| The selection of the topic is based on careful consideration of the following factors.On the one hand,anaphora plays an important role in understanding English speeches,on the other hand,the Christmas speeches of Elizabeth II are extremely representative and standard in English speeches.Anaphora refers to a phenomenon in which a linguistic expression,such as a word or phrase,substitutes another word or phrase mentioned above in a text or conversation.This linguistic expression is anaphor,and the one which it substitutes is antecedent.Anaphora,as an important means of discourse cohesion,seems to be common and simple in language learning,but in fact it is a complex linguistic phenomenon.Reviewing the previous study,it is found that few scholars use effective cognitive-metonymic models to analyze anaphora in discourse.This thesis makes data statistics of and classifies anaphora in the selected corpus.And some typical anaphora phenomena are exemplified and analyzed in terms of the cognitive-metonymic model of anaphora proposed.The corpus used in this study is the Christmas speeches delivered by Elizabeth II of England in 2017 and 2018.The focus of this study is to establish a cognitive-metonymic model to study anaphora,so as to get a better understanding of the relation between antecedents and anaphors in anaphora and of English speech discourse.Based on the ideal cognitive model theory,conceptual salience theory and textual model of cognitive metonymy theory,this thesis constructs a cognitive-metonymic model for anaphora research,by means of which we analyze all kinds of anaphora phenomena in the corpus.The results show that:(1)all kinds of anaphora in the corpus can be exemplified and explained by the cognitive-metonymic model proposed;(2)anaphora in English speech discourse has ideational,interpersonal and prominent textual functions;(3)metonymy in anaphora makes people pay more attention to the salient part of things;(4)the understanding of anaphora depends largely on the addressee’s cognitive background and specific context;(5)the cognitive-metonymic relations between anaphors and antecedents at the cohesive level and coherence level are the key to the understanding of English speech discourse.This thesis makes contributions both in theory and in practice.In theory,on the one hand,it expands the research field of anaphora,establishing an effective model for understanding anaphora in English speech discourse.On the other hand,it integrates the classifications of anaphora based on corpus statistics and explains the functions of anaphora in English speech discourse in detail.In practice,it takes the Christmas speeches of Elizabeth II as an example to study anaphora,which provides a new perspective for the study of her Christmas speech discourse and helps scholars better understand the Christmas speeches. |
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