On Speech Act Of Deliberate Misinterpretation

The thesis conducts a qualitative study of deliberate misinterpretation supplemented with the quantitative analysis of the data collected. Built upon Austin's and Searle's Speech Act Theory, this study is aimed at providing an account for deliberate misinterpretation from the perspectives of locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act, deepening the understanding of deliberate misinterpretation, and formulating how to use this pragmatic strategy to effectively accomplish the communicative purposes of the interlocutors.Previously, the study of deliberate misinterpretation has mainly rested on conversational implicature. Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory. Deliberate misinterpretation is one particular use of language, thus can be viewed as a speech act. It emphasizes the speaker's intentionity. which is different from misunderstanding. Deliberate misinterpretation is an intentional speech act that occurs when the second speaker responds to the first speaker's utterance by deliberately employing an utterance to mismatch his interpretation with the first speaker's intended meaning on the premise that the second speaker correctly and completely understands the meaning of the first speaker's utterance. Therefore, Speech Act Theory is justified the study of deliberate misinterpretation, and moreover in the understanding of the conversational interaction among people.This thesis is exploring and investigating deliberate misinterpretation from the following three aspects-locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Firstly, the locutionary act of deliberate misinterpretation is mainly demonstrated at three different levels:lexical level (including paradigmatic relation like polysemy and homograph and lexical indeterminacy), syntactic level (such as structural ambiguity and certain sentence patterns) and discourse level (change of discourse topic). This analysis also contributes to the study of triggers and operation mechanisms of deliberate misinterpretation. Secondly, as for the illocutionary act of deliberate misinterpretation, representatives account for the largest proportion, and declarations never occur in the data collected because of its particular characteristics. From the perspective of illocutionary force. humor is what most frequently occurs. Refusal, irony, threat and relief also appear in the data collected. Finally, given the fact that the perlocutionary act of deliberate misinterpretation in the data collected is mainly reflected by some non-verbal factors like facial expressions, gestures and actions, this thesis discusses the perlocutionary act of deliberate misinterpretation mainly from the angles of solidarity, aggression and defense, which also indicates the pragmatic functions of deliberate misinterpretation.Deliberate misinterpretation is a frequently occurring linguistic phenomenon in the course of verbal communication. Based on the analysis through Speech Act Theory, this thesis is attempting to comprehend it from another perspective, deepen the understanding and strengthen the application of Speech Act Theory, and furthermore help achieve smooth and effective interaction in the course of verbal communication.