A Study Of The Context: From The Relevance-theoretic Perspective

The context is a basic notion of pragmatic theories on verbal communication. Many scholars have made research of the context from various perspectives. Most of research is focused on the ingredients and classifications of the context. When scholars approach verbal communication by employing the context, the usual practice for them is to list relevant contextual ingredients to interpret utterances. They consider the context as given in advance of communication and the communication process is controlled by the given context. This view of the context is a static one which can not provide an appropriate interpretation of the communication process. Although Verschueren thinks that both the speaker and the hearer choose the context in the communication process, he proposes no principles to govern their choice. In other words, the dynamics of the context in his view is not governed by any principle. Therefore, his view of the context cannot provide an appropriate interpretation of the communication process, either. To sum up, the disadvantage of the above views of the context lies in the inadequate explanatory power.In 1986, Sperber and Wilson proposed the relevance theory. To provide an appropriate context as the basis of their theory, they put forward a new idea of the context. In the relevance theory, the context is considered as constructed by a sub-part of assumptions from the cognitive environment of an individual. The practice avoids the problem of taking complicated potential contextual ingredients as the actual context for communication as the former views of the context do. Hereby, our concern should be merely focused on the part of assumptions which make up of the context when we study the verbal communication process; according to the relevance theory, the speaker and the hearer choose the context from their cognitive environments. Compared with the static view of the context, the dynamic view of the context is appropriate for the verbal communication process, and can reflect better the psychological states of the speaker and the hearer in communication; Sperber and Wilson hold that the dynamics of the context is governed by the principle of relevance. Through an utterance, the speaker firstly conveys the presumption of optimalrelevance, and the hearer also finishes his interpretation of the utterance guided by the optimal relevance. The principle of relevance is developed from the theory on human cognition, which compensates for the disadvantage of Verschueren's dynamic view of the context and makes the relevance-theoretic context more adequate in explanation. Theoretically, the relevance-theoretic context has an adequate explanatory power.According to Sperber and Wilson, the hearer can choose appropriate contextual assumptions from his cognitive environment so as to infer the conversational implicature of an utterance. Therefore, the pragmatic inference can also been called the context inference. When discussing the pragmatic inference in communication, Sperber and Wilson consider that only the deduction plays the major role in the whole inferential process. The author argues that the deduction is the inferential process based on existing assumptions while the formation of those existing assumptions is not a result of the deduction. Therefore, Sperber and Wilson's discussion of the context inference has some defects. Then, the author attempts to probe into the context inference. Through analysis, the author thinks that in one turn of interpretation, the hearer's context inference should involve the abduction and the deduction which occur intermittently. The abduction refers to the process of the hearer's inference of the contextual assumptions while the deduction refers to the process of the hearer's inference of implicatures on the basis of the existing assumptions. Therefore, the context inference has the nature of both abduction and deduction. On the basis of the above discussion and Xiong's unilateral inferential mode of the context, the author proposes the inferential mode of the context of the thesis. In this mode, the most important point is that the accessibility of the contextual assumptions to the pragmatic inference is determined by the cognitive effort cost by the hearer in the abduction and the deduction.To further prove the adequate explanatory power of the relevance-theoretic context from a practical perspective, the author applies it to conversational implicatures, which is an important aspect studied in pragmatics. The author makes a comparative analysis of the two major approaches to conversational implicatures: Gricean and relevance-theoretic. Our conclusion is that, mainly because of differentviews of the context, the former only indicates the inferability of implicatures from an utterance by the hearer, but fails to explain the uniqueness of the hearer's inference of the implicature from an utterance; the latter, however, can provide an appropriate explanation in this aspect. Lastly, based on the above discussion, the author adopts some examples to make an analysis of how the Gricean implicatures can be inferred in the relevance-theoretic context. The relevance-theoretic context is adequate in the explanatory power in the inference of conversational implicatures.To firther prove the adequate explanator(?) power of the relevance-theoretic context, the author applies it to metaphor. The interpretation of metaphor involves the inference of conversational implicatures. After reviewing some major pragmatic theories of metaphor, the author thinks that the early theories have not made an elaborate interpretation of the nature and working mechanism of metaphor. Additionally, due to the static context on which they are based, they cannot explain the production and interpretation of metaphor appropriately. According to the relevance theory, metaphor is an interpretation of the speaker's mental representation; it is a form of loose talk employed by the speaker who aims to observe the optimal relevance. Like other loose talk, the interpretation of metaphor requires no special ability of the speaker. On the basis of the discussion, the author attempts to analyze how metaphor is produced and interpreted from the perspective of the relevance-theoretic context. Through analysis, the author concludes that by using metaphor, the speaker intends to convey a strong implicature and an incentive for the hearer to develop more weak implicatures by himself, or merely intends to convey an incentive for the hearer to develop a range of weak implicatures by himself; before deciding on the metaphoric use of language, the speaker should guess the cognitive environment of the hearer and construct the context mutually manifest; in communication, the speaker takes the major responsibility in conveying the strong implicature and the incentive, and takes the minor responsibility in whether the hearer can develop weak implicatures or not. The optimal relevance of metaphor is achieved through the hearer's inference of the strong implicature and developing weak implicatures, or merely through the hearer's developing weak implicatures; becauseof the different cognitive environments, different hearers will get different interpretations of metaphor, especially for their developing weak implicatures; in communication, the hearer takes the minor responsibility in inferring the strong implicature, and takes the major responsibility in developing weak implicatures by himself. The relevance-theoretic context has the adequate explanatory power in the production and interpretation of metaphor.Therefore, the thesis proves the adequate explanatory power of the relevance-theoretic context both from a theoretic perspective and a practical perspective.