A Study Of Body Language From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

There are two languages which are employed by human beings to interact witheach other, verbal language and nonverbal language. As an important form ofnonverbal language, body language plays an indispensable role in communication. Itis used to transmit various kinds of information, especially about man's feelings andattitudes. The study of body language has a long history which could be traced back toancient Greece. However, it was not until the 1950s that body language asserted itsrole as an independent discipline, which was marked by the publication ofBirdwhistell's Introduction to Kinesics. From then on, body language has attractedmore and more attention from the scholars of different concerning fields, such asanthropology, sociology, pedagogy, intercultural communication, etc. The previousstudies have the following characteristics: very scattered, but not systematic; onlyconcerned about objective descriptions, but ignoring the theoretical analysis.This thesis attempts to study body language from a new angle, from theperspective of cognitive pragmatics. In it, the author applies Sperber & Wilson'sRelevance Theory (RT henceforth) to interpret the cognitive process about how bodylanguage is understood by people.In RT, Sperber & Wilson hold that communication is a cognitive process, and putforward the ostensive-inferential communication model. According to this model,ostention and inference are two sides of the same process. For the communicator,communication is ostension which is the stimulus created by the communicator tomake something manifest or more manifest to the audience; while for the audience,communication is inference which is achieved by combining new information withold information to yield contextual effects. Sperber & Wilson also propose twoprinciples, cognitive principle and communicative principle. Cognitive principle isonly a psychological tendency which guides human communication. In actualcommunication, it is communicative principle that is at work. The core concept ofcommunicative principle is optimal relevance. In communication, both the communicator and the audience are optimal relevance-oriented. The ostensivestimulus produced by the communicator is the most relevant one compatible with hisabilities and preferences. Under the guidance of the principle of optimal relevance(adequate contextual effects for smallest processing effort), the audience chooses themost accessible context to process the new information.RT has been applied to explain various phenomena of verbal communication.Theoretically, it can also be used to explain body language. However, compared withverbal language, body language as a nonverbal form of ostensive-inferentialcommunication has its own distinct features. In the thesis, the author expounds on thecharacteristics of body language in terms of ostensive stimulus, body language'sinformative intention and communicative intention, its inference, formation ofcognitive context, and factors affecting its interpretation respectively. Besides, giventhe features of body language, the author modifies Sperber & Wilson's improvedinferential model to make it more suitable for the interpretation of body language.The data in the thesis is chosen from the novel The Adventures of SherlockHolmes. The specific instances of body language in the data are analyzed andinterpreted within the framework of RT. Its aim is to prove the explanatory power ofRT in body language communication from a practical point of view..Through the study, we can conclude that(1) RT is a theory with excellentexplanatory power, which can be Used to interpret both verbal communication andbody language communication. (2)As a nonverbal form of ostensive-inferentialcommunication, compared with verbal language, body language has its own features.In the last chapter of the thesis, the author points out the implications of the study forintercultural communication.