Role Relationship And Relevance

The present study undertakes an exploration of role relationship in communication within the theoretical framework of relevance theory coupled with insights drawn from role theory. It aims to show that relevance theory supplemented with role relationship has a strong explanatory power in accounting for socially motivated use of language in communication.Based on the understanding of relevance theory and the review of relevant literature, the thesis holds that although it is intrinsically social, relevance theory ignores the roles and role relationship of communicators in the illustration of utterance comprehension, which gives rise to the criticism that relevance theory is an asocial model. It tries to incorporate major concepts and assumptions of role theory in relevance theory, with a focus on how roles and role relationship together with role expectations influence how communicators understand each other and respond to each other in interaction. The proposed integrative framework is applied to examples of two-party conversations to uncover the function of role relationship in cognition and communication. On the basis of Sperber and Wilson's exposition of mutual manifestness, context, informative intention and communicative intention, it is suggested that crucial to communication is the recognition of communicators' roles and role relationships, and that how a conversation proceeds depends on participants' assumptions about role expectations or social norms. It argues for two types of role relationships for communicators. Communicators have a stable relationship to which they are most familiar, and a situational relationship contingent on changing interaction. It also proposes a distinction between the dominant role and the non-dominant role, which is conducive to a better understanding of role relationship. A model is also developed for analyzing two-party conversations. It is expected that this model can explain the whole process of cognition and communication in the interactional conversation, including the underlying motivation and working procedures.