R-A-C-C Framework: A Pragma-cognitive Study Of Biblical Metaphor Interpretation

The book Bible has long been considered as the scripture of Christianity. At the same time, it is regarded as the foundation of civilization and literature in the West. Ever since the middle of twentieth century, the Bible has been thought of as a great work on the whole and a new research discipline has been formed in the academic realm in the West. In the late twentieth century a new upsurge started in the interpretative study on the Bible with literary critical theory and approach. One of the most important aspects in the biblical study centers on the study of biblical metaphors (including parables). It is universally claimed that the use of metaphors is the most distinctive and common language phenomenon in the Bible, which runs through the Old Testament and the New Testament. Currently, the study on biblical metaphors still remains on the literary and cultural dimensions at home and abroad. The comprehensive study on biblical metaphors in terms of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics is seldom seen either at home or abroad.Our research is conducted on the basis of the following hypotheses: Biblical metaphors are a special language phenomenon as well as a special form of verbal communication. This argument makes it possible that the research on biblical metaphorical interpretations could be conducted in terms of pragmatic and cognitive linguistic perspectives. Specifically, this research is based on the Relevance Theory and the Adaptation Theory within the study of pragmatics; on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory as well as the Conceptual Blending Theory within the study of cognitive linguistics; on the experiential realism of philosophy to establish a R-A-C-C (the construction of Relevance-Adaptation-Conceptual metaphor theory-Conceptual blending theory) framework for the biblical metaphorical interpretations.The construction of R-A-C-C framework is based on the following theoretical considerations:Firstly, at present, a relatively idealized and comprehensive theoretical and practical framework for the biblical metaphorical interpretations has not been set up at home and abroad; therefore, it is imperative to construct a framework for the interpretations of biblical metaphors on the basis of contemporary pragmatic and cognitive linguistic theories.Secondly, being the four fundamental theories in pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, RT, AT, CMT, and CBT have their respective merits and demerits and they are mutually complementary and supporting each other in the study of language and communication. From the macroscopic point of view, RT and AT deal with communication from the pragmatic perspective; CMT and CBT lay special emphasis on the cognitive perspective in dealing with language issues. In this case, the pragmatic perspective and the cognitive perspective constitute the complementarities. From the microscopic point of view, though, RT stresses that the process of communication can be dealt with by seeking the optimum relevance with economical principle within the paradigm of ostension-inference. According to AT, adaptation runs through the whole process of communication and communication will break down without the language adaptation and choice. RT stresses the psychological inference whereas AT treats communication with the perspective of adaptation, society, and culture. Viewing from the explanatory power, we can see RT is more forceful than AT in terms of the logic cognitive inference; AT lays more emphasis on the function of society and culture in the process of communication. RT stresses the function of contextual effect in metaphors; AT tends to account for and describe the language in a dynamic way and claims that the key to successful communication lies in the dynamic adaptation to the context. RT stresses the mechanism of inference in obtaining the conversational implicature but it fails to explain why a certain kind of interpretation is relevant, thus resulting in a sort of subjectivity. AT stresses that it is the chief characteristics of language use to make adaptation to the specific language. But it cannot offer a theoretical foundation and cognitive orientation for the adaptation. We maintain that the description of language's regular patterns with RT and the focus on the explanatory function of the utterance with AT are complementary.Thirdly, the unidirectional mapping with CMT and the multidirectional projecting with CBT are also complementary to each other in terms of the operating mechanism of biblical metaphor interpretations. CMT mainly deals with the metaphorical conceptual process with generality and conventionality whereas CBT mainly resolve the cross-domain relation of the unconventional novel metaphor and the process of the conceptualization. Both emphasize the mapping in the system and the intentional inferences of the two conceptual domains, thus the two are highly complementary.We hold that RT, AT, CMT, and CBT are the necessary means toward the interpretations of biblical metaphors, hence the R-A-C-C framework. It is constructed on the basis of the complementarities of the four theories, with the experiential realism as the philosophical basis, the pragmatic and cognitive theories as the theoretical framework, incorporating all the respective merits of the four theories for the biblical metaphorical interpretations. The interpretative process of R-A-C-C framework is composed of two stages, namely, the deconstructing stage and the constructing stage. The deconstructing stage involves the decoding of the metaphorical intention and meaning. The metaphorical inference is considered to be the main part of this phase, which is made up of two steps. The first step is the identification of the explicature and implicature. The second step is the contextual construction, the contextual activation, and the contextual adaptation. In the constructing stage, the metaphorical mapping and blending is highlighted, which is composed of three steps. The first step is the construction and interaction among the source domain and the target domain through which the mapping and blending network are set up. The second step is the process of the integration for the metaphorical meaning motivated by RT and AT. Through the process, the emergent structure and meaning can be generated. Finally, the ultimate accepted biblical metaphorical interpretation can be achieved. During the whole course of interpretation, the audience's cognitive subjectivity plays the important role. It includes not just the audience's social, cultural, and cognitive inferential competence; it also stresses the audience's relationship with the God and the attitude towards God.This research has made some innovations so far. Firstly, the R-A-C-C framework is created for the interpretation of biblical metaphors in combination with the pragmatic and the cognitive linguistic theories as the theoretical foundation. Through the theoretical exploration and the application of R-A-C-C framework to the interpretation of biblical metaphors, we have found that the R-A-C-C framework is superior to the RT, AT, CMT, and CBT. It is a powerful tool and theoretical guarantee for the interpretation of biblical metaphors; at the same time, it is also instructive to other types of metaphors. Secondly, with the experiential realism as the philosophical basis, we have explored the interpretative mechanism of biblical metaphors completely from the linguistic perspective, attempting to bring the Bible's theological nature, literary nature, cultural nature, historical nature, and language peculiarity to the scope of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Thirdly, with the scripture of Christianity as the research object, we have tried to integrate the pragmatic and the cognitive linguistic theories. This practice offers an entirely new thinking pattern and perspective for the study of other religious scriptures within the frame of linguistics. Fourthly, it is proposed that the biblical metaphorical interpretation is based on the interactive operation of pragmatic inference, conceptual mapping and blending, plus the addressee's cognitive subjectivity. This point of view might offer the reference value for the study of other language phenomena.