Discourse Correlation Interpretation

Pragmatics aims to explain how to understand the speakers' meaning rather than their literal meaning which depends on inference. The most representative one of those who makes their contributions to the study of utterance is Grice. He proposes the famous Cooperative Principle, which is proved to be one of the most influential theories in the development of pragmatics. The Cooperative Principle, though very influential, is problematic in some ways and requires supplementing and developing.Relevance Theory is a theory developed by Sperber and Wilson in the basis of criticizing the Cooperative Principle. It is a new approach to pragmatics and verbal communication, which attempts to answer not only philosophical questions about the nature of communication, but also psychological questions about how the interpretation process unfolds in the hearer's mind. In Relevance Theory, pragmatic interpretation is substantially seen as a psychological matter governed by the cognitive principle and communicative principle. Thus it has been considered the fundamentals of cognitive pragmatics with its explanatory power, although it is still at an early stage of development. Controversial as some aspects of the theory are, it does not diminish the significance of Relevance Theory as a whole , it has proved to be a very powerful theory that can account for a wide range of linguistic and cognitive problems.Based on Sperber and Wilson's original statements in Relevance: Communication and Cognition as well as the research products of the following Relevance Theorists, this thesis is dedicated to the studies of...