Communicative Intention Research Within Relevance Theory

This thesis is an interdisciplinary study. From the perspective of pragmatics, it regards the process of communication intention (CI) in utterance communication as the subject, which is seldom studied by traditional linguistic theories and studies. Based on relevance theory (RT), this thesis studies the cognitive process of CI in utterance communication.After reviewing various studies of CI in linguistics, the thesis first points out the feasibility to study CI from the perspective of cognitive pragmatic. Then, it discusses the interpretation of RT in CI studies. After that, it analyzes the relation between CI and meaning. Finally, based on RT it analyzes the cognitive process of formation, transmission and interpretation of CI. It aims to explain the generation and interpretation of CI in utterance communication, i.e. in an ostensive—inferential process of dynamic interpretation with the utterance as medium, the speaker presupposes the meaning and the hearer presumes the CI.CI is the triggering mechanism in the communication process. It ignites the whole dynamic communication system, which control and predict the communicative strategy, method and effect. CI is base intention while meaning is variant intention which is the mapping of the intention on the hearer's cognitive domain. There exits two kinds of intermediate cognitive variant serving for the communication participants respectively: presupposition meaning and presumption intention. Presupposition meaning works in the communicator's transmission of his intention into a certain utterance or act, while presumption intention works in the hearer's creation of the meaning. After CI formed, the speaker seeks the optimal relevance from a set of presumption relevance through inferential so as to make the CI transmitted towards to the hearer in an acceptable way. The hearer also seeks the optimal relevance from a set of presumption relevance through inferential after he receives the utterance information. In the process of seeking the optimal relevance by communicative participants, presupposition meaning and presumption intention is produced.Barack Obama's inaugural address is chosen in this thesis as a case study material to be made a detailed analysis of how the politician transmits his political intention to citizens and the citizens seeks the optimal relevance by inference to capture and interpret the CI of the political leader.This thesis aims to provide language learners a conducting method to understand the communicator's CI and promote the communication effect. From the perspective of politics, the author also hopes that the case study will be helpful for publics to improve their comprehension to the CI of political leaders so that the citizens will control their direction in studying and working to contribute more to the nation at the same time improving themselves.