A Contrastive Study Of Two Interpretations Of Metaphor

Metaphor is a pervasive phenomenon, for it is used, consciously or unconsciously, in our daily conversations. The study of metaphor, with a long history in western countries, can be traced back to the age of Aristotle. In the past, different scholars studied metaphorical phenomena from different perspectives and made some achievements. However, the study of metaphor is a complicated task, and the exploration of metaphor is still going on.The present thesis explains how to interpret metaphor from the perspectives of Conversational Implicature Theory and Relevance Theory respectively, aiming at making a contrastive study of these two interpretations and finding similarities and differences between them, on which , at least as far as I know, little research has been made up to now. As two influential theories about verbal communication, Conversational Implicature Theory and Relevance Theory provide us with two different perspectives to interpret metaphor. Grice claims that metaphor results from the deliberate violation of the maxim of quality in the Cooperative Principle and metaphorical meaning is a kind of particularized conversational implicature. Grice's theory contributes much to the study of metaphor, but it cannot adequately interpret the images or states of mind evoked by metaphorical utterances. Relevance Theory, based on the revision and development of Conversational Implicature Theory, solves the problems that cannot be solved by Conversational Implicature Theory, and therefore is a more powerful theory. Relevance Theory emphasizes the cognitive ability of the hearer, holding that searching for relevance is the key to the understanding of metaphorical utterances. Through such a contrastive study, it is proved that there exist some deficiencies in the interpretation of metaphorical utterances with Conversational Implicature Theory; and Relevance Theory attempts to interpret metaphor from the...