An Adaptation-based Analysis On Anaphora In The Debate Of2010Britain’s TV Election

Anaphora is an extremely complicated phenomenon in human’s speeches and it hasaroused great concern in the fields of linguistics. Scholars make researches about anaphorafrom various angles of syntax, semantics, pragmatics and cognition, and they also made someachievements in their own field. But most anaphora studies are confined to one-dimensional orstatic perspective, and hence few can provide sufficient and convincing explanation for avariety of intricate anaphora as well as deep mechanism of anaphora choice.This research is based on Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory. It offers comprehensiveoutlook to explore language use from cognitive, social and cultural respects, which offers abrand-new approach for studying anaphora. The research data is chosen from three-round TVdebate of2010Britain’s general election and the research centers on anaphora in the debate.According to Adaptation Theory, analyses are made to explore deep operation mechanism ofanaphora choices and anaphora transfer in the course of debate. Since it is the first TV electiondebate in Britain’s history, it draws attention of a considerable number of British people andeach candidate cares much about their words and expressions. As a linguistic device, anaphorais widely applied to the candidates’ utterance and serves as a channel to fulfill their purpose andinterests.The analyses indicate that there are a wide range of factors that can exert influence onanaphora choices. The factors such as subject consciousness, pragmatic and cognitivemechanism, dynamic context as well as social and cultural convention make mutual negotiationand adaptation altogether. The candidates make continual anaphora choices along with dynamicprocess and information progression. In accordance with adaptation principle they dynamicallyand continually choose appropriate and felicitous anaphora forms so as to convey their politicalintention and motivation, persuade the constituency and tactfully defeat opponents. As for thosewho are good at employing anaphora, they stand a high chance to become winner.