Relevance, Rhetoric, Narrative Author(s): Michael Kearns Source: Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 31, No.

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Michael Kearns RELEVANCE, RHETORIC, NARRATIVE Abstract. Relevance is a universal futnction of communicationby which
humans innately attempt to balance processing effort with the cognitive effectof an utterance. Relevancetheoryinfonns the cognitiveand rhetorical dimensionsof readinga narrativeby (a) definingthe conditionsunderwhich a text will initially be taken as a narrative (emphasizingcontext selection, display, and tellability) and (b) delimiting the unmarkedcases of the urreadingnarrative (naturalizationand progression). These comenetions.for ur-conventions and the Cognitive and Communicative Principles of Relevancealso groundclaims about the roleplayed by narrativein humans' searchfor rationality and moral identity.

SCENARIO ONE A bored financial consultantwith a two-hourlayover in the DFW airportnotices a coverless book next to her in a lounge area. Being cautious, she doesn't at first pick it up, but she's able to read the first page: -Something's a little strange,that'swhat you notice, that she's not a womanlike all the others. She looks fairlyyoung, twenty-five,maybe a little more, petite face, a little catlike, small turned-upnose. The
shape of her face, it's .
.

. more roundish than oval, broad forehead,

pronouncedcheeks too but then they come down to a point, like with cats. -What about her eyes? -Clear, prettysure they're green, half-closed to focus betteron the drawing. She looks at her subject:the black pantherat the zoo, which was quiet at first, stretchedout in its cage. But when the girl made a noise with her easel and chair,the pantherspotted her and began pacing back and forth in its cage, and to growl at the girl, who up to then was still having troublewith shadingin the drawing. -Couldn't the animal smell her before that? -No, there's a big slab of meat in the cage ... (Puig 3) SCENARIO Two An earth-sciencemajor,enrolled in "WeirdNovels" strictlybecause she needs anotherupper-level elective credit to graduate,opens the first book assigned for the course, titled Kiss of the Spider Woman,and begins reading the same material. 73
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Both readers,if they continue,will have approximatelythe same experience, which we term "readinga narrative."Both readers encounter, in the first sentence, an invocationof "'tellability"-there'ssomethingstrangeabout this woman that makes her worth telling about. Both readers also quickly encounter past-tense verbs, indicating that one of the speakers is telling a structuresuggests two charactersin converstory. The question-and-answer sation, which is a common way for narrativesto begin. However, the experiences of these two readerswill also differ in importantways. The consultant will probably go through a longer period of uncertaintyand will spend more time re-reading in order to figure out what sort of experience these words are offering her. Why these differences, and why is it fairly safe to predictthatboth readerswill at least take the text as narrative?How much of to features the beginning differencesandthe final similaritycan be attributed of the text, how much to the context, and how much to what each of these readersbrings to the experience? According to ManfredJahn,readingcomand bottom-up(data-determined) cogbines "top-down(frame-determined) nitive strategies";"[t]heframetells us what the datais [sic], andthe datatells us whether we can continue using the frame" (464, 448). The process of reading can be understoodas an interplaybetween the "Primacypreference rule: Retain a frame for as long as possible," and the "Recencypreference rule: Allow a replacementframe to reinterpretprevious data"(457). These "rules,"however, can't predictwhen each of these readerswill decide to take frame the text as a narrative-when each will first adoptthe narrative-reading and what conditions the readingexperience must fulfill in orderfor a reader to retain that frame. Hypothetically,both readers are free to do whatever they want with this text, but several features in the text (past tense verbs, conversation, cohesive ties) as well as the basic fact that the text has been reading printedand boundin book form guide both readersto the "narrative" and progression. script,which is based on two ur-conventions:naturalization This guidance is groundedin the Principles of Relevance, as I suggested in Rhetorical Narratology, but there I stopped well short of explaining how these Principles actually inform the cognitive and rhetoricaldimensions of readinga narrative,thatis, how they influence frame selection and retention. Filling in this gap is my purpose here, in order to bring relevance theory more prominentlyinto the discussion of this specific type of rhetoricalinteraction-narrative-and to suggest that it be extended to other types as well. I will be arguingthat narrativerhetoric (within a text) and the reader's experience of that rhetoric (narrativity)both exemplify and depend on the Principlesof Relevance. Narrativeis a type of communication;as such, it is of the audience's "amoreor less controlledmodificationby the communicator mental landscape-or 'cognitive environment'as we call it-achieved in an intentional and overt way" (Sperberand Wilson, "Rhetoricand Relevance"

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144). Relevance theory makes a claim about "how the mind functions"that "the mind is preset for maximal relevance" (Pilkington, "The Literary Reading Process" 118) and assumes intentionalityin the environmentshared by reader and text (Campbell 150). Thus relevance theory can be seen as contributingto the theoreticalbase of rhetoric,conceived as purposefulcommunication.

I focus on readingratherthan on other means of experiencing narrative, although I believe that my argumentholds for all formats, and on fictional narratives,although again I believe that the ur-conventionshold for factual narrativesas well. (Anotherur-convention,heteroglossia, holds only for fictional narratives,as I explain in RhetoricalNarratology.) These limitations notwithstanding,my work facilitates the refinement of some of the claims in humanexperienceand about role playedby narrative aboutthe fundamental the applicabilityof rhetoricalprinciplesto this role. I discuss these claims in my final section, afterdeveloping a relevance-theoryconcept of narrativeas display and after describing in detail the ur-conventions. This analysis of narrativeappropriately falls under the domain of rhetoricratherthan of linguistics precisely because I'm working with principles of relevance. Following Geoffrey Leach, Nils Erik Enkvist explains that rhetoricis governed by principles, in contrastto grammar,which is (or at least tries to be) rulegoverned ("Text and Discourse Linguistics" 13). My analysis of the processes by which a text is taken to be a narrativeemphasizes that there are no guaranteesin the interactionbetween a text and a readerexcept thatthe reader will seek a context that maximizes cognitive effect and minimizes processing effort. Finding such a context is a probabilisticaffair ratherthan a precisely calibratedoutcome of the applicationof rules.
AS DISPLAY:A RELEVANCE-THEORY PERSPECTIVE NARRATIVE The theory of relevance is based on the assumption by all parties in any communication that the communication is relevant to the immediate situation. Drawing on psycholinguistics as well as on critiques of John Searle, Paul Grice, and other speech-act philosophers, Sperber and Wilson argue that "relevance" is an innate and universal function by which humans attempt to maximize the cognitive effect of an utterance while minimizing the

effort requiredto process the utterance. This argumentrelies on the "ostensive-inferential"model of communication,in which "ostensive behavior"is that which "makesmanifest an intentionto make something manifest" (Relevance 49). Once the receiver of an utterance determines that the utterance

includes an ostensive behavior,the receiver can use the strategyof inference to determinewhat additionalintentionthe utteranceis conveying. A helpful example comes from Paul Churchland. One can introducethe term "horse" to someone else by pointing to an actualhorse and saying "Thatis a horse."

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This showing plus saying is an "ostensive definition,"in which the speaker "expects the hearerto notice the relevantfeaturesof the situationpresented, and to be able to reapply the term when a new situationalso contains them" (Churchland51). The key elements in this example are the verbal formula "This is an X," the gesture of pointing, and the mutual understandingbetween speakerand hearerthat an act of defining is happening. Such an act would be much less likely to succeed without the pointing, which establishes an immediate situationalcontext that directs the hearerto notice salient features of some X. The complete verbal formula, however, need not be present, as any parentof a toddler knows: pointing and saying "horse"suffices. The act of defining by pointing and saying is flexible and not susceptible of precise description. Therehas to be an ostensive behavior, and this behavior probably must include a verbal signal as well as a bodylanguagesignal or a contextualeventthathas the effect of focusing the hearer's attention in a particularway. The act will probably succeed if the hearer deems it relevant to the context and if it contains both a verbal signal and a gesture that togethercan be understoodby the heareras meaning "Thisis an X." However, nothing can guaranteea felicitous act of definition. If the hearerbelongs to a culturein which the act of pointing and saying something means "eatthis" ratherthan "addthis to your repertoireof verbal signs," the act will fail. For Sperberand Wilson, relevance is the most basic element sharedby the communicatorand the recipient;without it, people could not make the inferences that are necessitated by even the most trivial interchanges. To adapt a frequently mentioned example, if I ask my wife "Would you like some coffee?" and she replies "Coffee would keep me awake,"I infer "yes," "no,"or "maybe"based on context (is it morningor evening, are we at home or on a road trip), my knowledge of her beverage preferences, and so forth. I'm able almost instantaneouslyto sort throughthese factors because I take her response as maximally relevantto my query,within the immediate context of that query. Each of us operateswith the assumptionthat the other's linguisticbehavioris intentional,an assumptionthatis necessaryfor the communicationof the message (Blakemore,"Relevance" 55). A centralfact about language is that "the linguistic propertiesof an utterance seriously underdetermineits interpretation: it will include referentialexpressions with undeterminedreferents;it may contain ambiguousor vague expressions; it may be elliptical; andits intendedillocutionaryforce may not be fully determined. for which no linguistic clue is Moreover,there are aspects of interpretation given at all" (Blakemore,SemanticConstraints62). My interpretation of my wife's utterance exemplifies sucha linguisticallyclueless interpretation, which could not be successful (except by chance) were it not for relevance. Similarly, the consultant's likely decision to take the found text as a narrative

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can't be explained simply on the basis of its linguistic properties. The pasttense verbs and cohesive ties in the speech of the first speakerstrongly suggest that he is telling a story,but to assume that the dialogue itself embodies anotherstory requiresthe readerto make an inferentialleap; the dialogue is as a narrative. under-determined As a general concept, relevance would only be suggestive. Sperberand Wilson's approachgains its explanatorypower from their formulationof two principles describing its operation. The CommunicativePrinciple,which is sharedby all participantsin the communication,is that "Everyact of ostensive communicationcommunicatesthe presumptionof its own optimal relevance" (Sperberand Wilson, Relevance 158). The Cognitive Principle is expressed in these two assumptionsthat the addresseewill make: (a) The ostensive stimulus is relevantenough for it to be worth the addressee'swhile to process it. (b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevantone compatiblewith the communicator'sabilities and preferences. (Sperberand Wilson, Relevance 270) Thus, relevance links cognition and communicationby establishing as a loose parameterthe drive to maximize cognitive effect while minimizing effect being established by the context. processing effort, appropriate to and According Sperber Wilson, relevance does a better job of exhow humans are plaining actually able to communicatethan do the "conversational maxims" that Paul Grice derives from what he terms the Cooperative Principle, in his seminal study Logic and Conversation (1967). They show thatrelevance is more explicit and assumes less sharedpurpose,in that communicatorsonly need to share the purpose of achieving "uptake:that is, to have the communicator'sinformative intention recognised by the audience" (Relevance 161). They also insist that relevance is intuitive, unlike Grice's maxims:whereascommunicatorsneed to learnGrice's principles"in orderto communicateadequately," they "needno more know the principleof relevance to communicatethan they need to know the principles of genetics to reproduce"(162). (Additionalvalidation of relevance theory comes from the currentassociational and parallel-distributed-processing models of cognition-see Williams.) Campbell explains that the recipient of a message arrives at inferences by a context-determinedassessment of the probability of each (146, 149-50); this is not to say that the recipient consciously calculates the probabilitiesbut that the human mind is designed automaticallyto work this way. The consultant takes that coverless book as a narrativebecause it seems to promiseadherenceto the ur-conventions. Earlyin her reading experience she can't be sure that her expectation of progressionwill be

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met, but she infers thatthis will happenbecause the two speakersseem to be engaged in a dialogue with a temporalflow and with some tensions and enigmas. In our experience, most such dialogues (at least in printed form) are going somewhere. And she can effortlessly naturalizethe dialogue. (Details about the ur-conventionsfollow in the next section.) The consultant'sinferenceaboutdevelopmentexemplifies the basic drive to maximize the relevance of an utterance,a drive which leads a listener to choose the context(s) that will achieve this end: contexts are chosen, not given (Pilkington,"PoeticEffects: A Relevance Theory Perspective"54; see also Pilkington,"Introduction" 159-60). It is the interplaybetween this drive and the correspondingdrive to minimize processing effort that accounts for the success of rhetorical strategies whose perception and interpretationrequire effort. The relevance of an utterancefor a listeneris its cognitive effect on the listener; an utterancethat requiresconsiderableeffort to process will be experienced as relevantif the effect is large. Any knowledgeable reader who sets out to read a lyric poem by Emily Dickinson expects to invest more effort than is requiredto read a typical newspaper article. But given that expectation, the Principles of Relevance apply. They apply equally to the case of specialist reading-the student in the "WeirdNovels" course, for instance. The text doesn't establish its own context; she constructsit on the basis of the course description,the syllabus, the first day's lecture, and other pertinentmaterials,so she needs to invest much less effort in actually beginning to read than does the consultant. Like some contemporary rhetoricians andall speech-acttheorists,Sperber and Wilson focus on language in use; they do not see textual characteristics as intrinsically definitive of genre types. Speech-act theory, concerned not only with locution (what is said) but with allocution(very roughly, what is meant) and perlocution (the effect of an utteranceon its audience), consistently asks "Whatis this language being used for?" For the type of text and that use begins with display. John Searle, experience we term "narrative," perhapsthe most influential speech-act theorist,treatsmeaning as primarily determinedby the use to which an utteranceis put, its illocutionary point. Searle identifies five categories of use: assertives (stating or hypothesizing that something is the case), directives (orderingor inviting someone to do something),expressives something),commissives (promisingor guaranteeing (expressing a psychological state in the context of some proposition, e.g. "I thank you"), and declarations(bringingabout the condition they name, e.g. "I pronounceyou guilty" spoken by a judge) (12-19). However, Searle says nothing aboutlanguage being used to call attentionto itself or to the speaker. This is the use that James Kinneavy identifies as "literature"-not literature as a kind of text but as one of the four "aims"of discourse (39); the other aims are reference, persuasion, and expression (39-40). I propose that the

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aims of what Kinneavy terms "expression"and "literature" are so similar that both can be combined into the single category of use, display, which demonstratesthe leading characteristicof ostension, "calling attention to" either the text or the text's produceror both. (While text and producerdo stand as discrete categories, distinguishing between the two is not always possible, nor is it really necessary-display is still the use.) Display actually comes fairly close to Searle's "directive"category,althoughit doesn't fit the examples he gives: a display is inviting an audience to notice its purpose to display itself or its maker. As a type of use, display is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a text to be taken as narrative; the display must also be associated with a state of affairs understood by the audience as intended by the "speaker"to be "tellable." This is the crucial point made by MaryLouise Pratt,who considers language from the perspective of the socially constituted actions it performs. According to Pratt, display texts, in contrast to "informing assertions," assert "statesof affairsthatare held to be unusual, contraryto expectations, or otherwise problematic;informing assertions may do so, but they do not have to, and it is not their point to do so" (136). The verb ratherthan the noun sense of display is importanthere: an audience attributesto either a text or the speakerbehindthe text the act of assertingthat a state of affairsis tellable." News and footnotes can be contrastively used to refine the notion of "display."By convention, a news "event"is unusualor problematic. A news "text" is the report of this event. But the function served by a news text depends on the extralinguisticcontext. Most people take newspaperarticles as informative, whereas the segments of 60 Minutes seem intended to be taken, and are taken, as calling in additionfor interpretationand evaluation. These are two different uses: assertive (to inform) and display (to call for or evaluation,or both). The "news"pages of a newspaperwill interpretation be read as assertives (stating that something is the case), whereas a 60 Minutes segment will be viewed as intending to elicit, from the audience, "an assignment of meaning and value." Similarly, that form of text we term the "footnote," which in an academic context usually exists only to inform, in a differentsetting can be seen as display. In Kiss of the Spider Woman,the only way most of my students can make sense of the obtrusive and obtuse footnotes is by assuming that Puig intends the informationthey present to be taken as irrelevant;the relevance of the footnotes is actually their irrelevance. As display elements, in this context, these footnote texts can be taken as making the point that academic explanationsof humanbehaviormiss the point. The ostensive stimulus in this case consists of the presence of footnotes in a context where they usually have no place, and of the resulting clash between the purposes of

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"assertion"and "display."Puig's act of placing such footnotes in a narrative is an ostension; readersbehavingrationallywill assume thatPuig had a rational purpose in using them, so a reader's question becomes "How can I take these footnotes in orderto preservemy sense of rationalpurposeand optimal relevance in this communicationof which I am a part?" One plausible answer is to "take them" as intending not to be taken at all, hence to cease reading them-as some of my students do. This action on the part of my studentsprobablyhas thematicrelevance, since the novel thematizes sexual and textual politics; students' evaluation and rejection of the footnotes becomes a political act of which Puig himself might have approved. In the terms used by Sperberand Wilson, the display text conveys an ostension that "makes manifest an intention to" display. For a text to be taken as narrative,this display must be interpretedas having an additional of the problematicevent, purpose,to invite, as Prattputsit, "aninterpretation an assignmentof meaning and value supportedby the consensus"of speaker and audience (136). This mutualunderstanding is "socially constituted";it takes place within a context thathas been selected to privilege narrativeand thus establishes the relevance of a text deemed to be narrative. In orderto take Kiss of the Spider Woman as narrative,both the studentand the consultant must come to the conclusion that this text is calling attentionto itself in orderalso to call attentionto an unusualstate of affairs. Having reachedthis conclusion, both readerswill then expect the text to adhereto the ur-conventions of naturalization and progression,as I show in the next section. Pratt'semphasis on interpretation does not mean that an audience must understandthe interpretation intendedby the speaker,only that the audience will take such an intention as present. The understandingcomes about because eitherspeakerandaudienceor text andaudiencesharean "extralinguistic institution"-for instance, the "literature" section of a bookstore-and because the Cognitive and CommunicativePrinciplesarein force. "Something a little strange,that's what you notice"-for both Valentin(the listener) and the reader,this statementof Molina's strongly signals tellability. The statement by "A. R.-G." that prefaces In the Labyrinthfunctions the same way, althoughenigmatically:"Thereaderis thereforerequestedto see in [this narrative]only the objects, actions,words, and events which aredescribed,without attemptingto give them eithermore or less meaning thanin his own life, or his own death"(140). But even without that statement,the novel's opening sentence conveys a sense of a state of affairs that the voice deems interesting: "I am alone here now, undercover" (141, emphasis added).
NATURALIZATION AND PROGRESSION

Display, then, is a category of illocutionaryact; as manifestedin written texts, this act will be located within what Searle terms "extralinguisticinsti-

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tutions"(18) such as a bookstore, a course, the features section of a newspaper, a Beastie Boys concert. The display act will be termed successful if the act's recipient accepts the locution, the text, as a display; that is, "display" becomes part of the context selected by the recipient in order to maximize cognitive effect, a maximizing that leads to the kinds of activities described by Pratt:contemplating, evaluating, and responding. All narrativebelongs to that kind of language use termed display. To this necessary contextual condition must be added another,that of tellability: the narrativetext is of interest because it representsan unusualor problematicstate of affairs. This interpretive context established,the readerwill then expect the reading experience to fulfill the ur-conventionsof narrative. In 1981 Susan S. but also recomLanser noted the single ur-conventionof "naturalization" mended thatmore work be done on "theconventions that govern the sending and receiving of display texts" (287). In Rhetorical Narratology I added "authorialreading" and "progression"but now deem the former unnecesChapter2.) sary, as I will explain shortly. (See Rhetorical Narratologvy, These ur-conventions define what an audience will expect having decided to approacha text as a narrative-not features that can be objectively proven to exist within the text but conditions that will exist in the interaction andreinforced by text, andcontextandthatareusuallystimulated amongreader, and a markedcase can be textualfeatures. For each convention,an unmarked described,the formerbeing what is conventionallyexpected and the latterrequiringan audienceto shift "the routineboundarybetween automaticversus 58). Becausethe CognitiveandCommuni(Beaugrande attentional processing" cative Principlesof Relevanceare alwaysin force, the audiencewill attemptto maximize cognitive uptakeand minimizeprocessingeffort,but the acceptable on whether level of effortchangesdepending on theselectedcontextanddepending In either as marked. Rhetorical the audience experiences ur-convention in understanding the rhetorical NarratologyI assertedthatmarkingis important technique,an assertionthat I now argue effect of various aspects of narrative is being of Relevance. Thatwhichis marked mustbe grounded on the Principles processedwith conscious attentionand must be experiencedas justifying,with greatercognitive effect, this additionalcognitive effort. I originallybelieved thatauthorialreadingconstituteda separateur-condition, but if I'm now correct that the Principles of Relevance establish the thenI feel compelledto avail myself for narrative andnarrativity, preconditions of Occam's Razor and pare away authorialreadingfrom the list. According to Peter Rabinowitz, to read authoriallyis to seek for authorialintention, understoodas "social convention"ratherthan as what the actualauthormight be known or presumedto have intended;it is to accept "the author'sinvitation to read a particularsocially constitutedway that is sharedby the author and his or her readers"(22). To read authoriallyis to expect that the text is

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tellable-that it is being offered as worth the reader'seffort-and to take the display quality as intended. But these reading strategies are fundamentally expressions of the Communicativeand Cognitive Principles of Relevance, which by assertingthat"communicativeintent"is assumedin any communication remove the necessity for any additionalreference to an authoras authorizing thatintent. I will still occasionally use the term"authorial reading" but will do so only to indicate one of the rhetoricaleffects of narrative-the reader's inference that a particularelement of the text or aspect of the reading experience was planned. I originally described a "markedcase" for authorialreading:the reader experiences the author,not the narrating voice, as requiringtoo much cognitive effort or as offering too little cognitive payback. For example, the narratedevents might not seem "tellable,"or the authormight seem to lack control over genre or usage conventions, so thatreaderswould be unableto infer the presence of a coherentintention. I arguedthatreadersinterpretmarking to mean that they should be engaging in some sort of interpretivework that the author really intended, that they should locate a context to justify this cognitive effort. By the CommunicativePrinciple, if they can't so engage, the text has falsely communicated"the presumptionof its own optimal relevance," which means that the author has failed. I now regardthis interpretive appeal to an author(or to some type of authorizingfunction, after the manner of Foucault in his essay "WhatIs an Author?")as unnecessary. In order for the narrative-reading frame to be activated, the Principles of Relevance must alreadybe met. If the combinationof text, reader,and context results in the readerfeeling that the text is communicating"the presumption of its own optimalrelevance,"thatthe readingexperience is worthpursuing, has createdwhateverin or aroundthe text serves and that a "communicator" as the "ostensive stimulus"-if all of these conditions arepresent,the reader can then engage in whatever type of reading activity she or he feels is most likely to maximize cognitive uptakeandminimize processingeffort. A reader may indeed decide to read authorially(as described above), but this isn't a necessary outcome. The consultantcan concentrate strictly on the experience that she's having with her found text, organizingthat experience so that it pays conceptualdividends,withoutworryingany more aboutintentionthan she does with her initial determinationthat the text representssomebody's ostensive production. Although the Principles of Relevance obviate the need for the ur-convention of authorialreading,the othertwo ur-conventionsremainnecessary. Naturalization, as defined by Lanser, is the convention that "the text will permit the creation of a coherent and human, if hypothetical,world" (113). Lanser's use of the term builds on JonathanCuller's well-known definition: a "recuperating" of "the strange, the formal, the fictional" into something

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which can "speakto us" (134). My use of the term continues this evolution by incorporating two points made by MonikaFludernik:she links naturalization to "theframe conception of storytelling"in which all stories have narrators, and she arguesthatpartof the experience of narrativeincludes "human immundation"or embodiment(47, 311, 341). However, I believe that naturalizationcan be best understoodif placed within the standardnarratological conception of "the narrated" and "the narrating" (also frequentlyreferredto as "story" and "discourse"-see Chatman). This seems to be where Fludernik'sseveral uses are headed, although she doesn't make an explicit connection. For the ur-conventionof naturalization to hold, the qualities of coherence and humannessnoted by Lansermust apply not only to the story world (the narrated)but to the realm within which the discourse takes place (the narrating).The unmarked case of naturalization is definedby the reader's experience: if the reader automaticallyexperiences coherence and humanness in both of these realms, the readerwon't notice the presence of this urconvention. The codes evoked by the narrativewill be very close to those with which the readerlives or will be familiar to the reader as conventional for the work's genre; the readerwill not be broughtconsciously to attend to these codes; the narratingwill be sufficiently conventional that the reader won't question whethernarratingis actually taking place in the mannerrepresented by the text. The codes are those that structurethe presentationand reception of action, character,and culture-Roland Barthes'proairetic,semic, and referential. (See S/Z 17-20.) These contributeto the situationalcontext within which a reader will receive a narrative;by the Cognitive Principle of Relevance they determinethe reader'sassessmentof the ostensive stimulusboth as worth processingand as "themost relevantone compatiblewith the communicator's abilities and preferences"(SperberandWilson, Relevance 270). For example, a character'sdefining traits are expected to remain fairly constant; if they change, the readerexpects a plausibleexplanation. Likewise, we expect some characters'morals to be reflected in their countenancesor else to be the inverse of what the countenances reveal. We don't expect someone with a hooked nose, beady eyes, and grasping hands (Charles Dickens's Fagin) to have a heartof gold, althoughif this turnsout to be the case, we can accommodate that violation because we know thatit's partof the display quality of narrativesto play such tricks. The unmarkedcase requires little cognitive effort; the most easily accessed context is the appropriateone-taking the text's world as identical to the world the readeroccupies and taking the narratingas conventional for the chosen context. The studentin the WeirdNovels course automaticallytakes the opening of Kiss of the Spider Woman as a novel because of that context, even thoughthe text readslike a scriptwithout speaker tags-at least, she will do so if she accepts that context. As she

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proceeds, whether she is able similarly to process the text's several violations of its own rules for the narratingwill depend on her own individual flexibility and predilections as a reader;however, because the narratedremains consistent, it might be safe to predict that her reading experience will not be overly troubledby those violations. Markingwill require the reader to searchfor a contextin whichthe marked element is relevantandmustjustify this extracognitive effort in orderfor the reader to deem the experience worthwhile. Two main "marked"cases of can be identified. The first, located within the narrated, occurs naturalization when the reader notices that a code is being transgressed:for example, a in a character'snotable featureschangein unaccountableways, or characters painting suddenly become partof the narrative'sworld. The second, within the narrating,occurs when the reader is invited to notice that a particular code is being applied,for instance when a characteris made so stereotypical as to seem overtly constructed,or (as in Kiss of the Spider Woman)when a new type of text (footnotes, tagged transcriptsof dialogue) intrudes. These examples, however, are not meantto suggest that markingmust be triggered by textual features; it may be linked to such features but is defined by a reader's experiences. Furthermore,one reader may feel that the narrated world is being marked,while anothermay feel thatthe same text is marking a convention of narrating. The Principles of Relevance do not provide a formulafor exactly describingor predictinghow a given readerwill interact with a given text-they are principles, not rules. Neither of these cases necessarily disrupts the process of reading. As long as nothing in the reading experience causes a readerto suspect that the Communicative Principle of Relevance no longer holds, the readerwill be able to accommodate either case in a coherent and human world-one in which narrating acts "really" takeplace even thoughthe acts themselvesevoke a world which violates one or several codes. A paradigmaticexample of both cases is In the Labyrinth.This novel's characters andevents arejumbled almost as if the authoris working with discrete pieces that he combines, shuffles, recombines, shuffles again, and so forthuntil the end. Linearchronology is not to be found here, nor are causal chains, although some individualpieces can be takenas connectingcausally. The unnamedsoldierseems a collection of cliches: unshaven, wounded, monosyllabic, doggedly loyal. Also, the narratingvoice seems to change his mind about what to tell and how to tell it: [The soldier] notices at this momentthatthe dooris ajar:door,hallway, door, vestibule, door, then finally a lighted room, and a table with an empty glass with a circle of dark-redliquid still at the bottom, and a lame man leaning on his crutch,bending forwardin a precariousbal-

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ance. No. Door ajar. Hallway. Staircase. Womanrunningfrom floor to floor up the spiralstaircase,hergrayapronbillowing abouther. Door. And finally a lighted room: bed, chest, fireplace, table with a lamp on its left corner,and the lampshadecasting a white circle on the ceiling. No. Above the chest is a printframedin black wood ... No. No. No. The door is not ajar. (194) To naturalizethis text, a readermay place it within a context thatemphasizes the act of narrating ratherthanthe applicationof widely sharedconventions of coherence; this passage can be taken as a moment in a story about trying to narratethe soldier's story. This context, because it has been chosen by the reader,justifies the extra effort required,at least up to a point. Now, imagine a text set up like The Kiss of the Spider Woman(lacking speech tags and all othernarrativemediation)in which neithercharactertells any stories and in which each voice speaks words that the audience knows to be randomlygenerated. A theorist might, perversely,try to find a narrative within this text, but no ordinary,fluent reader would invest effort in that activity:the context within which a readerencountersthe text (say, a preface stating that it has been randomlygenerated)means that the text overtly violates the CommunicativePrincipleof Relevance, and unless the random-generation process has produced a coherent text, the Cognitive Principle will also be violated-an incoherenttext won't be deemed worthprocessing by a reader. But if the voices interactand if the extralinguisticsituationis one in which narrativemay occur, the possibility exists for-and the audience will expect-progression, some kind of curve in the interaction, some purpose that develops and is or is not fulfilled. If the audience chooses the narrativereadingcontext as most relevantto this experience, the audience will expect the narrativeto move throughtime in termsof the events of the narrative(the story) or in terms of the events of the narrating(the discourse), or both. I takethe termprogressionfrom the subtitleof JamesPhelan'sReadingPeople, Reading Plots; progression is driven by a narrative'sinstabilities. Phelan differentiates between "two main kinds of instabilities: the first are those occurringwithin the story,instabilitiesbetween characters,createdby situations, and complicated and resolved throughactions. The second are those createdby the discourse, instabilities-of value, belief, opinion, knowledge, on the one hand, and the auexpectation-between authorsand/ornarrators, thorialaudience on the other"(15). The first type Phelan terms instabilities; the second he labels tensions; I adoptthis useful distinction. The unmarkedcase of progressionis the presence of instabilities and the absence of tensions. When we teach studentsin an introduction-to-literature course about conflict and plot, we are mainly just formalizing what they already know about how narrativesfunction-any narrative,literary or not,

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must have conflicts. Instabilities are basic to a narrative'stellability, the reason for its display: the "state of affairs" must be "unusual,contraryto expectations, or otherwise problematic."Obviously,althoughprogressionis it too is influenced by context. "Unmore "in"the text thanis naturalization, are not transcendentqualities but depend on exusual" and "problematic" pectations, which dependon context. A readerwho knows before beginning Kiss of the Spider Womanthat Molina and Valentinare cellmates in prison may immediately determinethat an instability is present having to do with these two characters,but even a readerlacking this knowledge will almost certainly have her interestpiqued by the enigmas in Molina's descriptionof the girl and "hersubject." The lack of instabilities can interfere with the processing of a text as narrative,althoughif tension is present, narrativitymay be salvaged. If we read somethingthatwe expect to be a narrativebut thatsimply presentscharacters going their daily rounds,with no conflicts of any sort, we might cease to read, because the effort requiredeven to read superficially pays no dividend of effect. Such a text would lack tellability. However, a readerwho is familiar with and sympatheticto contemporarywriting's many formal experiments could take the text as a sophisticatedexample of what speech-act theoriststermflouting,a violationof a conventionthatconveys by its ostension that the violation is purposeful. If such a reader took the apparently unconflicted text thatway, the readermight see the overt lack of instabilities as intended to invoke a tension between an insipid narrativeaudience (willing to plod througha sequenceof wholly predictableevents) and an authorial audiencethatis awareof life's complications. Whenevera narrator expresses or implies values contraryto those that can be inferredabout the (intended) exists for readersto experience a tension. authorialaudience,the opportunity for this predictabletext, the narrating voice Within the world of the narrated is implicitly speaking to an audience for whom this text satisfies the Principles of Relevance (in Rabinowitz's terminology, the narrativeaudience); otherwise there would be no text. Readers are predisposed to search their interpretivestrategies and their language experience for a context that will make the text relevant, but the effort requiredby this search must always be justified by the resulting effect. Again, the reader versed in contemporary avant-gardenarrativemay experience a tension when the narratingvoice engages in some verbal act that can be plausibly taken as destroying relevance within the world occupied by that voice while the text as a whole can be taken as communicatingsomethingof thematicvalue to the actualreader. Lyn Hejinian's experimentalautobiographyMy Life is an excellent example of a text that flouts most if not all narrativeconventions and yet is experienced by some readersas narrative. The opening sentence suggests a temporal structure:"A moment yellow, just as four years later, when my fa-

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ther returnedhome from the war, the moment of greeting him, as he stood at the bottomof the stairs,younger,thinnerthanwhen he had left, was purplethoughmoments are no longer so colored"(7). Occasionally other sentences similarly suggest a "then." This existence of a then and a now constitutes what some theorists consider the minimum criterionfor a narrative(see for example Prince 4). However, no instabilities manifest themselves, although one is hinted at by the difference between a time when moments had color and the presenttime when they don't. Because the ur-conventionof progression must be met, readerswho want to treatthis documentas a narrativemust find a tension, for instance between its minimalist, self-aware narratingand narratingof a typical autobiography. the dense, often putatively transparent Or readersmay note such textual phenomenaas a gradualmovement from, early in the text, relatively more evocations of a child's life to, later, more evocations of an adult's life; this can be taken as a progression that results from a tension between conventional chronology and this indirect suggestion of a temporalmovement. Obviously,readingMy Life in this way requiresconsiderableeffort. The consultantmight be less likely to read past the first page if it were My Life thatshe found. The text can be taken as ratherthanKiss of the Spider Woman a narrative,one thatis happeningratherthanbeing told by the voice(s) in the text-happening almost in spite of the text. The narrating,such as it is, can be naturalized:My Life can be looked at as a written record of Hejinian's reflections on her life, a record that consists of raw materials that haven't been edited into conventional narrativeform. A readercan also experience progression. The tellability of the narrativethen becomes something like this: "Conventionalautobiographicalnarrativeslose the reality and immediacy of a personreflecting on her life, whereas My Life's form is more honest." The text contains, albeit minimally,one featurethat is typical of narrative (the presence of "then"and "now"),but the decision to notice this feareadingframeis the reader's-the reader tureandto place it within a narrative must choose this context and must invest considerableeffort to process the text in this way.
CONCLUSIONS: RELEVANCE, RHETORIC, NARRATIVE

Sperberand Wilson state that "therationalway to go about interpreting an utterance, or any other ostensive stimulus, is to follow a path of least effort and stop at the first interpretationthat satisfies one's expectation of relevance" (Relevance 272). By "rational"they mean "assuming that the utteranceis intended to have an effect," and as I've explained, "least effort" is a relative not an absolute measure. Some kinds of text processing require more effort or a different type of effort than others, and readers know this when they enter into one of those types. The audience of a narrativewill

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expect to experience naturalizationand progression, and if one of these is "marked" (broughtto the audience'sattention),the CommunicativePrinciple of Relevance will lead the audienceto assume thatthe markingis purposeful. The marking is assumed to result from a rational attempt to communicate something; making this assumption then enables the audience to proceed without having to stop every few moments and re-evaluate. A numberof theorists have attemptedto explain how relevance theory applies to literarytexts-for apply it must, if the Principlesof Relevance are indeed universal. Adrian Pilkington, for example, persuasively argues that "poetic effects" result when a reader "weakly access[es] a wide range of implicatures"("LiteraryReading Process" 122). JonathanCulpeperargues equally persuasively against this position (44). Regarding the jury as still deliberating, I follow the lead of recent speech-act theory and discount the distinction between literaryand non-literarynarrative;instead, I treatnarrative in the widest possible sense, consideringtraitsof all narrative experiences rather thanjust one category, andincludingthe vastfield of suchexperiencesfor with specific outcomes. which no clear rules exist thatlink specific utterances this field-one of the fundamental tasksof rhetoric-is madepossible Charting withthe Principles of Relevance(Sperber andWilson,"Rhetoric andRelevance" 149). The Principlescan servethis purposebecausethey establishthe enabling conditionsfor all such interaction. Theoristssuch as AlasdairMacIntyre,Stanley HauerwasandL. Gregory Jones, and Michael McGuirehave attemptedto explain how rhetoricalprinciples inform the fundamentalrole played by narrativein humanexperience. Hauerwasand Jones summarizerecent argumentsfor the narrativecontribution to epistemology, suggesting that "rationality, methods of argument,and historical explanation have, at least to some extent, a fundamentallynarrative form" (3-4). MacIntyreoffers the "centralthesis" that "man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-tellinganimal. He is not essentially, but becomes throughhis history,a teller of stories that aspire to truth"(101). MacIntyregoes on to say that because personal identity is bound up with narrative,intelligibility, and accountability,one's moral identity exists within the communities,hence within the narratives,to which a person belongs (103-4, 106). According to McGuire, "a general
rhetorical theory of narrative . .. raises . .. questions of how narrative as a

form has potentials to inform and persuadethat differ from other language forms" (221). McGuire discusses a sociology and a grammarof narrative and concludes that "a dialectical relationshipexists between narrativesand attitudesor beliefs" (234). WalterFisher combines most of the key points made by Hauerwasand Jones, MacIntyre,and McGuireinto a sweeping "narrative paradigm"with the following presuppositions:

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1. Humansare essentially storytellers. 2. The definitive modes of human decision and action are good reasons, which vary in form among situations,genre, and media of communication.

3. The productionand use of good reasons are ruled by mattersof history, culture,and characteralong with the specific constraintsof time and place of presentation. 4. Rationalityis groundedin the natureof persons as narrativebeings, in their inherentawareness of narrativecoherence-whether or not a story hangs together-and narrativefidelity-whether or not the stories they experience ring trueto the stories they know or believe to be true. 5.The world as we live it is a series of stories that must be chosen among in orderfor us to live life in a process of continualre-creation. Reason, and Community"206) ("Narration, Fisher can be criticized for not defining and using his terms with care. as "a conceptual frame that would acFor instance, he defines "narration" count for the 'stories' we tell each other-whether such 'stories' are in the form of argumentation,narration,exposition, or esthetic writings and perspectives" (205). But to say that our experiences are structuredby stories and thatwe are "essentially storytellers"is not to say that every verbal act is an act of narration.Or, again, he refers to a particular plot as "respectfor the dignity and worthof all people" (215), but this use of the term "plot"ignores the ur-conventionof progression, which must result from tensions or instabilities. Fisher's definition of "narrative coherence"as "hangingtogether"a definition that seems text-based--does not fit well with the three types of coherence he identifies (structural,material, and characterological), all of which are defined in relation to extratextualelements (207). The ur-conventionsof naturalizationand progression actually help rescue Fisher's project by providing more precision to the key elements of his paradigm(good reasons, coherence, and fidelity) and thus lending credibility to his fundamentalassertions that "humancommunication in all of its forms is imbued with mythos-ideas thatcannotbe verified or proved in any absolute way," that"mythoshas cognitive as well as aesthetic significance,"
and that "humans as rhetorical beings are as much valuing as reasoning animals" (Human Communication 19, 57, Fisher's emphasis). For Fisher

and others who attemptto synthesize narrative'ssociological, cognitive, and the Principlesof Relevance philosophicallinks within a rhetoricalframework, establish the conditions under which humanbeings experience and seek out narration,rationality,good reasons, and moral identity. Following Sperber and Wilson, I argue that the precondition for any of these activities is the

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assumptionof relevance and thatthe first step in any linguistic interactionis to seek a context that provides the appropriate balance of effort and effect; without this first step, there can be no principled exploration of identity or community. McGuire is correct that the process is dialectical and that no theory can establish precisely to what result the Principles will lead in any given situation-a universallyacceptable"grammar of relevance"will probably never be designed. But this is not a reason for ignoring their constitutive function. Fisher's second and third presuppositions,regardingthe role, production, and use of good reasons, don't explain how it is that humans know to look for or expect good reasons in the first place or how the value of a reason is assessed. "Ruledby mattersof history,culture, and characteralong with the specific constraintsof time and place of presentation"and "varyin form among situations, genre, and media of communication"-these descriptions apply to an individualperson makinga decision, but as soon as communication among people becomes partof the process, which must happenaccording to all of these theorists,relevance automaticallyenters the picture. Two people will know without verbalizing it that they're seeking a good reason for an action; they know this not just because good reasons are "the definitive modes" as Fisher says but because in the particular communicationsituation the searchfor a good reasonis relevant. Thus, I would qualify Fisher's
fourth presupposition by saying that rationality is grounded in the nature of persons as relevance-seeking beings.

Why humans are this way-why we engage in display acts within situational contexts that signal "Let me tell you a story"-remains a mystery. (For evolutionary speculations,see Kearns,"ReadingNovels," and Abbott). Whatever the cause, the Cognitive and Communicative Principles of Relevance will result in a text being initially taken as a narrativeas long as it
exists in a situational context allowing people mutually to understand that the communicator's behavior is oriented toward telling a story; given this

context, the unmarkedcases of the ur-conventionsconstitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for an audienceto continueto take the text as narrative. These unmarkedcases are not essentially established by textual features but by the rhetoricalinteractionbetween text and audience. The same is true for any type of text or context: argument,exposition, confession, and so forth:the Principlesof Relevancewill establishthe conditionsunderwhich the text will be processed.'
Department of Humanities and Fine Arts The University of Texas of the Permian Basin

Notes I Thanks to James Phelan, Peter Rabinowitz, and anonymous reviewers for RhetoricSociety Quarterlyfor helpful comments on earlierversions of this article. Works Cited Abbott,H. Porter. "TheEvolutionaryOrigins of the StoriedMind: Modeling the Prehistoryof Narrative Consciousnessandits Discontents."Narrative8 (2000): 247-56. Barthes,Roland. S/Z. Transl.RichardMiller. New York:Hill and Wang, 1974. Beaugrande,Robert de. "Schemas for LiteraryCommunication." In Literary Discourse: Aspects of Cognitive and Social Psychological Approaches. Ed. Laszlo Hhlasz. Berlin and New York:Walterde Gruyter,1987. 49-99. Blakemore,Diane. "Relevance,PoeticEffectsandSocial Goals:A Reply to Culpepper." Language and Literature3 (1994): 49-59. . Semantic Constraintson Relevance. Oxford and New York:Blackwell, 1987. Campbell,J. L. "AnApplied Relevance Theory of the Making and Understandingof RhetoricalArguments."Language and Communication12 (1992): 145-55. Chatman,Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structurein Fiction and Film. Ithacaand London:Cornell UniversityPress, 1978. Paul M. Matterand Consciousness:A Contemporary Churchland, Introductionto the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge,MassachusettsandLondon, England:The MIT Press, 1984. Culler, Jonathan. StructuralistPoetics: Structuralism,Linguistics and the Study of Literature. Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1975. Culpepper,Jonathan. "Why Relevance Theory Does not Explain 'The Relevance of Reformulations."' Language and Literature3 (1994): 43-48. Enkvist, Nils Erik. "Textand Discourse Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Stylistics." Discourse and Literature. Ed. TeunA. van Dijk. Amsterdamand Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1985. Fisher,WalterR. HumanCommunication as Narration:Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, andAction. Columbia,SouthCarolina: Universityof SouthCarolina Press, 1987. . "Narration, Reason, and Community." Writingthe Social Text:Poetics and Politics in Social Science Discourse. Ed. RichardHarvey Brown. New York: De Gruyter,1992. 199-217. ' Narratology. London and New York: Fludernik, Monika. Towardsa "Natural Routledge, 1996. Foucault,Michel. "WhatIs anAuthor?" 1969. Trans.DonaldF. Bouchardand Sherry Simon. ContemporaryLiterary Criticism:Literaryand Cultural Studies. 2nd edition. Ed. Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York and London:Longman, 1989. 263-75. Grice, Paul. Studiesin the Wayof Words.CambridgeandLondon:HarvardUniversity Press, 1989. Hejinian,Lyn. My Life. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1987. Jahn, Manfred. "Frames,Preferences,and the Reading of Third-PersonNarratives: Towarda Cognitive Narratology."Poetics Today18 (1997): 441-68.

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Kearns,Michael. "ReadingNovels: Towarda Cognitive Rhetoric." RhetoricSociety Quarterly26 (1996): 17-30. . RhetoricalNarratology. Lincoln:University of NebraskaPress, 1999. y NarHauerwas,Stanley and L. GregoryJones. "Introduction: Why Narrative?"Wh rative: Readings in NarrativeTheology. Ed. Stanley HauerwasandL. Gregory Jones. GrandRapids,Michigan:Eerdmans,1989. 1-18. Kinneavy,James L. A Theoryof Discourse: TheAims of Discourse. New York and London:Norton, 1971. Lanser,Susan Sniader. TheNarrativeAct: Point of Viewin Prose Fiction. Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1981. MacIntyre,Alasdair. "TheVirtues,the Unity of a HumanLife, and the Concept of a Tradition." WhyNarrative:Readings in Narrative Theology. Ed. Stanley HauerwasandL. GregoryJones. GrandRapids,Michigan:Eerdmans,1989. 89-110. McGuire, Michael. "The Rhetoric of Narrative:A Hermeneutic Critical Theory." Narrative Thought andNarrativeLanguage. Ed. Bruce K. BrittonandA. D. Pellegrini. Hillsdale:LawrenceErlbaum,1990. 219-36. Phelan, James. Reading People, Reading Plots: Charactei;Progression, and the Interpretationof Narrative. Chicago and London:The Universityof Chicago Press, 1989. Pilkington, Adrian. "The LiteraryReading Process: A Relevance Theory Perspective." Empirical Studies of Literature:Proceedings of the Second IGEL1989. Ed. ElrudIbsch,Dick Schram,GerardSteen. Amsterdam, Conference, AmsterdamandAtlanta,Georgia:Rodopi, 1991. 117-123. "PoeticEffects:A RelevanceTheoryPerspective."LiteraryPragmatics.Ed. Roger D. Sell. London and New York:Routledge, 1991. 44-61. Pratt,MaryLouise. Toward a SpeechAct Theoryof LiteraryDiscourse. Bloomington and London:IndianaUniversityPress, 1977. Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioningof Narrative. Berlin, New York,Amsterdam:Mouton, 1982. Puig, Manuel. Kiss of the Spider Woman.Transl.Thomas Colchie. New York:Vintage, 1991. Rabinowitz,Peter. Before Reading:Narrative Conventionsand the Politics of Interpretation. Ithacaand London:Cornell UniversityPress, 1987. Robbe-Grillet,Alain. In the Labyrinth. Transl.RichardHoward. New York:Grove Press, 1960. Searle, John. Expressionand Meaning: Studies in the Theoryof SpeechActs. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1979. and Cognition. OxSperber,Dan and DierdreWilson. Relevance: Communication ford, Englandand Cambridge,Mass.: Blackwell, 1995. . "Rhetoricand Relevance." TheEnds of Rhetoric. Ed. John Bender and David E. Wellbery. Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press, 1990. 140-55. Williams, James D. "Rule-Governed Approaches to Language and Composition." WrittenCommunication10 (1993): 542-68.