Inference Of Utterance Meanings In Conversation

This dissertation focuses on utterance meaning, which is the object of study in pragmatics. It analyzes inference of utterance meanings in conversation and the discourse meanings of utterances from the aspects of Relevance Theory and Speech Act Theory, thus enabling both parties to understand utterance meanings more thoroughly in verbal communication and achieve success in communication.The dissertation reviews the related studies made on inference of utterance meaning. The relevant literature review shows that those studies are of great help to studying linguistics in its practical application. Studies in such aspects can also be further explored.Centering on inference of utterance meaning in conversation, the dissertation probes into the relevance of utterance and interprets the logical thinking of the theory of relevance. Verbal communication is the process of ostensive-inferential communication. Furthermore, pragmatic reasoning is characterized by abduetive nature. As a dynamic logic process, it incorporates abduction, deduction and induction.Centering on inference of utterance meaning in conversation, the relation between utterance and context is discussed. Any utterance cannot part from context. Only when context exists can utterance has meanings. Because of linguistic features of spoken English, the interpretation of spoken English needs to rely on co-text, paralanguage or non-linguistic symbols to a greater extent. What is more, as an important theory which studies the meanings of language in pragmatics, speech act theory is constrained in rhetoric narrative utterance by context, the ur-conventions and discourse, as said by the American rhetoric narrative theorist Kearns. Kearns's model that focuses on three aspects of narrative: context, the ur-conventions and discourse on the basis of speech act theory will then be discussed.Meanwhile centering on inference of utterance meaning in conversation, the dissertation explores utterance meaning by classifying it into two categories: explicature and implicature. Utterance meanings such as explicature and implicature are dynamically generated in pragmatic process. Furthermore, both successful and unsuccessful turning and polite and impolite language have an influence on utterance meaning.From the above analysis of utterance meanings from various aspects of inference, language users can have a relatively comprehensive understanding oflocutionary act and illocutionary act and have a thorough understanding of explicature and implicature, thus identifying the speaker's intention and achieving success in communication.Finally, this dissertation summarizes the main ideas which center on inference of utterance meaning in conversation and points out that utterance meaning can also be inferred from the aspects of image schema and meaning postulates.