Relevance-theoretic Approach To Coherence In Verbal Communication

This thesis aims to analyze coherence in verbal communication from cognitive pragmatic perspective within the framework of relevance theory. Coherence and how it is achieved, are fundamental to communication. It is impossible to separate issues in coherence and meaningful ways that people connect ideas from communication. Moreover, the investigation of the working mechanisms of coherence mirrors the systematic study of communication.This thesis firstly summarizes the advantages and limitations of traditional theories of coherence and the present studies of coherence in relevance-theoretical framework. Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory describes various cohesive devices in detail and makes great contribution to coherence analysis, but their work is just to describe and mark coherence relationships within text and does not explain how those cohesive devices are chosen and used. Cooperative principle and speech act theory interpret coherence pragmatically and are concerned with pragmatic coherent devices. Still they fail to explain how the participants use these devices in communication, and they cannot interpret coherence working mechanisms in communication because of their own problems in inference.Blakemore discusses coherence in relevance theory and suggests two types of coherence: coherence of propositional content and coherence of contextual effect. But she does not touch upon the relationship of these two types of coherence and how they work in communication. Wilson gives a brief study on coherence as a response to Giora's doubts on relevance theory in interpreting coherence. Wilson analyzes coherence with the concept of optimal relevance and makes clear Giora's misunderstanding of relevance theory. But Wilson's discussion is limited in the hearer's utterance interpretation process. Meng Jiangang introduces the above relevance-theoretic study on coherence and develops Blakemore's two types of coherence. He proposes to establish a complete and operable framework of studying coherence with relevance theory, but he does not do this job.Based on these traditional and present relevance-theoretic studies of coherence, this thesis brings forward a relevance-theoretic account of coherence mechanisms, which include a coherence model and three coherence-achieving functions, namely, the filter -function of optimal relevance, the navigation function of procedural connectives and matrix function of context.By distinguishing the two confusing concepts - maximal relevance and optimal relevance, the thesis finds out that it is optimal relevance that governs human being's choice of devices to achieve coherence, both cohesive devices and pragmatic coherent devices, which is concluded as the filter function of optimal relevance. Influenced by the working process of this filter, those various coherent devices enter into human being's actual verbal communication. The navigation function of procedural connectives is proposed by referring to the relevance-theoretic classification of connectives-(conceptual connectives and procedural connectives). This function lies in revealing and directing the inferential ^process to achieve coherence in verbal communication. Relevance theory develops the concept of context, that it is selected rather than predetermined and its selection is governed by the principle of relevance. And coherence in communication develops and realizes within the process of context selection guided by the principle of relevance, where the matrix function of relevance-theoretic dynamic context lies. The three functions act on the speaker and the hearer respectively in the process of achieving coherence in the communication, and enter into the ultimate coherence model, constituted by coherence of prepositional content and coherence of contextual effects.Then with the ostensive-inferential communicative model, the dynamic interactive nature of coherence is investigated through the analysis of the speaker's contribution to coherence by ostension and the hearer's by inference respectively, which follows the notion of asymmetrical communication held by relevance theory.Three factors are found to influence the speaker's ostension of coherence. The assessment of the hearer's cognitive environment and the speaker's own cognitive environment determine the speaker's assumptions to convey, while the filter function of optimal relevance governs the speaker's way of organizing those assumptions in acoherent utterance, which also communicates a presumption of optimal relevance and a guarantee of coherence of the communication. Therefore, the speaker should not only organize his own utterances in a coherent way, but also assure that the assumptions he conveys could be accessible to the hearer and guarantee the coherence between him and the hearer.During the hearer's inferential process to achieve coherence, two factors mainly constrain the hearer's inference: context selection and procedural connectives. In the process of the context selection, the hearer perceives the presumption of optimal relevance from the speaker. Then she sets out to select those contexts in her cognitive environment to confirm the speaker's assumptions. Afterwards, the hearer begins to interpret the utterance 1 following the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure, during which the hearer firstly computes cognitive effects following a path of least effort and finally stops when her expectation of relevance is satisfied, when the coherence of the communication is achieved. Once procedural connectives are used, the hearer has to follow the navigation of these connectives. Otherwise she would make unjustifiable processing effort to achieve those adequate contextual effects, so as to affects the coherence in communication.Finally, a full psychology of coherence in verbal communication is concluded with a flow chart, which summarizes the relevance-theoretic account of coherence in verbal communication.