Psychology Victory Or Serious Opportunism

Relevance theory (RT), as the new theory of communication interpretation, is first presented in the book Relevance: Communication and cognition, which was written by D. Sperber and D. Wilson in 1986. Since then, its unique ideas of communication and ostensive-inference communication model are well introduced, explored, analyzed and put into practical use in various fields. However, studies on its application to the literature works seem to be inadequate both in China and abroad. So based on Sperber and Wilson's original statements in the book as well as the researches of the following relevance theorists, this thesis is dedicated to the studies of RT's main ideas, principle of communication and distinctive communication model as well as its potentiality of interpreting the controversial issues of literature works.To start with, the thesis introduces the current researching situation of relevance theory both in China and abroad. In the second chapter, the author of the thesis first reviews the background information of relevance theory, and then carefully explains its main ideas, which includes the definition of relevance; the definition of contextual effect; the relationship between contextual effect and relevance; the degree of relevance; the two criteria of optimal relevance and the difference between the maximum relevance and optimal relevance. In the third chapter, the author focuses the attention on the illustration of the ostensive-inference communication model, which includes its basis - mutual manifestness of cognitive environment; explicature and implicature; the speaker's two intentions in the ostension and the hearer's inference process in the communication. It also talks about the feasibility of application of relevance theory in interpreting the written discourse.In the last and the most important part, a large space of the thesis is devoted to discussing the practical use of relevance theory in interpreting the controversial issue in literature works. The author of the thesis has a strong point that it also has astrong power in explaining the communication between the writer and the reader. The author holds that the process of the writer producing the work is just the process of ostension while the reading process is just the inference process of the readers. In other words, the two sides of the communication are not the speaker and the hearer, but the writer and the readers. For this reason, the author makes an effort to apply the ostensive-inference communication model to the different opinions in analyzing the main characteristics of Ah Q in Lu Xun's work The True Story of Ah Q. There are two different opinions about Ah Q's main characteristics: one is his psychology victory and the other is his serious opportunism. So the author first analyze how people get the two different opinions respectively, and then compares the differences in inferring the two opinions, and then make the conclusion that the psychology victory is in agreement with the reader' s maximum relevance while the serious opportunism is the optimal relevance that the readers can achieve in process of inference. That is, the serious opportunism is just the communicative intention of the writer trying to convey to the readers. So the author holds that the serious opportunism is Ah Q's main characteristic. With the analysis of Ah Q's main characteristic, the author attempts to prove that relevance theory, as the basis of the cognitive pragmatics, not only has a very strong power in interpreting the natural human communication, but also has a very strong potentiality in solving the literature controversial issues.