An Analysis Of Personal Reference In English From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As an important area in pragmatics, deixis has attracted many linguists'attention. The comprehension of reference realized by deixis always relies on other elements in the text and context. Various approaches have been applied to the research of reference. Relevance Theory, put forward by Sperber and Wilson, provides a new theoretical foundation for the reference research. Relevance Theory focuses on the significance of contextual effect in communication, which is a guidance to the speaker to use reference and also to the hearer to understand it. This thesis tries to analyze the phenomenon of personal reference from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Personal reference is defined as the reference realized by person deixis which functions in the speech situation(Halliday &Hasan, 2001). This study discusses two kinds of usages of personal reference: personal exophoric reference and personal endophoric reference. Personal exophoric reference is context-dependent. That is, without the context, personal reference can't get explained, and the referent exists outside the text. Personal endophoric reference, on the other hand, can get explained only within the text itself.In this thesis, by means of exemplification, the author discusses the choice of personal reference and the comprehension process of personal reference from the perspective of Relevance Theory in three aspects: optimal relevance, mutual cognitive environment and ostensive-inferential communication. According to the principle of relevance, every ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. Personal reference can be considered as an ostensive act, so the use and the comprehension of it are deeply influenced by the optimal relevance. In verbal communication, the speaker should choose appropriate personal reference which is relevant enough to activate related information in the hearer's cognitive environment to make the hearer understand the referent and acquire the informative intention the speaker intends to convey. To the hearer, he should activate related contextual assumptions with the utterance in his encyclopedic knowledge and construct new context for every utterance in the process of comprehension, and then infer the referent and acquire the speaker's informative intention. The process of personal reference comprehension is just an inference between contextual assumptions and new information. However, optimal relevance plays a role of guidance to the context selection and inference when the hearer understands the personal reference. Any shared cognitive environment that is mutual manifest to the speaker and the hearer in communication is called mutual cognitive environment. When the speaker communicates, her intention is to alter the hearer's cognitive environment and make her intentions mutual manifest to the hearer.Results show that from the angle of Relevance Theory, the speaker should estimate the hearer's cognitive environment, choose appropriate person deixis to indicate the referent and further convey her communicative and informative intentions to the hearer, aiming at achieving mutual manifestness with the hearer and eing optimal relevance. That is the process of the speaker's ostension. In the process of the hearer's inference, according to the activated related contextual assumptions, he should search optimal relevance and infer the referent of person deixis and the intentions the speaker intends to convey.