A Study On Mechanism Of Novel Metaphor Interpretation-A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach

Metaphor has been studied for over two thousand years. Taking different approaches, many scholars have presented their own explanations to the issue of metaphor interpretation, which results in the formation of a large number of theories. These theories reflect the essence of metaphor interpretation to some extent. However, they have their own limitations. Adopting a cognitive-pragmatic approach, Relevance Theory takes metaphor interpretation as not only a pragmatic activity but also a cognitive one. The theory gives rational and full account of metaphor interpretation by focusing on the process of the metaphor interpretation.Generally speaking, there are two kinds of metaphors in our daily speech: conventional metaphors and novel metaphors. Starting with the premise that conventional metaphor is inadequate to reveal the nature of metaphor, the present study attempts to tackle the mechanism of novel metaphor interpretation by exploring how novel metaphor is interpreted from the cognitive-pragmatic perspective, with Relevance Theory as the general conceptual framework.This paper is mainly divided into two parts: the first part probes into the relationship between "metaphor interpretation and amount of effort involved" by conducting an empirical research on metaphor interpretation. We found, through a questionnaire test and a follow-up experiment, that the processing cost of novel metaphors is higher than that of conventional ones, that is to say, the more metaphorical an utterance is, the more processing effort it requires. And meanwhile the experiment proves that context and assumptions play a crucial role in interpreting novel metaphors. And it also demonstrates that language proficiency and social experience may facilitate one's acquisition of knowledge, which is found to have an important role to play in metaphor interpretation. The second part explores the mechanism of novel metaphor interpretation by investigating the cognitive-pragmatic process of novel metaphor interpretation. It involves three sub-processes: identification of explicatures, construction of contextual assumptions and recovery of implicatures, which are mainly based on non-demonstrative inferences. And the ultimate goal of novel metaphor interpretation is seeking optimal relevance.In this study, it is concluded that a relevance-theoretic framework to novel metaphor offers a satisfactory account of how it is interpreted. Furthermore, our explorations of the mechanism of novel metaphor interpretation are expected to shed some light on the fundamental problems in metaphor studies.