The Complementarity Between Systemic Functional Linguistics And Relevance Theory

Systemic Functional Linguistics and Relevance Theory are regarded as two very influential linguistic theories. The former views language as a social semiotic resource and mainly studies language from the social perspective. The latter, falling into the category of cognitive pragmatics, focuses more on the cognitive and psychological aspects. This thesis, after a brief overview of the independent research situations of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Relevance theory, proposes and explores the theoretical possibility of the complementarity between the two linguistic theories, with a detailed discussion first on the philosophical bases and then the specific complementary aspects.The revisit to both theories in Chapter Two falls into two parts. Firstly it dwells on the notions of"System","Stratification","Function"and"new developments of the system"in the framework of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics; then introduces some basic beliefs proposed by Sperber and Wilson, which include ostensive inferential communication, non - demonstrative inference and cognitive context and relevance. The complementarity between the two theories is firmly based on three philosophical bases, namely, language as use, context-consciousness and constructivism, which are discussed in turn in Chapter Three. The tentative discussions of the specific complementary aspects are devoted to Chapter Four and Five. Chapter Four offers a detailed analysis of how RT complements SFL on the specific aspects of thematic structure, information structure and relevance, cohesion and coherence. Chapter Five explores how SFL complements RT on three aspects. The first two are related to how the social perspective of language can help RT on the relationship between language and thought, and on the notion of psychological construction of context. Thirdly, it points out the importance of lexicogrammar in the interpretation of language. The last chapter offers a brief summary of the whole thesis, with some tentative conclusions being drawn at the same time.