A Study Of Metaphor In American Presidential Inaugural Addresses From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Metaphor has been the focus of cognitive linguistics for decades, with itsrecognition of a way of human’s thinking and cognition rather than a rhetorical deviceestablished in the human mind long ago. Studies on metaphor emerge in an endlessstream, including cognition and construction of metaphor, the operating mechanism ofmetaphor, metaphor and psychology, metaphor and neurolinguistics and metaphortogether with other fields.Relevance Theory is a cognitive theory as well as a communicative theory.Relevance Theory, which is looked on as a core and critical theory in cognitivepragmatics, has an interpretation for metaphor, which not only offers studies inmetaphor a powerful theory, but also provides metaphor researches with a new angleto know better and think more. In the theory of relevance, similarity is supposed to beconsidered to be the basis of metaphor construction. It is similarity that associates oneobject or concept with the other between which it seems to share no relationships.Optimal Relevance is the core theory in Relevance Theory while whether whathas been said is relevant to the subject under discussion is a critical question thatdialogue-makers are concerned about. Optimal Relevance is different from MaximalRelevance. The former is defined as a balance between contextual effect andprocessing effort whereas the latter refers to a process in which dialogue participantsachieve the maximal contextual effect with minimum processing effort. In acommunication, pursing Optimal Relevance is possible and practical, but a pursuit ofMaximal Relevance always turns out in vain. Metaphor, functioning as a way ofthinking and cognition, is the best combination between contextual effect andprocessing effort. Therefore, metaphor is an Optimal Relevance. This thesis, on the subject of American Presidential Inaugural Addresses(shortened as APIA) which have prevailed among linguistic scholars and researchers,is intended to classify metaphors obtained from APIA into9types, namely, humanmetaphor, journey metaphor, war metaphor, building metaphor, family metaphor,weather metaphor, road metaphor and other metaphors. And then this research, basedon Relevance Theory, is aimed at how Optimal Relevance is well expressed inmetaphors found in APIA, why metaphor is an Optimal Relevance and how metaphorreflects a balance between a given contextual effect and processing effort. In the end,it applies Optimal Relevance and ostensive-inferential communication to analyze oneor two examples of each type in order to illustrate the process of comprehendmetaphor from the perspective of Relevance Theory, namely, recognition of metaphor,identification of explicatures and construction of Optimal Relevance.The achievements of the research provide a new perspective to the studyof metaphors in political speeches, lay a strong factual basis for the interpretationof metaphor from relevance theory, and bring convenience for subsequent scholarsto better study metaphor. The practical significance of this study is to help readersimprove their critical reading, allowing them to gain a better understanding ofdifferent social values and political ideologies in political discourse.