A Comparison Between Relevance Theory Approach And Systemic Functional Approach To The Interpretation Of Discourse Coherence

Coherence is one of the main characteristics of discourse, and has become the focus ofresearch in discourse analysis recently. The linguists at home and abroad have put forwardtheir views on the subject of discourse coherence in their works. Some linguists thought thatthe analysis of coherence should be made in the aspect of pragmatics, and pointed out that weshould study coherence from the relation between proposition and the illocutionary value oflanguage. Some linguists emphasized that coherence is a kind of mental phenomenon, but nota linguistic term. All these researches studied coherence from only one aspect and neglect theother points, which made the existing theory of discourse coherence lack sufficientconvincing force. Thus, in order to make discourse analysis systematical andmulti-dimensional, this paper attempts to find out a relatively comprehensive way to analyzecoherence by comparing two approaches to discourse coherence studies—systemic-functionalgrammar and relevance theory.Among the studies of discourse coherence, Halliday's systemic-functional grammar andSperber and Wilson's relevance theory explained the discourse coherence systematically. Thefirst chapter of this paper gives a brief introduction and personal evaluation of the studies ondiscourse coherence. The second chapter and the third chapter focus the discussion on thediscourse coherence from the aspects of systemic-functional approach and relevance theoryapproach respectively. Chapter two explains discourse coherence mainly from two aspects,cohesion and situational context, which are the main focuses of systemic-functional grammarand show that the three variables of context and three metafunctions of language are closelyrelated. Chapter three explains discourse coherence mainly from relevance theory in threeaspects, including the two principles of relevance theory, the ostensive-inferentialcommunication and cognitive context. Chapter four follows the analysis of chapter two and three. In this chapter, some examples are given in order to illustrate theories in chapter twoand chapter three.The research shows that the two methods of discourse analysis explain discoursecoherence in a unique way and one cannot be replaced by the other. The systemic functionalapproach mainly expressed coherence from the discourse itself. But, when the discourseinvolves both the addresser and the addressee's cognitive coherence, the systemic functionalapproach seems unconvincing. On such occasion, another approach– relevance theory, canmeet the need, for this theory focuses on the cognitive activities of individuals. By comparingthe disadvantages and advantages, the paper proposes a frame that in the study of thediscourse coherence, we should integrate the systemic-functional linguistics and relevancetheory and analyze the discourse coherence comprehensively from the aspects of discourseitself and the communicators that are involved in the discourse with complementaryadvantages of two theories.