The Study Of Hyperbole Based On RI Model

Hyperbole is one of the various figures of speech, which refers to intentionallyenlarging or reducing the image of an object in order to increase the expressingeffects with the help of abundant imaginations. Hyperbole serves as outstanding thenatures of an object, increasing the author’s certain feelings and arousing the reader’sassociations.Based on the Four Principles put forward by an American scholar Grice, DanSperber, a French scholar who undertakes the study of linguistics and philosophy,and an English Scholar—Deirdre Wilson cooperated to put forward RelevanceTheory in their published book—Relevance: Communication and Cognition in1986.Idealized Cognition Model theory was proposed by Lakoff in1987, who thinks thatpeople’s knowing about the world exists as a model in their mind. In this study, wewill choose some examples of hyperbole from Three Kingdoms and A Dream of RedMansions and analyze them with the help of the RI model in order to explore howthe exaggeration is produced and interpreted. We think that the study is veryimportant, and the reasons are as follows: Firstly, seldom do the scholars make somestudies on hyperbole by taking the combination of Relevance Theory and IdealizedCognition Model theory as the theoretical framework, so this study will be a newsupplement to the study of hyperbole from a new angle. Secondly, this study has itspractical meanings. Either in the written statements or in daily communication,hyperbole is often adopted as a kind of language method to increase or decrease theauthor’s feelings, so the analysis of the production of hyperbole and its interpretationfrom the linguistic perspective will benefit people’s expression of their feelings.This thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One is the introduction of this thesis, including the rationale of thestudy, the objectives of the study, methodology and data collection, and the outline ofthis thesis. Chapter Two reviews the previous studies from multiple perspectives and gapsare found from these studies.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework. Firstly, Relevance Theory andIdealized Cognition Model are introduced and commented respectively, with someimportant notions and merits and demerits referred to. Secondly, we combineRelevance Theory and Idealized Cognition Model theory to analyze the examples ofhyperbole, which will be better than any one of the two theories.Chapter Four is the analysis of hyperbole with the RI model. The main task inthis chapter is to analyze the production and interpretation of hyperbole and the twotasks will be described respectively according to the new model.Chapter Five is the conclusion part, in which some major findings will bepresented，some limitations are pointed out and some practical suggestions will beproposed for the future study.