A Study Of Novel Metaphor From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the development of economy and society, public service advertisements are playing a more and more important role. PSAs mainly reflect ubiquitous social problems such as racism, AIDS prevention, environment protection, etc, aim to arouse individuals’ awareness and consciousness and change their improper thoughts and behaviors. In order to make PSAs more powerful, attractive and impressive, more and more advertisers use novel metaphor in PSAs.Firstly, this thesis begins with a study of definitions and research status of PSAs, metaphor and novel metaphor, including the origin and history of PSAs, the development process of metaphor in rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics, psychology, etc, and the distinction between novel metaphor (non-conventional metaphor) and conventional metaphor (dead metaphor). Then, based on previous studies, this thesis takes novel metaphor in PSAs as the research target from cognitive-pragmatic perspective, using Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory as theoretical framework, and with the help of qualitative method, mainly analyzes the interpretation of novel metaphor in PSAs.Relevance theory put forward by Sperber and Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986 consists of two principles of relevance:cognitive principle of relevance and communicative principle of relevance. Cognitive principle means human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance, while communicative principle of relevance demonstrates the fact that every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. Relevance theory stresses the achievement of optimal relevance with the help of some processing effort and cognitive environment to produce enough contextual effects. In addition, in the process of achieving optimal relevance, Sperber and Wilson focus on the ostensive-inferential process of communication embodied by three sub-tasks of comprehension procedure:the identification of explicatures, the construction of contextual assumptions and the recovery of implicatures.Based on relevance theory, this thesis firstly sheds light on the nature of novel metaphor-an effort-imposing loose talk. It is believed that the discrepancy between propositional form and communicator’s thoughts follows relevance theory. Besides, reasons of using novel metaphor are also explained. It is demonstrated that novel metaphor is a persuasive ostensive-stimulus to produce contextual effects and is an effective way of achieving optimal relevance. Then, this thesis discusses that cognitive environment is the main factor influencing the interpretation of novel metaphor in PSAs, and that the interpretation can’t be achieved unless logical information, lexical information and encyclopedic information which are main parts of cognitive environment are satisfied at the same time. Finally, this thesis expounds the comprehension procedure of novel metaphor:the identification of explicatures, the construction of contextual assumptions and the recovery of implicatures, which deepens our comprehension and interpretation of novel metaphor in PSAs. All these explorations are based on the analysis of PSAs with novel metaphor, which are mainly from http://www.cnpad.net/and http://www.chinaadren.com. Moreover, PSAs in this study consist of many different forms of expression, including words, pictures and the combination of them, which enriches previous studies in types of expression of PSAs.In this study, it is found that relevance theory is applicable to the interpretation of novel metaphor in PSAs.In addition, this study helps audiences to successfully comprehend some novel metaphor in PSAs and offer a new way of understanding PSAs. Last but not least, it could inspire and provide some suggestions for designers of PSAs to design in a new and creative way combining many forms like pictures, video, sound, etc.This thesis is made up of five chapters:Chapter One presents a brief introduction to the background, significance, objective, methodology and organization of the thesis.Chapter Two offers the definitions necessary for this thesis including advertisement, public service advertisement, metaphor and novel metaphor. It as well sums up previous studies on PSAs and on metaphor in advertisements at home and abroad.Chapter Three provides the theoretical framework of relevance theory mainly including cognitive principle of relevance and communicative principle of relevance. Each factor is illustrated in detail in this chapter.Chapter Four makes a detailed analysis of novel metaphor in PSAs from the perspective of relevance theory. It gives a relevance theoretic account of the nature of novel metaphor, reasons of using novel metaphor in PSAs, main factor influencing the interpretation of novel metaphor and the comprehension procedure in understanding novel metaphor in PSAs. The illustration of nature, reasons and factor about novel metaphor paves the ground for the comprehension procedure of it.Chapter Five summaries major findings of the study, illustrates the implication of this thesis, analyzes limitations of the thesis and presents suggestions for future study on novel metaphor.