A Relevance-theoretic Approach To Verbal Misunderstanding In The Big Bang Theory

Verbal misunderstanding is the hearer’s inability to interpret the speaker’s utterance correctly. Although remarkable studies on verbal misunderstanding have been conducted from different perspectives such as pragmatics and sociolinguistics, detailed analysis of misunderstanding from the perspective of cognitive-pragmatics is still needed. Besides, most scholars consider that misunderstanding frequently results in breakdown of communication and brings about negative consequences. It is asserted in this thesis that misunderstanding, though unavoidable to some extent, can be monitored and repaired in different ways in the process of communication.To be more specific, this thesis aims to provide a systematic analysis of verbal misunderstanding based on the corpus of the five seasons of The Big Bang Theory within the framework of relevance theory. Qualitative method is adopted in order to answer three research questions:What is the distribution tendency of misunderstanding at the level of explicatures and implicatures in The Big Bang Theory? What are the causes of misunderstanding at the level of explicatures and implicatures in The Big Bang Theory? How do characters in The Big Bang Theory repair misunderstanding after it occurs?For the purpose of this study,167 cases of misunderstanding were collected. These instances were analyzed in the following steps:first, these instances of misunderstanding were classified into various (sub)-categories at the level of explicatures and implicatures, and the distribution tendency of misunderstanding at these two levels was described. Second, the exploration on the repairing process of misunderstanding was made. These instances of misunderstanding were classified under different categories according to different ways of repairing misunderstanding. Finally, detailed analysis of misunderstanding with real examples was given, in order to explain how misunderstanding occurs at the level of explicatures and implicatures and how communicators repair misunderstanding in different ways.After detailed discussion, major findings of this study can be summarized as follows:first, misunderstanding does occur at the level of explicatures and implicatures. At the level of explicatures, misunderstanding happens because the hearer constructs erroneous explicatures or misinterprets the speaker’s explicatures as unintended implicatures. At the level of implicatures, erroneous implicatures and unintended explicatures may lead to misunderstanding. Second, the distribution tendency of misunderstanding indicates that the hearer is more likely to misunderstand the speaker’s explicatures than implicatures. To be more specific, misunderstanding occurs more frequently when the hearer makes wrong assignment of sense and reference. Third, there are altogether six different ways of repairing misunderstanding: immediate correction, disregard, disregard after mal-correction, zero response, delayed correction and self-correction, among which immediate correction is basically the most frequent choice to repair misunderstanding.All in all, the present study, providing a new perspective to approach misunderstanding, is of both theoretical and practical value. By analyzing the causes of misunderstanding at the level of explicatures and implicatures, the explanatory power of relevance theory over misunderstanding is expanded. In addition, the account of the repairing process of misunderstanding is of social importance. Different ways of repairing misunderstanding can be used by the interlocutors to minimize negative effects of misunderstanding and achieve smooth and successful communication.