HOW DO WE DECIDE WHAT'S RELEVANT IN OUR CONVERSATIONS?

The answer: we pick up what is really reeeeeelevant!

Relevance theory may be seen as an attempt to work out in detail one of Grice’s central claims: that an essential feature of most human communication is the expression and recognition of intentions (Grice 1989: Essays 1-7, 14, 18; Retrospective Epilogue). In elaborating this claim, Grice laid the foundations for an inferential model of communication, an alternative to the classical code model.