An Applied Study Of Implicature: Relevance Perspective

People have noticed long before that disparity exists between what they say and what they mean. At the first stage, philosophers set their interests onto it, and then linguistics such as Gricean scholars and Relevance theorists paid close attention to it. This thesis presents the core notion of the disparity between what people say and what they mean:implicature, which is a vital element that causes the disparity. The thesis mainly focuses on the interpretation of implicature from the perspective of Relevance Theory, trying to employ the structure of Relevance Theory to explore the notion of implicature.The thesis aims to discuss the definition, the classification and the interpretation of implicature under the framework of Relevance Theory, and seeks out the reasons of misinterpretation of implicature, trying to solve the communication problems. With the above exploration of implicature, the thesis tries to utilize the theory into practice by the pedagogic application section, supporting the teaching and learning of English listening and reading comprehension.The thesis starts by briefly reviewing the previous studies on conversational implicature: Grice's theory of conversational implicature. Grice differentiates the notion of "what is said" and "what is implied", and later Grice put forward the Co-operative Principle and its four maxims. He thought that conversational implicature occurs when maxims are violated. Neo-gricean scholars Horn and Levinson made amendments to Grice's theory of conversational implicature, but did not make fundamental breakthrough. Then the introduction of Relevance Theory defines the basic notions of communication. The definition of relevance, the significant role of context and the principle of relevance are discussed to show the basic ideas in Relevance Theory. In the major sections of the thesis, the mechanism of ostension and inference of implicature is explained with detailed exploration of various examples from English short stories, test papers, text books and previous researches of other scholars. In Relevance Theory, communication is an ostensive-inferential process, which includes ostension from the speaker and inference by the hearer. The thesis presents three means to make ostension and three means to extend the context in inference process. During the process of ostension and inference, the principle of relevance takes the vital position, balancing between the contextual effect and processing effort. Successful communication involves mutual attribution of the speaker and the hearer. Hence, when implicature is misinterpreted, it is the fault of both the speaker and the hearer. On the part of the ostension, the thesis explains two reasons which may cause misinterpretation of implicature: under-informative ostension and ambiguous ostension; on the part of inference, the thesis presents four communication problems in the inferential process which will lead to problems of non-understanding, puzzled understanding and alternative understanding. The exploration of the reasons which lead to misinterpretation of implicature contributes greatly to successful communication.The study of ostensive-inferential process of implicature in Relevance Theory offers a new insight into the development and explanation of the theory of meaning, and with the exploration of various examples, it reinforces the utilization of the theory. In addition to that, the thesis also introduces the exploration of implicature in Relevance Theory to pedagogic application for practical purposes, helping teaching and learning in English listening and reading in an effective way.