A Cognitive Analysis Of Evasion In Question-Answer Communication

Evasion is an important pragmatic strategy, and it is also a speech act, which has a unique rhetorical function. In recent years, evasion as a burgeoning language phenomenon attracts the attention of many scholars. Along with the remarkable advancement in depth and breadth in the evasion’s research, more and more people have been familiar with evasion and have used it in daily life. Its application is not only reflected in the verbal communication, but also in films, literatures, and even in the political talk shows. No matter in which field, evasion has highlighted its distinctive features and rich variability.In the previous study, scholars have studied evasion from the same perspective relatively, and the basic thinking of those researches is based on evasion’s characteristics, taking its definition and classification into account. This kind of researches emphasizes the surface research of this phenomenon, and few of them have touched the nature. This thesis reveals the cognitive mechanism and the cognitive process of evasion from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, combining static theory with dynamic analysis, aiming to promote evasion’s development in the field of pragmatics and make more people understand and master this communicative strategy thoroughly.This thesis interprets evasion in a new angle supported by Relevance Theory and its branch theories. After introducing the research background, the research purposes and the layouts of the thesis, the focus is on the summary of the research results of domestic and foreign scholars. Combining Relevance Theory including its branch theories with evasion is to carry out a cognitive analysis comprehensively. Furthermore, the thesis divides the questions into three categories based on different attributes, and then analyzes the suitable strategies by each category of questions separately to achieve the intention of improving the application level of evasion.The study of this thesis has double meanings. In theory, it focuses on the cognitive mechanism of evasion in specific cognitive contexts and the pragmatic effects evasion has produced. It can help people understand the forming process of evasion fundamentally and it can broaden the scope of evasion’s research. This study makes the understanding of evasion become more systematic. Moreover, it can promote the further development of Relevance Theory, and it can improve the explanatory power of Relevance Theory and its branch theories in the practical application. In practice, the detailed analysis of this thesis helps to summarize the applying principles of evasion’s strategies, which can guide people how to use evasion in the communication more effectively and further improve users’communicative abilities of identifying questions and dealing with questions in different situations. Evasion and other answering forms appear in a discourse alternately, and constitute an organic body. Choosing the optimal strategy can have a positive pragmatic effect based on the specific context.