A Study Of Metaphor From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

This thesis aims at studying metaphor from the perspective ofrelevance theory. According to relevance theory, metaphor is a loose talk,No special mechanism of interpretation of metaphor is needed. It isrelevance that influences the effect of metaphor, contextual effects andprocessing effort involved.In this thesis, definitions and classifications of metaphor are given atfirst, an overview of the views of metaphor is offered, and a little moreattention is paid to the pragmatic interpretation of metaphor, esp. toGrice's conception of metaphor as an implicature, Searle's approach tometaphor as an indirect speech act. Some weaknesses of the above viewsare pointed out here. Next relevance theory is introduced. Human'scognition and communication are very closely related to the relevance; anostensive-inferential model of communication is proposed: thecommunicator produces a stimulus which makes the utterance strongmanifest to communicator and audience and the communicator intends,by means of this stimulus, to make manifest or more manifest to theaudience a set of assumption; relevance is a comparative notion whosemeasurement depends on two factors: cognitive effect and processingeffort. The greater the cognitive effect and the smaller the processingeffort, the greater relevance of an input to an individual will be.At last, this study discusses the mechanism of interpretationmetaphor and the effect of metaphor. Metaphor is formed based on theresemblance between things; the acquiry of resemblance, however, isinfluenced by many factors, for example, context, human's cognitive ability etc. Anyway, the process of seeking the resemblance is actuallythat of seeking relevance, because there is relevance in any utterance,therefore, relevance can be acquired in any metaphor. Relevance theorypoints out that, according to the communicative principle, utterancescreate expectations of optimal relevance; the interpretation which bestsatisfies the utterer's expectation of relevance should be chosen. Sperberand Wilson adopt two terms—description and interpretation to themechanism of interpretation of metaphor. Metaphor involves aninterpretive relation between the utterance and the thought this utteranceis used to represent, and a descriptive relation between the thought andthe actual state of the affairs. From this point of view, metaphor is a kindof loose talk, and no special mechanism of interpretation of metaphor isneeded. Cognitive context is offered in relevance theory. The function ofcognitive context is put much emphasis on in this study. From thetraditional view, context is static, predetermined and abstract. Thecomprehension of metaphor will probably be in a mess and in inabilitysometimes. While cognitive context is dynamic, a set of new contextualassumptions can be created along with the previous ones, and contextualeffect can be acquired during the processing of metaphor interpretation,so from this point of view, we can't ignore the function of cognitivecontext in the understanding of metaphor.This study concludes that relevance theory is powerful and effectivein an account of metaphor.