A Study Of News Spokesman Hong Lei’s Pragmatic Response Strategies From The Perspective Of Relevance-adaptation Model

The Foreign Ministry Press Conference, regularly held by China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is to release information about important diplomatic activities and to elaborate on foreign policies by answering sensitive questions. Spokesmen’s remarks are special kinds of bilateral communication which are achieved by answering journalists’ questions in press conference. Pragmatic response strategies can help to evade embarrassment and reach the communication goals. Naturally, pragmatic response strategies in spokesmen’s remarks have also aroused the interest of many scholars.Dr Yang Ping and Ran Yongping put forward the Relevance-Adaptation Model by combining Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory and Verschuren’s Adaptation Theory. The model gets rid of demerits and absorbs two theories’ merits. Relevance Theory emphasizes the explanation efficiency but lack of sufficient description of specific rules. Adaptation Theory, on the contrary, provides a thorough theoretical framework but is short of powerful explanation ability. Relevance-Adaptation Model can achieve these two functions at the same time and explain the mechanism of language use comprehensively.150 pieces of spokesman Hong Lei’s transcribed remarks from 2013 to 2014 are collected and classified and 17 pieces of them are analyzed in the thesis. Combining with quantitative and qualitative method, the thesis discusses three main response strategies employed by Hong Lei from the perspective of Relevance-Adaptation Model. Through the quantitative approach, the thesis finds that Hong Lei mainly employ three pragmatic response strategies: understatement response strategy(24%),vague response strategy(49%) and evasive response strategy(59%). Within these three categories strategies, he prefers to employ emphatic sentence as understatement response strategy(74%), discourse vagueness as vague response strategy(56%) andimplied evasion as evasive response strategy(94%). Through the qualitative approach,three response strategies are discussed by studying the case of Hong Lei’s remarks. It is found that language communication is a dynamic process of relevance-seeking and adaptation-making urged by context assumption. During the process, spokesmen not only choose linguistic forms, but also choose pragmatic strategies to realize their intentions which reflect various degrees of consciousness. Also, to reach the communication goals of establishing and maintaining peaceful international relations and safeguarding national sovereignty, security and interests, spokesmen always adapt to various context correlates including linguistic context, situational context and background context. These contexts are not fixed in what we have already known in our mind or what we can see at the moment but can be currently perceived or currently inferred. It is these unfixed contexts that conduct different intentions and these intentions urge spokesmen manage remarks by extending the context, reducing the context or even changing the context. Thus, different response strategies are chosen.As a kind of diplomatic language, spokesmen’s remarks differ from daily communication greatly in two aspects. In the one aspect, they are different mostly in linguistic style. Spokesmen’s remarks are pithy which reflect on conciseness of content and briefness of sentence. In the other aspect, appropriate wording make spokesmen’s remarks decent which reflect on the using of understatement, vagueness and evasion. As a seasoned spokesman, Hong Lei has his own linguistic style. By statistic analyzing, it is found that among these three response strategies, he prefers to employ emphatic sentence as understatement response strategy, discourse vagueness as vague response strategy and implied evasion as evasive response strategy. Also, he tends to use positive words like to avoid the unnecessary embarrassment and troubles.In conclusion, spokesmen’s remarks are processes of relevance seeking and adaptation making. It hopes to help audiences to have a better understanding of spokesmen’s remarks and get the real intentions of spokesmen.