From The Associated Theory Of Cognitive Context On Metaphor Comprehension

The relevance theory establishes the foundation of the cognitive pragmatics, having the great explanatory power. It puts all the aspects of the language communication under its frame to explain. The relevance theory changes the definition of the traditional context and takes the context as a psychological construction. The communicators internalize and cognize the relevant concrete context by experience or thought, which is the cognitive context.We first talk about the explanation and restriction of the cognitive context on the metaphor understanding. From this course we can see the cognitive context's leading role in the deduction of the metaphor meanings. And then we probe into the culture's important role in the metaphor understanding. The explanatory power of the relevance theory lies in that it can explain the literal meaning and non-literal meaning under the same frame of the theory, but the explanation of the non-literal meaning needs more effort and more dependence on the cognitive context. Culture is vital important in the metaphor understanding. In some degree, culture decides whether a metaphor can be correctly understood. In this dissertation culture is divided into national culture, regional culture and era culture.