I think people information trading, and coordinating are good reasons for why humans evolved language, but I think that signaling gives a stronger explanation for why “casual” conversations happen so often.
Why do you think the signaling interpretation doesn’t fully explain why relevance is necessary? Your hypothesis, norms for language evolving for efficiency, makes sense to me but doesn’t strike me as being a more important factor than signaling.
I think people information trading, and coordinating are good reasons for why humans evolved language, but I think that signalling gives a stronger explanation for why “casual” conversations happen so often.
That sounds reasonable. I still think there’s more going on in casual conversation than signalling, as evidenced by signalling in conversation getting called out as “bragging” or “humble bragging” or “flexing”, indicating that people would like you to do less signalling and more of whatever else casual conversation is used for.
Why do you think the signalling interpretation doesn’t fully explain why relevance is necessary?
I think it the best argument against signalling fully explaining relevance is that there are situations where signalling is pointless or impossible, this happens between people who know each other very well as any attempt to signal in those cases would either be pointless or immediately called out. However, relevance is almost a universal property of all conversation and the norm rarely if ever breaks down. (Unless you’re dealing with people who are really high, but I would explain this as a consequence of these people no longer being able to keep track of context even if they wanted to.)
I think people information trading, and coordinating are good reasons for why humans evolved language, but I think that signaling gives a stronger explanation for why “casual” conversations happen so often.
Why do you think the signaling interpretation doesn’t fully explain why relevance is necessary? Your hypothesis, norms for language evolving for efficiency, makes sense to me but doesn’t strike me as being a more important factor than signaling.
That sounds reasonable. I still think there’s more going on in casual conversation than signalling, as evidenced by signalling in conversation getting called out as “bragging” or “humble bragging” or “flexing”, indicating that people would like you to do less signalling and more of whatever else casual conversation is used for.
I think it the best argument against signalling fully explaining relevance is that there are situations where signalling is pointless or impossible, this happens between people who know each other very well as any attempt to signal in those cases would either be pointless or immediately called out. However, relevance is almost a universal property of all conversation and the norm rarely if ever breaks down. (Unless you’re dealing with people who are really high, but I would explain this as a consequence of these people no longer being able to keep track of context even if they wanted to.)