 Because of its preference provision, Optimal Relevance does not clash with Politeness and Style the way Maximal Relevance does. The parents may say “Your performance wasn’t perfect” rather than “It was horrendous” because they strongly prefer not to hurt their daughter’s  feelings.[64]  This means, however, that Optimal Relevance would not predict that Barb meant I am not going to Paul’s party in  (1)  even if it is relevant enough to process and more relevant than the other alternatives. For Barb might have preferred to dodge Alan’s question. In  (2),  Don may have preferred an ironic utterance to ones with higher E/C ratios (Millikan 1987: 725).