A Relevance-theoretic Study On The Pragmatic Enrichment Of Polysemy

As a universal linguistic phenomenon, polysemy has received studies fromvarious angles. However, previous studies are still deficient to explain thepragmatic-cognitive mechanism of polysemy.Under the framework of relevance theory, the present thesis attempts to narrowdown the research of the pragmatic enrichment of polysemy in the perspective oflexical pragmatics. Lexical pragmatics studies word meanings in utterancecomprehension and it is a dynamic process relating to some factors such as contextand encyclopedic knowledge. Pragmatic enrichment declares that the understandingof utterance is hearer making inference from the speaker rather than just a process ofsimple encoding and decoding. It is a main concern of lexical pragmatics and includespragmatic narrowing and broadening. The pragmatic narrowing refers to the processwhere a word is used to convey a more specific sense than the encoded one byrestricting its linguistically-specified denotation, and the pragmatic broadening refersto a process where a word is used to convey a more general sense, with consequentwidening of the encoded meaning.On the relevance-theoretic account, we aim to build a cognitive model to interpretthe pragmatic enrichment of polysemy. Cognitive context is basic for theunderstanding of polysemy and based on the mutual cognitive context of the speakerand the hearer, the hearer will automatically enter the inference process when hereceives ostensive stimulus from the speaker. In the inference process, the hearer willdeal with all related information to achieve optimal relevance of polysemy inutterances. In relevance-theoretic procedure, the hearer will use optimal relevance tofind the meaning of polysemy to satisfy his expectations, and if he assumes that this isnot the speaker's meaning and more efforts should be made to find the specificmeaning of polysemy to satisfy his expectations, pragmatic narrowing happens. If heassumes that this is the speaker's meaning and does not need more specificinformation, pragmatic broadening happens.This thesis provides a new angel to the pragmatic-cognitive study of polysemy. Italso gives evidence to explain that the choosing and understanding of polysemy is apragmatic-cognitive issue based on context within lexical pragmatics.