A Study On Metonymy Understanding From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory In Desperate Housewives

In recent years, with the development of cognitive linguistics, more and more linguistsfrom different fields have begun their studies on metonymy. Traditional rhetoricians focustheir study on the usage of metonymy from the linguistic level, reviewing metonymy as afigure of speech. Cognitive linguists pay more attention to metonymical cognitive mechanismfrom the aspect of conceptualization. As an important theory to explain humancommunication, Relevance Theory has a strong explanatory to the comprehension ofmetonymy; while this aspect needs more in-depth studies. Therefore, based on Radden andK vecses’ classification on metonymy, this thesis will discuss the use, the inference and theirconstrains of low-level metonymy and high-level metonymy under the framework ofRelevance Theory.Taking a famous American TV series Desperate Housewives as a case study, this thesismainly analyzes the understanding of metonymy from two aspects: optimal relevance andmutual cognitive environment. According to Relevance Theory, every act of ostensivecommunication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance (Sperber&Wilson,158). The use and inference of metonymy can be regarded as a process ofostensive-inferential. In this process, the author should choose the suitable source domainwhich is thought to be relevant enough to activate related information to the reader’scognitive environment to make the reader understand her reference; at the same time, basedon the author’s communicative intention, the reader employs his word, logical, andencyclopedia information to infer author’s informative intention, which is the target domainof the metonymy. In the meantime, optimal relevance is the premise of metonymy contextselection and inference, and it plays a guide in metonymy understanding. Besides, themeaning of mutual in mutual cognitive environment includes the author and the reader. Theauthor uses metonymy to shape the cognitive environment of the reader and make himunderstand his own communicative intention and informative intention. On the other hand,the reader combines the communicative information getting from the author with his cognitive environment assumptions to infer the author’s informative intention. Then theyreach mutual cognitive environment. What’s more, cognitive environment is dynamic for itincludes not only the physical environment but also the cognitive abilities; besides, due to thedistinctive features of the word and the different cultural backgrounds between the author andthe reader, there exist constrains in metonymy use and inference from semantic level andpragmatic level.After analyzing the metonymy use and inference in Desperate Housewives, someconclusions are made:1. The process of use and inference of metonymy is the process ofseeking and realizing the optimal relevance for the reader and the author, and the degree ofrelevance mainly depends on the readers;2. There are constrains from the semantic level andpragmatic level because of the distinctive features of the word and the different culturalbackgrounds, which will constrain the understanding of metonymy. In conclusion, theanalysis of the comprehension of metonymy from the aspect of Relevance Theory provides anew way of exploring metonymy.