The Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Model Of Relevance-Adaptation

The author has proposed a cross-cultural pragmatic model of relevance-adaptation, and given an analytical investigation and explanation to this model from the perspective of pragmatics. This new model is on the basis of Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory (1986,1995) and Verschueren's Adaptation Theory (1987,1995,1998,1999), together with some other pragmatic theories such as Code Theory (Shannon and Weaver, 1949) and Conversational Implicature Theory (Grice, 1975). With a view to explaining the production and interpretation of language in cross-cultural communication, the cross-cultural pragmatic model of relevance-adaptation integrated by Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory will be more adequately convincing to promote language user's cross-cultural pragmatic awareness and competence and improve their linguistic and pragmatic performance in cross-cultural communication so as to minimize the possibility of or even avoid pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication. The context in the light of Adaptation Theory should be regarded as the context concept of the new model. This new model claims the following points:First, According to the new model human cognition is relevance-oriented. Any utterance (or other act of overt communication) creates a presumption that it will be relevant enough to be worth the audience's attention or in other terms,"optimally relevant". Therefore, the speaker's task is to try to express the proposition which is the most relevant one possible to the hearer; the hearer is to find the interpretation that satisfies the expectation of optimal relevance.Second, linguistic choices and contextual choices are constantly interadapting with each other in language use on both the production and interpretation sides. When an utterance is chosen, it is very likely to be an integrated process of choice-making, involving language and context at the same time. Linguistic and contextual choices are hardly separable, and language use should be regarded as unified and integrated processes of making linguistic and contextual choices at all possible levels.Third, In order to achieve successful cross-cultural communication, the communicator should be constantly in the pursuit of optimal relevance. Based on the presumption of relevance, which is made during the interadaption process, the speaker decides his particular linguistic style and the hearer finds the interpretation intended by the speaker.Finally, the process of a relevance-adaptation involves choosing strategies.