I think that this is one reason why people have conversations, but there are many others.
Things like:
-Information trading
-Coordinating
-Manipulating
-etc...
However, I like that you pointed out that relevance is important in conversations. That’s something I find myself taking for granted but is actually kind of weird when you think about it. I don’t think signalling fully explains why relevance is necessary. I’ll put forth an alternative hypothesis:
I think conversations having a requirement for being relevant is a consequence of language being an efficient code for communicating information that also efficiently uses and changes working memory. When you talk about something, you often need a good deal of background context to get these ideas across. This can manifest itself at the lowest levels of abstraction as the need to decipher homonyms and homophones, and at the highest level when understanding why someone would want to “blow up the plane”. Keeping track of this context eats up working memory. If you switch topics frequently, you’ll either have to keep track of multiple smaller contexts, or waste your time wiping and repopulating working memory after every context switch. However, by tackling one topic at a time and moving smoothly between related topics, all working memory can be devoted to keeping track of the conversation, and you only need to partially recontextualize infrequently.
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 that this is one reason why people have conversations, but there are many others.
Things like:
-Information trading
-Coordinating
-Manipulating
-etc...
However, I like that you pointed out that relevance is important in conversations. That’s something I find myself taking for granted but is actually kind of weird when you think about it. I don’t think signalling fully explains why relevance is necessary. I’ll put forth an alternative hypothesis:
I think conversations having a requirement for being relevant is a consequence of language being an efficient code for communicating information that also efficiently uses and changes working memory. When you talk about something, you often need a good deal of background context to get these ideas across. This can manifest itself at the lowest levels of abstraction as the need to decipher homonyms and homophones, and at the highest level when understanding why someone would want to “blow up the plane”. Keeping track of this context eats up working memory. If you switch topics frequently, you’ll either have to keep track of multiple smaller contexts, or waste your time wiping and repopulating working memory after every context switch. However, by tackling one topic at a time and moving smoothly between related topics, all working memory can be devoted to keeping track of the conversation, and you only need to partially recontextualize infrequently.
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.)