Deliberate Misinterpretation: A Pragma-cognitive Approach

As a widespread but special phenomenon in our verbal communication, Deliberate Misinterpretation (DM for short) has its own particular pragmatic purposes and specific pragmatic effects. It is so popular in verbal communication that people, even some linguists, just take it for granted. The studies of DM are sporadic and most of them are accidental touched when linguists study misunderstanding. Its importance to the construction and understanding of verbal communication has not received enough attention and systematic research from linguists. Therefore, a more comprehensive work on it is urgently needed.Based on the previous studies, the present research is intended to probe into the depth of this conversational phenomenon from the pragma-cognitive perspective to reveal the cognitive generating mechanism underlying DM. The thesis first generalizes the advantages and deficiencies of the previous studies and then proposes Idealized Cognitive Model-based Relevance Assumption ( ICM-based Relevance Assumption) after analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of Sperber &Wilson's RT and Lakoff's ICM respectively in explaining DM. Afterwards, the assumption is applied to the analysis of the specific DM cases, the result of which indicates that the generation of DM is first driven by the hearer's specific communicative intention. Then through taking advantage of the indeterminacy in speaker's utterance, the construction of ICM conflict is realized, which mainly depends on these four principles: propositional principle, image-schematic principle, metaphoric mapping principle and metonymic mapping principle. At last, DM is generated.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One offers a general introduction to the whole research, including the research topic, the objectives, the rationale of the study, the methodology, data collection as well as the layout of the thesis. Chapter Two reviews relevant literature based on our categorization of the previous studies on the related theme and presents He Ziran & Shen Zhiqi's definition of DM with an aim of distinguishing it from misunderstanding. At the end of the chapter, the achievements and limitations of the past researches are discussed. Chapter Three means to put forward the standard to judge the occurrence of DM from the perspective of RT and propose ICM-based Relevance Assumption which takes Sperber & Wilson's RT and Lakoff's ICM as the theoretical foundation to demonstrate the cognitive generating mechanism of DM in interaction. Chapter Four uses the standard we put forward in Chapter Three to figure out the DM cases in Cao Yu's Thunderstorm and Lao She's Teahouse and then applies the ICM-based Relevance Assumption to the analysis of the specific DM cases to acquire the actualization approach of DM. Chapter Five summarizes the major findings, points out the implications and limitations of the current research and gives suggestions for further studies.