A Relevance-Theoretic Approach To Deliberate Misinterpretation In FRIENDS

Deliberate misinterpretation is very common in people's daily communication as well as in literary works. It occurs when the hearer correctly understands the speaker but gives utterances diverging from the speaker's expectation deliberately in order to achieve certain communicative goals.The present study conducts a qualitative and quantitative analysis of deliberate misinterpretation that occurs in verbal communication from the perspective of Relevance Theory. Relevance Theory is a new approach to pragmatics; it attempts to answer not only philosophical questions about the nature of communication but also psychological questions about how the interpretation process unfolds in the hearer's mind. In general, the Relevance Theory provides a general explanation of utterance interpretation since it regards communication as dynamic interaction between the speaker and the hearer. With its general applicability and high explanatory power, Relevance Theory is employed here to explain the special phenomenon of deliberate misinterpretation.With Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory as the general conceptual framework and based on the research results of related studies at home and abroad, this study attempts to answer the following two questions:1) how are different kinds of deliberate misinterpretation distributed in daily communication? and 2) how do the realization mechanisms of deliberate misinterpretation function?The English situation comedy Friends is chosen as the data source for this study. With the video version and the transcripts of this play at hand, conversations containing deliberate misinterpretation are marked, collected and analyzed systematically.It is found that deliberate misinterpretation can be classified into deliberate misinterpretation of explicit meaning and deliberate misinterpretation of implicit meaning based on the distinction between explicature and implicature conveyed in the speaker's utterance proposed by Relevance Theory. Deliberate misinterpretation of explicit meaning can be further categorized into deliberate misinterpretation of propositions, deliberate misinterpretation of deictic expressions and others. Deliberate misinterpretation of implicit meaning can be further categorized into deliberate misinterpretation of indirect speech acts, deliberate misinterpretation of conversational implicature, deliberate misinterpretation of figurative language and others.The realization mechanisms of deliberate misinterpretation can be studied from the perspective of the speaker and the perspective of the hearer based on Relevance Theory's ostensive-inferential communication and cognitive context. The speaker's utterance provides the prerequisite for the hearer to realize deliberate misinterpretation, so it can be regarded as the external factors; the hearer, utilizing the triggers contained in the speaker's utterance, can make use of various means to achieve the effect of deliberate misinterpretation, so the hearer's utterance can be regarded as the internal factors for the realization of deliberate misinterpretation. The external factors for deliberate misinterpretation are categorized into explicit indeterminacy in the speaker's conversational utterance and implicit indeterminacy in the speaker's conversational utterance, which are subcategorized respectively. From the hearer's perspective, logical means, lexical means and encyclopedic means, which are classified on the basis of the cognitive environment in Relevance Theory, can be employed to realize deliberate misinterpretation.The study of deliberate misinterpretation in the English situation comedy Friends from the perspective of Relevance Theory expands the research scope of the pragmatic study of this linguistic phenomenon. Hopefully, it will help promote the conduction of smooth daily communication as well as cross-cultural communication and the establishment of sound interpersonal relationship. At the same time, it provides implications for English language teaching and learning.