Discourse Space. Daily Communication

There is still no complete and specific theory system for the research of discourse space. Most of the scolars only attach the importance to the research of those words expressing the specific locations at the physical level. Actually, in our daily social intercourse, in addition to the physical space information, our speech could carry with mental space information between us, which is what we are maily going to discuss about in this paper. In essence, mental space could reflect the situation of people's interpersonal relationships, of which the information is vital to handling the interpersonal problems. Mental space and mental distance are two important concepts to the research of discourse space. Fauconnier's Mental Space Theory and Hall's Proxemics both have deficiencies in discussing about how the two concepts are related to discourse, resulting in difficulties in further research of discourse space. Consequently, both of them can not give effective advices to people in interpersonal discourse.This paper puts forward the new concept of"discourse space", emphasizing the interpersonal relationships reflected by the daily discourse's mental spaces. Guided by mental space theory, term"the physical space of discourse"was created to be used as an premise for the classification of mental distance by proxemics and coordinates, in order to check the conditions of interpersonal relationships. The combination of the two theories could make up for the past deficiencies in discussing the relationships between mental distance and interpersonal relationship. Besides, its combination is beneficial for building up the concept of discourse space and its further research. And the ultimate goal is to discover the features of the human minds through studying discourse space.