A Relevance-Theoretic Study Of Self-repair In Gossip Girl

Self-repair is a common phenomenon in communication,and it has attracted the attention of scholars of various persuasions for centuries. Studies of self-repair mainly focus on the structure and classification. A multitude of studies of self-repair have been made in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics and language acquisition. However, few researches have been found to deal with self-repair at a relevance-theoretic angle. In view of this, the present thesis attempts to make a tentative study of self-repair proposed by Levelt, based on Relevance Theory. By analyzing self-repair in Gossip Girl, the thesis presents the purpose and strategy of self-repair and systematically analyses three phases of self-repair in order to display what functions Relevance Theory performs in the process of self-repair.The present thesis provides a new approach to the study of self-repair in English. Unlike the previous studies, this study explores the pragmatic functions of self-repair in daily communication as shown in Gossip Girl. It is beneficial for communicators to master the conversational strategies and improve their communicative abilities. It also sheds light on foreign language study. The thesis, to some extent, broaden the application scope of Relevance Theory, at the same time, it is an inspiration to the relevant studies in Chinese and other languages.