1. T H E R E S E A R C H E R S

2. 1.In what way does a conversationalflow is being affected by cognition?1.In what way does the relevance of aninput affect the processing effort of thelistener in order to interpret the messagebeing conveyed in an utterance? 3. The DataExtract . ([Focusing only from teacher & studentinteraction)])(Context: Student and teacher conversationconducted from Valencia National High SchoolSection III-Pearl Lesson, Proper Directly, Time:11:00AM, Time Duration: 5 minutes, Class: 3rdYear High School ).(We only used five students and teacherinteraction to name them 1 by 1 accordingly forclarification.) 4. Teacher: Okay, good morning class.Students/Whole class: Good morning sir.Teacher: Okay, you may now take your seat. Isanybody here have already eaten his/her lunch?Student 1: Yes sir.Student 2: None sir.Student 3: Me sir not yet sir (laughing).Teacher: Okay, thank you. Dont worry class I willdismiss you earlier.Student 5: Thank you sir. 5. Student 1: No problem sir.Student 2, 3, 4: Yes sir.Teacher: Okay, I have another question.Students /class Whole: Yes sir.Teacher: Who among you here hadnt told any liesever since?Students/Whole class: (Answering in chorus) Nobody sir.Teacher: Yes thats right. Okay Mr. Fernandez, youare raising your hand what is it?Student 2: No body sir.Student 3: Yes sir.Student 1: No one sir. 6. Teacher: Yes, Fernandez thanks. (Smirk) you all haveyour ideas. Okay now, why do you think we lie Mr.Bonbon?Student 4: Yes sir, because lying is a human nature.Student 1: Yes, thats right sir.Teacher: Okay, thank you. Very good Mr. Bonbon,because everybody really lies.Student 1: Yes sir.Student 2: YesStudent 3: YesStudent 4: right sirStudent 5: yes. 7. Teacher: Now, do you have any idea if what wouldbe our topic for today?Student 2: Lying sir. (Laughing).Student 4: Humans sir.Student 1: Oral questioning sir?Student 3: How to lie sir? (They are laughingaltogether)Student 5: Short story sir?Teacher: Kindly raise your hands if you want toanswer and please do not answer in chorus please.Students/Whole class: (Suddenly became silent)Sorry sir. 8. Teacher: Anyways, you got all the ideas. Our topicfor today is sequencing of events. Before anythingelse I have a story here entitled The puddle thatlies. Do know about this story?Student 2: Yes sir.Student 1: Familiar sir. I think I had heard about it.Student: 3: No sir.Teacher: Okay, thank you. Now, do you have anyidea what does a puddle looks like? Who among youhere have already seen a puddle?Student 4: Me sirTeacher: Ms. Batoon I mean Mr. Batoon, what is apuddle? (Smiling). 9. Student 4: A puddle is a hairy dog or long fur.Brownish hair in colour, Oh yes brownish.Student 1: Not all hahahaha (laughing).Student 3: Oh I love brownish in colour.(Sarcastic laugh).Teacher: Thank you Mr. Batoon. Very gooddescription. 10. Teacher: Okay, good morning class.Students/Whole class: Good morning sir.From this conversation, we can tell that the teacheris greeting the students and thus it is easy for thestudents to respond because the evidence of theutterances indicates that it is a greeting plus theenvironment tells the students that the time of the day ismorning so, the students greeted back. In thisconversation, we can tell that the students cognitiveresource is relevant to what the teacher is trying to sayand so the students processing effort is less because ofthe greatest possible cognition and interpretation of thestudents. 11. In this chapter, the collected data which is the recordedconversation between the English teacher and Third yearhigh school students of Valencia National High School wereanalyze and interpreted using the Relevance Theory of DanSperber and Deirdre Wilson (1986).Based on our readings, Relevance Theory is aninferential theory of communication which have 2 mainprinciples:a. The Cognitive Principle of Relevanceb. The Communicative Principle of RelevanceNow, our research is anchored with these 2principles. The data that has been collected areanalysed and scrutinized to know in what way doesthe cognition affects the conversational flow. 12. Based on the cognitive principle of relevance, we canassume that the speakers communicative intention isrelevant to the listener and so it is easy for them torespond in the conversation and so the effort exertedby the listener to interpret and process the messagebeing conveyed by the speaker is less in order to attainthe perfect interpretation.Teacher: Okay, you may now take your seat. Isanybody here have already eaten his/her lunch?Student 1: Yes sir.Student 2: None sir.Student 3: Me sir not yet sirTeacher: Okay, thank you. Dont worry class I willdismiss you earlier. 13. The second communicative intention of the speaker (b.)indicates of asking the students if they have already takentheir lunch. And based on the response of the students, wecan say that:a. Student 1 get the message that the teacher is trying to askthem if they have eaten their lunch based on the evidencesprovided by the stimulus which is produced by the teacherand it is relevant to Student 1 which makes it easier for him torespond to the message that he have already eaten that iswhy he respond Yes sirb.Student 2 and 3 also understand what the teacher is tryingto convey and they respond. On the case of Student 2, themessage is relevant to her. But, she assumed that nobody inher classmates have already eaten, that is why she answeredNone sir. But on the case of Student 3, the message is alsorelevant to her that is why she respond Me sir, not yet sir. 14. From the example above, we can tell that the teacherscommunicative intentions are:To inform the students that they are allowed to take theirseats.To ask them if somebody have already taken their lunch.Based on the first communicative intention (a.) of the speaker(teacher) and the response of the listener (students) whoimmediately take their seats, we can tell that the messagewhich the teacher is trying to convey is relevant to thestudents because they easily respond to it through theiractions. This abides the Cognitive Principle of Relevance ofSperber and Wilson in which The human cognition tends tobe geared towards the maximisation of relevance. Since themessage is relevant and understandable to the listener, thenthe listeners response would be immediate. So cognitionaffects the flow of interaction. 15. The speakers message is relevant to the cognition of thelistener. The relevance raised by the utterance of the teacherare precise enough and predictable enough, to guide thestudents to the teachers meaning.Teacher: Okay, thank you. Now, do you have anyidea what does a puddle looks like? Who among youhere have already seen a puddle?Student 4: Me sirFrom the above example, we can assume that the speakerwants to tell us that he is asking if anybody have an idea ofwhat a puddle is.Now do you have any idea what does a puddle looks like?Who among you here have already seen a puddle? 16. That utterance is relevant to Student 4. And it isclear that she understood what the teacher is tryingto say because she immediately answers to theteachers question. From her answer Me Sir, wecan assume that Student 4 has the followinginterpretations:a. The teacher is asking what a puddle is.b. The teacher is asking what a puddle looks like.And based on her answer again, we can tell that shehas the following cognitions:a. She knows that a puddle is a dog.b. She have seen a puddle so she knows what itlooks like. 17. From the above examples, we can conclude that thecognition of the listeners affect the conversational flow in away that when the input or message that the speaker istrying to convey is relevant to the listener, then it would beeasier for the listener to respond to the speaker. At the sametime, if the message is relevant to the listener then the effortof processing the message in order to understand it would beeasier for the listener. That is why it is easy for the listener togive response in a conversation. This conclusion is herebysupported by the Theory of Relevance by Sperber and Wilson(1986) in the Cognitive Principle of Relevance and theCommunicative Principle of Relevance .The relevance to thereceiver of the message can affect the interpretation of themessage and so the conversational flow as well. 18. Teacher: Ms. Batoon I mean Mr. Batoon, what is apuddle? (Smiling).Student 4: A puddle is a hairy dog or long fur. Brownishhair in color, Oh yes brownish.Student 1: Not all hahahaha (laughing).Student 3: Oh, I love brownish in color. (Sarcastic laugh).Teacher: Thank you Mr. Batoon. Very good description.The relevance-theoretic analysis considers these points. Inthe first place, there is no suggestion that the literal meaningmust be tested first. As with bank in student 4, Brownish, theencoded conceptual address is treated merely as a point ofaccess to an ordered array of encyclopaedic information fromwhich the hearer is expected to select in constructing asatisfactory overall interpretation. 19. Whether this interpretation is literal or connotative willdepend on which types of information he selects. Inprocessing, Student 4 will be expecting to derive aninterpretation to his answer: that is, his evaluation about thepuddle. In the circumstances, the first contextual assumptionto occur to him is likely to be that a puddle which is brownishin color and other student may interpret it extremely indifferent way.The relevance also affects the processing effort of the listenerin order to interpret the message being conveyed by thespeaker. In a conversation, a speaker produces a stimuluswhich enables the addressee to identify the speakersinformation by recognising the speakers intention to conveyit. It serves as an evidence of communication and inputs themessage to the listener. 20. If the message and input is relevant to the listener, therewould be less processing effort in interpreting the messageyet, the response would be immediate. The greater therelevance to the listener, the less the processing effort, theimmediate the response.The lesser the processing effort, the greater the relevance ofthe input to the individual This summarizes the mainprinciple of the Theory of Relevance. According to theCognitive Principle of Relevance, The human cognition tendsto be geared towards the maximisation of relevance(Sperber, 1986).Based on our results, we can tell that cognition has somethingto do with the conversation. 21. If the message that is trying to convey by the speaker isrelevant to the listener in the sense that the listener hasalready a background knowledge of what the speaker is tryingto say, it would be easier for the listener to process themessage and interpret it and so he/she can easily respond in aconversation. In that case, the conversational flow is smoothand clear for both the speaker and listener. Relevance Theoryhas something to do with inferential communication.According to Christopher Unger 2001, if the human cognitivesystem is efficient enough, it should pick out informationwhich connects to existing assumptions in such a way as toimprove the individuals overall interpretation of the word. 22. With the speakers message and the human cognitive systemis functional, then it would be easy for the human to interpretthe message that is trying to reach him/her because of thecognition and the evidences provided by the stimulus. We canalso say that an input- whether a sound, a sight, a gesture, orbasically an utterance is relevant to an individual when itconnects with the background information he has available toyield conclusions that matter to him (Sperber, 1986). In aconversation, when an individual achieved the maximuminterpretation, it means that the speakers stimulus is muchrelevant to the listener. Understanding is achieved when thecommunicative intention is fulfilled that is, when theaudience recognises the informative intention of the speaker. 23. In a conversation, a speaker produces a stimulus that servesas an evidence of the input. That stimulus is designed toattract the attention of the audience and focus it on thecommunicators meaning and so it creates precise andpredictable expectations of relevance not raised by otherstimuli (Sperber and Wilson, 1969). That stimulus called themessage of the speaker and so it makes the input relevant tothe audience.From the examples above, it is clear that the teachersmessages are clear and understandable to the students andso the effort exerted by the students to interpret the messageis less. In that way, it is easy for the students to respond to inthe conversation. ostensive stimulus helps the audience tounderstand and interpret the message is less. 24. In that way, it is easy for the students to respond to in theconversation. According to the Cognitive Principle ofRelevance and Communicative Principle of Relevance, thehearer, who received the speakers ostensive stimulus,expects presumption of optimal relevance. Then the hearerstarts inferring in order to get the interpretation of themaximal relevance (Sperber, 1986). When the hearer reachedthe maximal relevance, it is easy for him/her to process suchinput or message and decode it. Then, the listener would beable to respond immediately in the conversation. Relevance isassessed in terms of the cognitive effect and the processingeffort. The maximal relevance has a high cognitive effect witha low processing effort. 25. Processing effort, on the other hand have 3 main factorsin order to determine it:(a) The complexity of the utterance: the more complexthe utterance the greater the processing effort.(b) The size of the context: the larger the context, thegreater the processing effort.(c) The accessibility of the context: the less accessible thecontext, the greater the processing effort.If we are going to determine the processing effort in thethree examples above, Examples 1, 2, and 3 are notcomplex, the context is not large, and it is accessible. Thismeans that on the examples above, the listenersprocessing effort is lesser. 26. Conversation analysts recognise that people design theirbehaviour always with an awareness of its accountability(except when we are on our own of course!). When we areinteracting with each other, we orient to whatever rulesand conventions of conversation operating at the time, andwe choose to follow or ignore such conventions with anawareness of the likely and immediate consequences. Inother words, we are always accountable for our actions,verbal and otherwise. If somebody asks you a question,and you deliberately do not answer them, then this will beseen as somehow flouting the rules or conventionscovering questions and answers. 27. In Grices framework (and indeed in all rhetorical andpragmatic discussions of irony as a figure of speech beforeSperber & Wilson 1981) the treatment of verbal ironyparallels the treatments of metaphor and hyperbole. ForGrice, irony is an overt violation of the maxim oftruthfulness, and differs from metaphor and hyperboleonly in the kind of implicature it conveys (metaphorimplicates a simile based on what was said, hyperboleimplicates a weakening of what was said, and ironyimplicates the opposite of what was said). Relevancetheorists have argued against not only the Gricean analysisof irony but the more general assumption that metaphor,hyperbole and irony should be given parallel treatments. 28. Grices analysis of irony as an overt violation of the maximof truthfulness is a variant of the classical rhetorical view ofirony as literally saying one thing and figuratively meaningthe opposite. There are well-known arguments against thisview. It is descriptively inadequate because ironicalunderstatements, ironical quotations and ironical allusionscannot be analyzed as communicating the opposite of whatis literally said. It is theoretically inadequate because sayingthe opposite of what one means is patently irrational; andon this approach it is hard to explain why verbal irony isuniversal and appears to arise spontaneously, without beingtaught or learned (Sperber & Wilson 1981, 1998b, Wilson &Sperber 1992). 29. Moreover, given the relevance-theoretic analysis ofmetaphor and hyperbole as varieties of loose use, theparallelism between metaphor, hyperbole and ironycannot be maintained. While it is easy to see how aspeaker aiming at optimal relevance might convey hermeaning more economically by speaking loosely ratherthan using a cumbersome literal paraphrase, it is hard tosee how a rational speaker could hope to convey hermeaning more economically by choosing a word whoseencoded meaning is the opposite of the one she intendsto convey (or how a hearer using the relevance theoreticcomprehension procedure could understand her if shedid). Some alternative explanation of irony must be found. 30. According to the explanation proposed by relevance theory,verbal irony involves no special machinery or procedures notalready needed to account for a basic use of language,INTERPRETIVE USE, and a specific form of interpretive use,ECHOIC USE. An utterance may be interpretively used to(meta) represent another utterance or thought that itresembles in content. The best-known type of interpretiveuse is reported speech or thought. An utterance is echoicwhen it achieves most of its relevance not byThe personasking the question will look for reasons why you did notanswer (e.g., are they are being rude, did they not hear me,are they not paying attention and so on). Conversationalcontexts are always dynamic, immediate and in a certainsense confrontational. And no matter how small orinsignificant behaviour might be, in the presence of otherpeople, we are always accountable for our actions. 31. Understanding the relationship between the idea ofalways having to be accountable and the analysis ofconversation rests in part in having a clear idea of what ismeant by participant-oriented analysis. In contrast todiscourse analysis, and other language focused qualitativemethod, conversation analysts have a strong commitmentto the idea that interpretations, suggestions or claimsmade about the data being analysed (the actualconversations), must rest upon identifiable evidence in theconversations themselves. In other words if it is notpossible to identify specific elements in the talk whichsupport the analysts interpretation then we should bevery sceptical about whatever claims are being made. 32. This is quite different from other qualitative methodswhere the investigator might begin the process of analysisby formulating a set of categories or themes, based forexample on a particular theory or hypothesis, and then usethese categories as the basis for looking in detail at theactual conversation. The transcript might then be analysedby counting the number of elements within categories andthen making comparisons between them. This kind ofapproach is used in content analysis is sometimes used inconjunction with statistical procedures. Conversationanalysis, in contrast, should be seen as a much moreinductive process where a sample of conversations iscollected and then transcribed in a neutral value-freefashion. 33. Relevance theory is a framework for the study ofcognition, proposed primarily in order to provide apsychologically realistic account of communication. Thispaper presents relevance theorys central commitmentsin detail and explains the theoretical motivations behindthem; and shows some of the ways in which these coreprinciples are brought to bear on empirical problems. Thecore of relevance theory can be divided into two sets ofassumptions. Assumptions relating to cognition in generalinclude the definition of relevance as a trade-off betweeneffort and effects, and the claim that cognition tends tomaximise relevance. 34. Assumptions about communication include the claims thatunderstanding an utterance is a matter of inferring thespeakers communicative and informative intentions; and thatthe communicative principle of relevance and thepresumption of optimal relevance mandate the relevance-theoreticcomprehension procedure, a heuristic that guidesthe search for the intended interpretation of utterances.Relevance theorists model communication in terms of theworking of this comprehension procedure. This theory startsfrom the idea that there is normally much more going on inthe environment of any human being than it could payattention to, and certainly much more than it could mentallyprocess fully. According to Sperber & Wilson, (1886) if thiswere not the case, there would be no need to consider atrade-off between the effort put in and the benefit extractedfrom doing so. 35. We could process each input fully to extract all thecognitive benefit it might yield, and theories of cognitioncould ignore processing effort. CA also provides the kind ofdata we can document and discuss in detail, by taping/recording a certain conversation and transcribing it. So thebasic idea of conversation analysis is that we shouldntstart with what we think we know about talk, rather weshould start with lots of examples of people talking, andlook for the kinds of patterns they and we take forgranted. One way we do this is by looking at cases wherethe expected patterns of conversation break down, andsee what people do then. 36. All in all, utterances are interpretively used to represent thethought of a speaker. It is a representation that a speakerwants to communicate. In conversing, it is not enough to onlycommunicate. In order to be understood, you have to drawyour audience attention to your intention to communicate.And that intention is carried by the message itself. As statedin the Communicative Principle of Relevance, Everyostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimalrelevance (Sperber and Wilson, 1986). And by optimalrelevance, it means that it is worth the audiences processingeffort and that it is the most relevant message in terms ofcompatibility with the communicators abilities andpreferences. 37. So when a speaker communicates, he produced a stimulusthat conveys the message and helps the receiver in theinterpretation of the message. When the listener receivedthe input, and with the help of the evidences provided bythe stimulus, the listener interprets the message and whenhe reached the maximal relevance, the listenerimmediately interprets the message with less processingeffort because the message is relevant to him.And so, cognition affects the conversational flow in a waythat when the message that the speaker is trying to conveyis relevant to the listener, and when we say relevant, thelistener has already a background of the message in hiscognitive system, then it would be easier for the listener tointerpret the message thus, can easily respond to thespeaker. 38. At the same time, when an input is relevant to the listener,he will not exert much processing effort in order tointerpret the message being conveyed in an utterancebecause the greater the relevance and cognition of amessage to the listener, the lesser the processing effort,the easier to respond in the conversation, the smootherthe conversational flow. 39. Based on our data, we found the two rules of theCognitive Principle of Relevance:a. Other things being equal, the greater thepositive cognitive effects achieved by processingan input, the greater the relevance of the input tothe individual at that time.b. Other things being equal, the greater theprocessing effort extended, the lower therelevance of the input to the individual at thattime. 40. In other words, the students are quite familiar with whatthe teacher is trying to convey in his utterances and thus,the processing effort of the students to interpret theutterance meaning is less and so the cognition is greater.Another thing that we found out is that how the listenerinfers the communicators meaning is based on theevidence provided by the speaker with its stimulus.The data that we have gathered is an example of anostensive communication and thus, the teacher delivers astimulus called ostensive that attracts the studentsattention.We also found out that communication contains not onlythe information that the speaker wish to transmit, but alsothe information of the speakers intention to inform thelistener of such intention. 41. We recommend for a further research inConversational Analysis focusing on turn-taking andimplicatures that can also help in understandingconversation. Also, to further analyse this concept, it isbetter to use another data like a normal conversationssuch as dialogue, telephone conversations and moviein order to understand more the concept ofconversational analysis and Relevance theory ofCognition. We also recommend for future research toexamine issues related to the outcomes of this study. 42. And for those who want to explore more in Conversationalanalysis, this can be a good start but this research needs moreimprovements which cant be attained because of the lack oftime. This study is very interesting and somehow challenging.There are many factors to consider before you can interpretand analyse the data. This work is not perfect; there are someerrors that are made unconsciously. But we the researchersrecommend reading, exploring and reflecting in every page inthis work. As you read the succeeding pages, surely you willbe taught of the other things we have while we arecommunicating to others. We did a lot of efforts while makingthis work so hope you guys like it. Have fun reading! 43. T H A N K Y O U