A Study On Narrative Discourse From The Perspective Of Dynamic Context

With the establishment of context theory, dynamic context, as one of the most important notions in it, has received a great deal of attention. Many scholars have made carefully study on dynamic context, and these studies are quite fruitful. Theory of Adaptation and Relevance Theory have put forward their own concepts on dynamic context, and these concepts are widely accepted now. Nowadays, people arc becoming more and more aware that static context itself is not adequate to interpret narrative discourse. Only from the perspective of dynamic context, can we grasp the real characteristic of language, thus have the correct understanding and explanation to all kinds of language events. At the same time, the rapid development of narranology also arouses our attention. People are no longer satisfied with those traditional studies of narrative discourse, such as characters, plot etc. Nowadays, scholars have switched their study emphasis to some factors which are more complex, such as the communication levels of narrative discourse. These studies are also very fruitful. However, for a long time, the study of the dynamic context and the study of narrative discourse are isolated from each other, and the connection between dynamic context and narrative discourse remains untouched. We should admit that the study of dynamic context and the study of narrative discourse are closely connected essentially. Only from the perspective of dynamic context, can we become more and more sensitive to the dynamic factors of narrative discourse, such as the interaction of characters, the continuous changing of physical environment, etc. By doing this, we can improve our ability of finding the contextualization cues given by the authors of narrative discourses, thus have a better understanding of narrative discourse. Based on the theoretical study of dynamic context and narrative discourse, the present paper introduces the notion of dynamic context into the interpreting of narrative discourse. It tries to explore the effects of dynamic context on the understanding of narrative discourse. Meanwhile, a relative empirical study is conducted, and finally some suggestions to the present English teaching are given.The study is mainly divided into six parts. The first part is the introduction. The background of the study and purpose of the thesis are introduced. The second part intends to make a general study of dynamic context and narrative discourse, functions as a basis of further study. The third part devotes to the theoretical study of the relationship between narrative discourses and dynamic context. Narrative discourse here is regarded as a dynamic process of interaction between the author and the reader. According to the fact that narrative discourse has complex communication levels, concepts of dynamic context of Relevance Theory and Theory of Adaptation will be employed to analyze the intratextual levels and extratextual layer of concrete narrative discourse. The forth part is the experimental study bymeans of testing 80 sophomores majored in Landscape Architecture. The fifth part based on the pedagogic implication, puts forward some tentative methods of applying dynamic context into the reading process of narrative discourse and gives some feasible suggestions on the current college English teaching. The sixth part is the conclusion. It concludes that during process of reading narrative discourse, the employment of dynamic context can help a lot to make people to have a better understanding of narrative discourse and improve the reading efficiency.