A Study On Online Chinese Catchwords In Daily Conversations From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Online Chinese catchwords are a kind of language expressions upsurging with the fast development of online informational communication. They enrich themselves constantly in unceasing disappearance and development, and produce a considerable effect on social life. The burgeoning online Chinese catchwords have become an inseparable part in daily life, which have extensive sources and various forms. There are certainly some people who feel perplexed and cannot understand them, which impedes the process of successful communication.Relevance Theory holds that communication is a kind of cognitive activity which is based on some reasoning thinking and is achieved through the addressee’s constructing and choosing suitable contexts in accordance with the addresser’s extensive behaviors. The contexts are temporarily constructed with manifest assumptions from cognitive environment, including not only the physical environment or the contextual information, but also the perceptions of the world and the interactive experience between people and the world. According to ostensive-inferential model,the addresser’s utterances always provide the optimally relevant information and express his/her intentions accurately, while the addressee constructs the maximally relevant assumptions and makes logical inference to find out the addresser’s communicative information.This paper applies Relevance Theory to analyzing online Chinese catchwords in daily conversations, aiming at investigating how the catchwords in daily conversations are used to carry the speaker’s intentions and how people understand the conversations consisting of catchwords on the basis of Relevance Theory. And there are three research questions: 1) What are the functions of mutual cognitive environment for understanding online Chinese catchwords? 2) How does ostensive-inferential model play a role in understanding online Chinese catchwords? 3)In what ways are the meanings of catchwords connected with optimal contextual information in the process of understanding?The paper mainly takes the following steps. Firstly, a collection of online Chinese catchwords is made to set a small database. Secondly, based on the data, a small collection of online Chinese catchwords is extracted according to their use frequency. Thirdly, a qualitative analysis of the selected online Chinese catchwords is performed to analyze the process of the addressee’s interpretation of the addresser’s communicative intentions in the conversationsResearch results show that the application of Relevance Theory provides great help to online Chinese catchwords in daily uses. In the first place, the construction of mutual cognitive environment supplies a fundamental support to the success ofcommunication. The similar cognitive structure of the same object removes some obstacles of misunderstanding. In the second place, the application of ostensive-inferential model provides an efficient way to the success of communication.It helps the hearer make inferences to grasp the speaker’s informative intentions and communicative intentions accurately. In the last place, the combination of the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance is the real safeguard for a successful communication. It filtrates the redundant information and keeps the important one in the process of the hearer’s understanding the conversations consisting of online Chinese catchwords, thus to satisfy the speaker’s expectation of relevance and communicative information. All in all, Relevance Theory has a strong explanatory force in daily uses of online Chinese catchwords, and online Chinese catchwords are well-understood with the help of Relevance Theory.