A Relevance Theory Approach To Metaphor

This thesis is an attempt to explore the working mechanism and the nature of metaphor, as well as the cognitive process of novel metaphor understanding from the perspective of relevance theory.The relevance theory, proposed by Sperber and Wiloson in 1986, tries to analyze human communication from a cognitive-pragmatic view. With the ostensive-inferential model and the two principles of relevance: Cognitive Principle (that human cognition is geared to the maximization of relevance) and Communicative Principle (that every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance), Sperber and Wilson illustrate the nature and interpretation process of verbal communication.The interpretive power of relevance theory for metaphor derives from the fact that it disregards the strict distinction between literal and metaphorical utterances. Sperber and Wilson claim that there is no substantial difference between the two. Thus, metaphor understanding needs no special mechanism but simply results from the search for an interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance in different contexts.This thesis studies the working mechanism of metaphor. It claims that metaphor on the one hand involves an interpretive relation between the propositional form of an utterance and the thought it represents, on the other hand involves a descriptive relation between the speaker's thought and an actual state of affairs. Metaphor is in essence a descriptive use of language.Then this thesis moves on to discuss the nature of metaphor. It argues that metaphor is in nature a kind of effort-posing loose talk whose propositional form resembles that of the speaker's thought. With mutual manifestness as its prerequisite and optimal relevance as the ultimate goal, the interpretation of metaphor demands extra processing efforts to exploit a large array of weak implicatures. And the extra effort will be offset by extra cognitive effect.After the research in the working mechanism and the nature of metaphor, this thesis continues to discuss the cognitive process of novel metaphor understanding. The process still follows the ostensive-inferential model, which is applied by Sperber and Wilson to explain common verbal communication. It includes three sub-tasks: the identification of explicatures, the construction of contextual assumptions and the recovery of implicatures. In the first sub-task (the identification of explictures), the utterance is decoded into semantic representations which are then completed into a full propositional form through an inferential process. In the second sub-task (the construction of contextual assumptions), the hearer follows a path of least effort, activating no more context than is necessary to understand a metaphorical utterance. It is an essential part of the whole cognitive progress. In this task, what should be pointed out is that context is not given, but a matter of choice. The third task (the recovery of implicature) is largely based on non-demonstrative inference, which is from one assumption to another. This is the nature of novel metaphor understanding.One of the greatest advantages of relevance theory is that it solves the dilemma of indeterminacy and determinacy of metaphor implicature. On the one hand, relevance theory illustrates that the identification of implicature of a metaphor depends on cognitive resources, which are different individually. As a result, metaphor implictures are indeterminate. On the other hand, the implicature of a metaphor is determinate since the hearer's interpretation is constrained by his assumption that the metaphor is consistent with the search for optimal relevance. Consequently, the dilemma of indeterminacy and determinacy vanishes in the face of relevance theroy. This study shows that in contrast with other theories, relevance theory is more powerful and effective in the account of novel metaphor understanding.