A Study On Deliberate Misinterpretation In Chinese Comic Sketch From The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

Deliberate Misinterpretation (DMI) as a language phenomenon often occurs in people’sdaily life. It refers to the fact that in order to obtain certain communicative purpose, thelanguage user chooses to misinterpret the interlocutor’s real meaning deliberately by utilizingsome uncertain and vague factors in the utterances of the interlocutor and in fact, the languageuser understands the interlocutor’s intention well. As a special pragmatic strategy, DeliberateMisinterpretation is widely applied in the Chinese Comic Sketch. The thesis aims to provideguidance for people to improve the communicative competence in the daily communicationbased on the study of Deliberate Misinterpretation in the Chinese Comic Sketch from theangle of Speech Act Theory.Based on the theoretical framework of Austin’s and Searle’s Speech Act Theory (SAT),the thesis conducts a qualitative analysis of Deliberate Misinterpretation in the Chinese ComicSketch. The texts are selected from an influential entertainment program the China Showbizwhich broadcast on the international channel. The central tenet of Speech Act Theory is thatsaying is doing or words are deeds. The application of Deliberate Misinterpretation incommunication is a kind of speech act. The author manages to answer two research questionsby studying the Speech Act Theory and learning from other famous scholars who contribute alot in the field of Deliberate Misinterpretation. Here are the two questions:(1) how does theDMI in Chinese comic sketches realize from the perspective of speech act theory?(2) whatare the pragmatic functions of DMI in Chinese comic sketch from the perspective of speechact theory?The thesis mainly studies the language phenomenon of Deliberate Misinterpretation fromthree angles of locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Because locution isutterance itself to certain extent, locutionary act can explain how the DeliberateMisinterpretation happens from phonetic level, lexical level, syntactic level and context level.The study of locutionary act provides the answer to the first research question. As for thepragmatic functions, they can be discussed from both illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.The pragmatic functions produced by illocutionary act include humor, irony, relief, refusaland threat. With regard to perlocutionary act, four functions are mentioned, such as, breakingthe deadlock to maintain harmonious relationship, saving face, withholding privacy andappropriate aggression.By the study on Deliberate Misinterpretation in Chinese Comic Sketch, the author findsthat realization modes and pragmatic functions of Deliberate Misinterpretation can provideguidance for people to improve the communicative competence in the daily communication. At the same time, the author also finds that all the pragmatic functions in the thesis share onecommon aim to make the communication fluent and maintain harmonious relationship tosome degree. To some extent, the thesis also enlightens further researchers in the field ofDeliberate Misinterpretation.