,et al.  Economic theory of teams , 1972 .

[13]  H. Raiffa,et al.  Applied Statistical Decision Theory. , 1961 .

[14]  D. Sperber,et al.  Relevance: Communication and Cognition , 1997 .

[15]  Jonathan Ginzburg,et al.  Resolving questions, I , 1995 .

[16]  D. Lindley.  On a Measure of the Information Provided by an Experiment , 1956 .

[17]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  A Course in Game Theory , 1995 .

[18]  Maria Aloni,et al.  Questions under cover , 2002 .

[19]  Robert van Rooy.  Questioning to Resolve Decision Problems , 2003 .

[20]  M. Krifka,et al.  The Semantics and Pragmatics of Polarity Items , 2003 .

[21]  Marcia C. Linebarger,et al.  Negative polarity and grammatical representation , 1987 .

[22]  L. Stein,et al.  Probability and the Weighing of Evidence , 1950 .

[23]  Richard E. Blahut,et al.  Principles and practice of information theory , 1987 .