An Analysis Of Fictional Dialogues In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Sperber and Wilson presented Relevance Theory (RT) in their work Relevance: Communication and Cognition, is a new approach to pragmatics, which studies human communication and utterance understanding from cognitive perspective and in dynamic context. The concept of’communication’is both the core and premise to comprehend the RT. Moreover, RT emphasizes the combination of code model and inferential model, which points communication involving informative intention and communicative intention.Hong Lou Meng is the peak of the art of the novel in ancient China. It is a tragic love story setting against the background of the decline of an aristocratic family. In creation of HLM, the author adopts two basically types of writing—narration and dialogue. The function of the narration is mainly to present the key characters, main plot and organize story. While the artistic achievement of the dialogue of HLM is successful arraying seven hundred dazzling characters. The dialogues of HLM are known as language model of Chinese ancient novel. With vivid vocabulary, smart sentence pattern and accurate performance of personality, it receives highly praise both at home and abroad.This thesis attempts to make a relatively systematic study on the dialogues of the main characters of HLM based on the RT. The characters’dialogues are an important means to promote plot development and portray the inner world of characters. On reading the subtle dialogues, people feel in the Grand View Garden, where they witness various people’s voice and expression that they are the real ones. It is a new angle of Redology research to analyze from the perspective of RT, which proves the feasibility and practicability of RT in the analysis of fictional dialogue.