Mental Models Analysis On Generation Of Conversational Implicature

In this paper, the author attempts to analyze the phenomenon of conversational implicature (CI for short) generation from a cognitive perspective, which is a new research approach on conversational implicature studies, and also a try in an interdisciplinary study, since this paper will explain a pragmatic topic using cognitive theories. Mental models (MMs for short) are such broad and abstract which include the autonomy-dependency (A-D for short) model and other models, and the analysis on generation of conversational implicature on the basis of mental models can be narrowed to that on the basis of the autonomy-dependency model.Conversational implicature can be considered as a special utterance, widely existing in normal intercommunication. So the study of generation of conversational implicature is rooted on the studies of utterance generation. The scientificity of the autonomy-dependency analytical framework of utterance generation put forward by Professor Xu Shenghuan has been widely accepted, therefore, the objective of the paper is to verify that the scientific framework can be used to analyze the generation of conversational implicature.According to the theoretical framework of the autonomy-dependency alignment, generation of conversational implicature is geared by the intentional contents in the speaker's mind, which serves as the autonomy during the generation and gives derivation to the dependency which is converted as the utterance of conversational implicature which is explicit expression. The derivation, constrained by the speaker's communication intentionality which is implicit expression, is realized through making use of similarity and proximity and seeking in the suitable mental models. The whole process is called in this framework"nipping-along"of the dependency by the autonomy. The autonomy is dominant to the dependency and transmits its own intention to its corresponding dependent structure by nipping-along. The existence and operation of dependence structure are decided by the intention of autonomous structure. And the exertion of dependent structure should regress to the intention of autonomous structure. In principle, dependent structure can be reverted to autonomous structure when necessary.During the research, qualitative method is used. The study uses irony as an example, the reason is that as a rhetorical device, in irony, the gap between literal sense and intentions (particularly informative intention) is most noticeable, and hence it best satisfies our analysis. The materials will come from novels, daily conversation or written language from books and ironical examples are mainly from Chinese language.