 By ‘ostensive’ relevance theorists make reference to the ‘overt’ or ‘public’ nature of the speaker’s communicative intentions in acts of communication. Communication will be successful (i.e., understanding will occur) when the addressee recognizes those intentions. This process is mostly inferential and it has costs. So, the addressee would not start the inferential process without a presumption that it will report her some benefits, that is, without a presumption that the input is not only relevant, but as relevant as it can, ceteris paribus. Then, when someone utters something with a communicative purpose, she does it, according to relevance theory, with the presumption of optimal relevance, which states that