A Function-based Study On Teaching Strategies Of English Intonation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Despite the large scale and considerable duration of English teaching in China,little attention is paid to English pronunciation teaching,let alone English intonation(EI).Thus more researches from diverse aspects are urgent for contributing to EI teaching.Relevance Theory is a theory of pragmatics which studies language in use;English intonation studies the way language is used.Therefore,these two have close relation with each other and the study of EI from perspective of Relevance Theory is prosperous.In this thesis,dialogues taken from American sitcom Modern Family are analyzed to study function-based comprehension of EI from the perspective of Relevance Theory.The ultimate goal of the study is to find implications of function-based EI comprehension to its teaching.To achieve these goals,the whole research aims to answer the following three questions,which are as follows:1.How does English intonation realize its functions of organizing discourse information and communicating discourse meaning in the verbal communication?2.From the perspective of Relevance Theory,how does English intonation distribute information and achieve contextual effects?3.What implications does function-based English intonation comprehension have to the EI teaching strategies from the perspective of Relevance Theory?The research indicates that according to Relevance Theory,communication is an ostensive-inferential process.In the communication process,intonation can be regarded as a device of ostension provided to the hearer,through which the speaker tries to make his intentions manifested to the hearer and at the same time decrease the processing effort of the hearer.Also,the choice of intonation indicates the distribution between background information and foreground information.Based on the information distribution,the hearer is guided to the intended contextual assumptions and thus achieves the expected contextual effect.Once the contextual effect is achieved,the intonation has realized its certain function.The author holds that function-based comprehension of EI from the perspective of Relevance Theory is inspirational for teaching strategies of it and thus proposed three significant teaching strategies for EI in this thesis:(1)Cultivation of learners' function-based EI awareness is pedagogically important for learning intonation.(2)Intonation should be taught with assistance of identifying information distribution(3)More emphasis should be laid on perception stage of perception-production intonation learning process.This function-based study of English intonation from the perspective of Relevance Theory is a relatively new angle.Its contribution for teaching EI has such implication that perspective of pragmatics for EI teaching research deserves attention of researchers and language teachers as well.