| In communication, it is impossible to avoid misunderstanding (MIS). Studies of understanding have received much attention from the linguists, but misunderstanding is seldom dealt with. This thesis concentrates on the research of misunderstanding, mainly from the relevance-theoretic perspective.In the previous researches, misunderstanding is mainly studied from cross-cultural, pragmatic and psychological linguistic points of view. In Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure, Thomas points out that there are two levels of misunderstanding. The first-level misunderstanding refers to the hearer's failing to understand the proposition the speaker expresses. The second-level misunderstanding refers to the hearer's failing to understand the pragmatic meaning intended by the speaker. She proposes the notion of pragmatic failure, which is further divided into pragma-linguistic failure and socio-pragmatic failure. Pragma-linguistic failure is a problem of language usage, and is easy to overcome. Socio-linguistic failure is difficult to avoid, because it is closely related to social knowledge and beliefs. According to Thomas, intracultural communication is the same as cross-cultural communication. She employs the term cross-cultural in an all-encompassing way to describe 'not just native-non-native interactions, but any communication between two people who, in any particular domain, do not share a common linguistic or cultural background.' Hence, cross-cultural communication includes not only encounters among people with different cultural and/or linguistic backgrounds, but also encounters associated with such variables as gender, class, race, and age. Her argumentation enlightens the author greatly, but her classification of misunderstanding is not accurate.In pragmatic researches, Yus (1999) defines misunderstanding as the addressee's inability to select one interpretation, among all the possible interpretations that a stimulus can have in a context, which is precisely the interpretation that the addresser intends to communicate. His study is influenced by the traditional view of the context,and cannot reveal the process of misunderstanding.From the psychological point of view, Zong Shihai (2000) analyzes the cause of misunderstanding. He argues that misunderstanding results from general mentality and social mentality. He distinguishes two kinds of general mentalities and four kinds of social mentalities. According to Zong Shihai, the utterance of the speaker provides the possibility of misunderstanding, and the mentality of the hearer enables the occurrence of misunderstanding. His psychological analysis of misunderstanding is convincing but he does not combine the research of understanding and the research of mentality properly.Based on the previous studies, the author proposes a new definition -of misunderstanding: an understanding phenomenon in which the hearer fails to correctly understand the informative or communicative {or both) intention(s) of the speaker. From the relevance-theoretic perspective misunderstanding could be classified into two types: misunderstanding at explicature level (including three subtypes; misunderstanding at disambiguation level, misunderstanding at reference resolution level and misunderstanding at pragmatic enrichment level), and misunderstanding at implicature level (including two subtypes: misunderstanding at implicated premise level and misunderstanding at implicated conclusion level).As for the criterion of the occurrence of misunderstanding, the author holds the opinion that 'wrong' reaction of the hearer (or repair sequences) should not be taken as the criterion, because criterion should be a both sufficient and necessary condition. 'Wrong' reaction is a sufficient but not necessary condition for the occurrence of misunderstanding. Misunderstanding is a mental process. Misunderstanding which takes place at the mental level does not necessarily lead to wrong reaction.Theoretical framework of the current study is relevance theory. As an inferential theory of communication, relevance theory aims to explain how the audience infers the communicator's intended meaning. The relevance-theoretic explanation of these inference processes is rooted in an account of cognition.The basic point of ostensive-inferential communication is that the communicator intentionally provides evidence that he/she intends the audience to arrive at certainconclusions. Relevance theory presents two principles of relevance: The cognitive principle of relevance (Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance) and The communicative principle of relevance (Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance). Relevance theory explains ostensive communication in the following way: the production of an ostensive stimulus demands the investment of some processing effort from the addressee. Since the mind tends to allocate its resources to the most relevant information, if the communicator wants to be understood, she should produce a stimulus which is at least relevant enough to the addressee to be worth attending to. The addressee can therefore interpret the stimulus on the assumption that it will be at least adequately relevant to him.Principle of relevance, presumption of optimal relevance, comprehension procedure, interpretive strategies and relevance-theoretic context are used to analyze misunderstanding.According to the presumption ofoptimal relevance, the ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the speaker's abilities and preferences/But nothing could guarantee the hearer's accurate knowledge of the speaker's abilities and preferences. If the hearer does not know well enough about the speaker, misunderstanding might happen.In the hearer's comprehension procedure, he would consider the interpretations in order of accessibility, and stop when his expectations of relevance are satisfied. But to the hearer, the meaning intended by the speaker is not always easily accessible. When the first satisfactory interpretation is not the one intended by the speaker, misunderstanding will happen.Sperber (1994) identifies three interpretive strategies that hearers may adopt, depending on whether they consider their speakers benevolent and competent (naive optimism); benevolent but not competent (cautious optimism) and neither benevolent nor competent (sophisticated understanding). Incorrect judgment of the speaker's benevolence and competence might lead the hearer to misunderstanding.Sperber and Wilson (1995) argue that a mismatch between the context envisagedby the speaker and the one actually used by the hearer may result in a misunderstanding. Without the help of the context, right understanding of an utterance is absolutely impossible, but inappropriate application of relevance-theoretic context will lead to misunderstanding. Unlike the traditional context, the relevance-theoretic context is a set of assumptions. It is a dynamic construct chosen by the hearer.When processing an utterance, the hearer would activate some related assumptions and process them together with the ostensive stimulus in order to achieve understanding of the utterance. There might be many relevant assumptions (relevance-theoretic context) about the ostensive stimulus, but only the salient relevance-theoretic context would be activated and processed. :If the selected relevance-theoretic context is not the one envisaged by the speaker, misunderstanding will occur.In summary, the thesis (1) proposes a new definition of misunderstanding and classifies misunderstanding from the relevance-theoretic perspective; (2) analyzes misunderstanding by applying the principles of relevance theory; (3) talks about the relationship between misunderstanding and relevance-theoretic context. The significance of this thesis lies in its implications for language teaching. Teachers should tell students the process of understanding. For further study on misunderstanding, the author suggests that misunderstanding research should be combined with the studies of human brain.
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