Study On The Metaphors Of Woman In Gone With The Wind From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Metaphor is not only a rhetoric device, but also a very indispensable part in cognitive linguistics. The study of metaphor has a centuries-old history and lots of researchers study the interpretation of metaphor from different angles. There are plenty of theories of metaphor, but the study on the mechanism of metaphor interpretation is still not complete. To some extent,all of these theories point out the essence of metaphor interpretation, but limitation still exists in these theories. Until Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory put metaphor interpretation into the cognitive-pragmatics frame, people acknowledge that metaphor interpretation is not only a pragmatic action, but also a cognitive behavior.Sperber and Wilson first presented relevance theory in 1986, with an attempt to study human communication from the view of human cognition. The theory is widely applied in such fields as literature, translation, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, etc.. As we consider the background of these studies on metaphor at home and abroad, it is clear that many scholars study the common metaphors in our daily life from different aspects. Among them,some scholars start to research metaphors in literary works, but the majority of them only study from one single perspective, few thorough studies are carried out to explore metaphors in literary works with relevance theory. This thesis is a tentative research which applies relevance theory to interpret metaphors in Gone with the Wind. By analyzing a number of metaphors in this classic novel, the author wants to show that relevance theory is a powerful device to analyze metaphors in literary works. The author hopes to interpret the metaphors in Gone with the Wind from the perspective of cognitive pragmatic to expand research contents and methods of this classic novel. Furthermore, using relevance theory as the theoretical basis to analyze metaphors in this novel can provide a brand-new method to study this novel and other literary works.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first three chapters mainly give a general overview of metaphor and relevance theory. Firstly, chapter one gives background of this study,then purpose and significance, as well research methodology. The content of chapter two is the literature review of metaphor, including the definitions, development of metaphor theories and different classifications of metaphor. In chapter three, the author gives theoretical framework of this thesis, including the primary coverage of relevance theory, main studies on cognitive context and interpreting metaphors on a relevance-theoretical basis. By choosing suitable examples of women metaphors in Gone with the Wind, chapter four mainly interprets these metaphors with relevance theory and makes reasonable explanations of contextual effect.Finally, in the last chapter, the author makes a summary of this paper and points out limitations of this study, and gives some suggestions for the succeeding studies as well.The aims of making this research on women metaphors in Gone with the Wind with relevance theory are enriching the studies of this novel and making readers have a better comprehending of this novel’s language style and creative psychology. This study is a good attempt to discuss metaphors with relevance theory in classic novel. These analyses on women metaphors can help readers to understand novel’s contents better and pay attention to the status of women in the society and cultural differences. The author hopes this study can provide a new angle of view for metaphor interpretation and catch more people’s attention on metaphor study in literary works.