An Analysis Of The Functions And The Understanding Procedure Of Poetic Metaphor From The Relevance Perspective

This thesis is an attempt to analyze the functions and the understanding procedure of poetic metaphor within the framework of the relevance theory.Sperber and Wilson treat metaphor as loose talk. In their opinion, poetic metaphor is one kind of ordinary utterances, which requires no extra efforts and special understanding mechanism during the comprehension procedure. What we should do is just simply apply the principles of relevance to give the interpretation of metaphor just like normal utterance.First, some major theories of metaphor are introduced and their weaknesses are pointed out. It is then suggested that the relevance theory can give a more satisfactory account of metaphor, because the relevance theory examines metaphor in the context of communication. It is also discussed that relevance is a comparative notion whose measurement depends on two factors: cognitive effect and processing effort. The greater the cognitive effect and the smaller the processing effort, the greater the relevance of an input to an individual will be.Then, the functions of poetic metaphor are discussed, which can be divided into three categories: the rhetorical function, the linguistic function and the social function. It is argued that the more poetic the metaphor is, the more clearly the functions are manifested.Finally, the analysis of three steps of poetic metaphor understanding will be offered. These three steps are the comprehension of the explicit content, the comprehension of the intended contextual assumption and the comprehension of the intended contextual implications. The analysis shows that the cognitive process of poetic metaphor understanding is in nature a non-demonstrative bridging inference.