A Relevace-Based Analysis Of Coherence In English Vehicle Rint Advertisement

The present thesis is an attempt to apply relevance theory to analyze coherence in English vehicle print advertisements. Coherence is a fundamental but controversial concept in discourse analysis. In the past three decades, linguists have explored coherence from different perspectives, arrived at different definitions, and constructed various theories about it. Previous studies, both semantic (e.g. cohesion theory) and pragmatic (e.g. conversational implicature theory and speech act theory), have contributed greatly to our understanding of this issue. However, they all suffer from their weaknesses. The common problem with previous studies is that they have not paid enough attention to the cognitive feature of coherence constructing, which makes the present study necessary and worthwhile.The theoretical background of the present research is Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson in 1986. They hold that human communication is essentially cognitive which is relevance-oriented. On the basis of comparison of Code model and Inference Model, they propose a new model: Ostensive-Inferential communication. Ostension and inference are two sides of a same process; ostension is for the addresser while inference is for the addressee. Both ostension and inference should be consistet with relevance.This thesis concerns first with the advertiser of English vehicle print advertisements to tell the advertiser's important role in constructing coherence. In the process of interaction the advertiser is always rational and intentional, he believes that the reader can get the information intended by him. When the advertiser uses linguistic signals to produce an advertisement, he must have an intention and believe that the reader can derive his intention from the advertisement. In order to convey his intention to the reader, he first estimates the reader's cognitive environment, arranges his words in an effective way and makes sure that what he produces can activate the right memories in the reader's mind. In terms of this, it is claimed that the advertiser exerts himself to establish the advertisement in a coherent way and his sentences serve as the guarantee for coherence. As a result of the advertiser's effort, the intended information will be the most salient in the reader's memory. When the interpreting process begins, the reader takes what is activated in his mind as the advertiser' intention. It's natural that coherence is created.Then this thesis turns to contributions made by the reader. It is assumed that in the process of reader's searching for relevance, a coherent English vehicle print advertisement is constructed. The reader's inference is relevance oriented. To get the intention which is indeed intended by the advertiser, the reader must infer the implicated premise first, then based on the premise she infers the intention given by the advertiser, i.e. the implicated conclusion. Coherence, which is finally established in the reader's mind by seeking for relevance, can be divided into propositional content coherence and contextual effect coherence: the coherence that arises when information made available by the interpretation of a sentence of an advertisement is used for establishing the proposition of the next, and the coherence that arises when the information made available by the interpretation of a sentence of the advertisement is used for establishing the contextual effect of the next.Based on relevance theory, this thesis discusses the contributions made by the two sides of communication, i.e. the advertiser and the reader, to get the conclusion that coherence results from the advertiser and the reader's common goal for relevance.