Referential Trouble In English Movie Conversation

Discourse reference and anaphoric repair in conversation both have received attention from different perspectives, but referential trouble, a linguistic phenomenon related to them, has only been touched upon by a few works. Among those studies, some of which focus on Chinese discourses written by foreign students and others of which deal with Chinese, Japanese and German conversations, little work has been done in English conversation. This thesis aims to explore referential trouble in English conversation with focuses on linguistic descriptions, empirical verifications as well as analyses and an alternative account for referential trouble. Altogether 203 episodes of conversation have been collected for the present study from an English Movie Script Corpus consisting of 46 movie scripts. Based on observation of the data, both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been adopted, and both theoretical exploration and statistical analysis have been made in the study. Specifically speaking, the following major findings have been achieved.Firstly, referential trouble in English conversation has been redefined and classified in the present study. Referential trouble has been redefined as the real or potential problems in using or understanding referential expressions in daily conversation. Both functional and formal classifications of referential trouble in Chinese drama dialogue are applied to English data and the results claim that both of them can also work well in English movie conversation. The verifications and analyses of both classifications with English examples are carried out and based on the observation of functional and formal classifications in English data, new findings are discovered respectively.Secondly, a flow chart of the general process of reference is revised based on Ma's flow chart (the general procedure of anaphoric repair) for the present study and Ma's studies on the production of referential trouble have been verified on the basis of the analysis of the English data with the help of the flow chart, which appropriately explains where and when referential trouble may take place in English conversation. From those discussions above, it can be concluded that CP of Anaphoric Reference manipulates the production of referential trouble in English conversation as well. Different maxims of CP of Anaphoric Reference work on different stages of the general process of reference and different types of referential trouble may be triggered by the violation of different maxims. The violation of 13 is the most predominant cause of referential troubles in English conversation and the violation of Maxim I is the most important reason that leads to referential trouble compared with the violation of the other two maxims.Thirdly, pronominal and non-pronominal troubles of referential unclearness are interpreted from Relevance Theory perspective and a Relevance Model of Referential Trouble is designed in order to fully interpret this linguistic phenomenon. Based on analyses of both pronominal and non-pronominal examples of referential unclearness, the following findings are concluded. Firstly, the discrepancy between the speaker's assumption and the hearer's assessment of the relevance of the referent leads to referential unclearness in both pronominal and non-pronominal forms. Secondly, the Relevance Model of Referential Trouble is also empirically verified by the examples of referential unclearness in English conversation and it is concluded that all the instances of referential unclearness can be interpreted with this model.The present study has both theoretical and practical significance. Firstly, it will contribute to the study of anaphoric repair and referential distribution in English conversation. To be more specific, the definition and classifications of referential trouble in English this paper presented would be a great help for future study in this field and the alternative account of troubles of referential unclearness would add to the existing work on anaphoric repair, which indicates the alternative cause of the occurrence of referential trouble. Secondly, movie dialogue is a concentrated and condensed form of real life conversation and reference is a very crucial linguistic device in communication. The analysis can help us understand this linguistic phenomenon in movie dialogue. In addition, data of referential trouble in English conversation of this study will provide opportunity for further research in this area.