Study On The Metaphors In Pst Of CET-4&6 Reading Materials From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Reading, one of the most important ways to get information in our daily life, is one of the skills that emphasized in college English teaching. Reading has always been regarded as one of the most essential language skills of the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The unprecedented advances of science and technology after World War Two gave rise to huge volumes of writings concerning scientific research, investigation and operation. In the eyes of the general public, these writings are of a special domain with vocabularies outside the range of the ordinary educated man and with distinctive patterns of a restrictive kind. Especially in CET-4&6 reading materials, there appear lots of popular science texts (PST), and the language used in PST contains so many metaphors that are difficult for college students to understand. This thesis tentatively tries to explain the metaphors in PST of CET-4&6 reading materials from the Relevance Theory perspective.This thesis investigated the metaphors in PST of CET-4&6 reading materials from the perspective of Relevance Theory. The purpose of this study is to find out what features that the metaphors in PST of CET-4&6 reading materials have. Through the study on 44 CET-4&6 reading materials, the thesis aims to help the college students to improve their understanding of the metaphors in PST of CET-4&6 reading materials. The results of the research are: (1) From the perspective of the Relevance Theory, it is found that the metaphors in PST of CET-4&6 reading materials have the feature of asymmetry and cultural orientation. The asymmetry can be further divided into different domain mapping, the asymmetry of the metaphor itself and creating nature. Cultural orientation mainly reflects in vocabulary. (2) The two extent conditions, three potential relations of contextual effects and the three factors that determine the contextual effects in Relevance Theory have positive effects to help understand the metaphors in PST of CET-4&6 reading materials.