A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach To White Lies

The use of white lies is a complicate and intriguing aspect of communicative behavior. Scholars at home and abroad have made studious researches in a variety of disciplines such as psychology, sociology, semantics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics and so on. However, these studies are just static description, only partially explain the mechanism and process of lies, and lack of theoretical system. Lying process involves cognitive, social, cultural and many other factors. Lying is a dynamic process and it is caused by ever-changing context, so that a lie needs to be understood from a more comprehensive perspective. Nevertheless a white lie is a member of lie category. In this thesis our attention will be restricted to white lies. From a cognitive-pragmatic perspective, a theoretical analysis of white lie generation and interpretation will be carried on so as to further explain the innate cognitive process of white lie construction and appreciation.The study of white lies belongs to the category of deceptive study that involves many fields such as psychology, ethics and linguistics. From the perspective of cognitive, language is a product of cognitive processes. The white lie is no exception. From the perspective of pragmatics, white lies are regarded as a kind of pragmatic strategy that harmonizes interpersonal relationships and smoothes social communication. Combining Lakoff's Idealized Cognitive Models Theory (abbreviated as ICM thereafter) with Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (abbreviated as RT thereafter), we can perceive and interpret white lies better. This new cognitive model is called RT-ICM compatibility mode, where the ICM is operating in the dynamic cognitive context, then achieving the optimal relevance through RT. The aim in this paper is to describe and explain white lies in communication with the help of the relevance theory and ICM theory, so as to reveal the essence of white lies.This article is to study the construction mechanism of white lies which has not been studied before. From a cognitive pragmatic point of view, basing on the relevance theory and ICM theory, first I will propose an assumption that ICM theory provides us with the theoretic framework of white lies in a narrow sense, and the relevance theory can apply the cognitive framework of this theory into the actual analysis of white lies. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the two theories to explain the specific language phenomenon. Then I will further attempt:1) to resolve the generation and interpretation mechanism of the white lies from a cognitive pragmatic point of view;2) to introduce a new practical type of cognitive model, which is that the ICM is operating in the dynamic cognitive context, then achieving optimal relevance through RT;3) to apply this RT-ICM compatibility mode into the analysis of white lies, in order to obtain a certain significance in practical applications.The abductive approach is applied as the methodology of the present study:to proceed from an observed result-the existing white lie examples, invoke an explanatory principle by pursuing its motivation, and infer that something must be the case.The purpose of this study is to use the cognitive pragmatics to explain the generation and interpretation mechanism of white lies, and try to achieve the discovery of the following by explaining the specific process:1) ICM theory provides us with the theoretic framework of white lies in a narrow sense, and the relevance theory can apply the cognitive framework of this theory into the actual analysis of white lies; 2) RT-ICM compatibility mode of the cognitive pragmatics is not a static cognitive model, but a new cognitive model which is functioning on dynamic organizational processes;3) RT-ICM mode of cognitive pragmatics is an important basis in the explaining the similar language phenomena, like humor, irony and so on.