Page 56 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

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34 Vladimir Zegarac

to inform the addressee/audience of something. Comprehension is an inference
(i.e. reasoning) process which takes the evidence presented by the communi-
cative act (i.e. an ostensive stimulus) and the context as inputs, and yields inter-
pretations as outputs. These tenets of Relevance Theory are illustrated by the
following examples of (inter-cultural) communication:

(1) A British family had lived in an African country for several years. They had
become familiar with the local language and culture. After the break-out of
civil war in the region, they were forced to leave the country. Before leaving,
they accepted the local peoples’ offer of help and asked them to try and “res-
cue” some of their “special things”. Quite some time later, they were some-
what surprised to find that their TV set and video recorder were the main res-
cued items.

In this case, the British participants did not take account of the context (i.e. the
set of assumptions) in which their interlocutors would interpret the phrase
“special things”, despite their knowledge of the local culture (most likely, be-
cause they had to divide their attention between several pressing concerns,
which made them revert to their more intuitive cultural mindset). 2
In other instances of miscommunication, the intended interpretation is rec-
ognized, but it is not accepted. Consider Example (2):

(2) [The following is an extract from an interview with Haldun Aydingün, the
author of the book The Divorced Man, described in the Cyprus Turkish Air-
lines’ in-flight magazine Caretta (September 2005) as “an entertaining look
at the institution of marriage, how the institution and, more importantly, a
break with this institution, affects men and their behaviour”.]

Interviewer:
You make allusions to the male make-up and even say, “I wish the male body had a
control button that would suppress sexual impulses”. On the other hand, it is clear
that you value faithfulness and the institution of marriage. Aren’t these two some-
what contradictory?
Interviewee:
No, not in the manner you have just described. What I was trying to communicate
here was the fact that the male sexual impulse was very basic, a need that had to be
met. If sexuality is expressed in a healthy way in marriage then there is a chance that
marriage and faithfulness can be non-contradictory.

The interviewee’s intention to communicate that he holds modern views on
gender relations is very salient in the interview from which this excerpt is taken.
However, rather than accepting this message, many (Western European) readers
will be more convinced by the inadvertently produced evidence of the intervie-