On The Psychological And Cognitive Process Of Deliberate Misinterpretation In Verbal Communication From The Perspective Of Code Deviation

More and more linguists (Verschueren, 1999; Sperber and Wilson1995; Mey, 2001), have reached an agreement that the most important use of language is for the purpose of communication between human beings. Pragmatics not only describes what people do with language, but also concerns itself with how to help them become better languages users (Mey, 2001) . As to the relationship of language and communication, language production, language comprehension and language users come into focus. Combined with pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psychology, the present research focuses on English and Chinese deliberate misinterpretation (short for DMI) regardless of different cultural influences on DMI, for the purpose of exploring the universal cognitive and psychological process of people' creating DMI, which is often viewed as a phenomenon of linguistic useThe present research is a qualitative study about DMI, a communicative strategy in verbal communication, and attempts to make a psychological and cognitive analysis of DMI from the view of trans-discipline. Unlike misunderstanding, which is the accidental transmission of information, DMI occurs when the hearers deliberately misunderstand what the speakers express based on knowing correctly the speakers' intended meaning. By doing so, the hearers satisfy certain communicative needs of their own. The study on verbal communication abroad focuses on ambiguity and misunderstanding and the study at home fixes its attention on pragmatic failure, cross-cultural communication and misunderstanding. The present research clarifies the confusing concepts and terms relevant to DMI, provides theoretical framework for better understanding DMI, explores the psychological and cognitive process of the hearers' creating DMI and directs communicative practice based on employing DMI successfully and appropriately. Thus, the present research is of great theoretical and practical significance in pragmatics, communication and psychology.The study on DMI can be made and explored from different disciplines. Pragmatically, as verbal communication is potentially face-threatening, so is DMI, which is often viewed as jokes and humor, for DMI is frequently used to deal with existing face-threatening acts in speech communication, such as saving, enhancing or attacking interlocutors' face. From the field of psychology, similar to DMI, defense mechanisms in people' unconscious mind often serve as a way of self-defense or self-protection to deal with something about self-esteem and stress etc in daily interaction; meanwhile, mature humor is at the highest level in hierarchy of Defense-Mechanisms. According to Vaillant' (Hentschel, 2004) fourfold hierarchy of DMs, humor is at the highest level, and the five characteristics of DMs are unconscious, dynamic, instinctive, discrete and adaptive. It can be considered that the function of DMI in verbal communication agrees with DMs in psychology, for their functions aim at self-defense and self-protection including the consideration of the hearers' and their counterparts' face. As a result, based on the views of dynamic context and face theory in pragmatics, multiple-knowing-processes model of social cognitive psychology and Defense-Mechanisms of psychology, by adopting the questionnaires which deal with the relationship between degree of deviation, unconsciousness and self-avoiding embarrassment, the current research carries on cognitive and psychological exploration of the hearers' creating DMI and reaches the following conclusions, in the dynamic development of context and communication, the hearers deviate from the speakers' intended meaning and make a reply by inventing new codes mainly for the purpose of face-work; the greater the degree of deviation, unconsciousness and self-avoiding embarrassment of the hearers' utterance is, the maturer the humor is, the higher DMs are; DMI can improve inter-personal relationship and lead to successful communication.The thesis falls into seven chapters. Chapter one presents a general introduction to the research. Chapter Two clarifies some linguistic phenomena concerning DMI with the intention of giving a clear understanding for DMI. Chapter Three provides a review of the relevant literature based on the previous studies on the related theme home and abroad. In Chapter Four, the theoretical framework is laid down on the basis of related theories, among which Verschueren's view of dynamic context (1999), Tracy's face theory (12990), Multiple-knowing-processes model and Defense-Mechanisms from the view of psychology are the major ones. Chapter Five provides the concrete experimental procedure to explore the psychological and cognitive process of the hearers' employing DMI, that is, DMI or humor, closely relevant to DMs, is self-defense at core. Finally, Chapter Six analyzes the cognitive and psychological reasons of creating DMI and in Chapter Seven, the author summaries the major findings of the present research, points out its limitations and suggests some directions for further study.