Pragmatic Enrichment Of Nonce Words

Nonce words are temporarily created to solve instant communication problems.Because of its temporary nature,novelty and acceptability,nonce words can be constantly updated and enriched.Nonce words are highly dependent on context,and the context gives them powerful pragmatic functions.Therefore,the study of pragmatic enrichment of nonce words has important theoretical and practical significance which not only enriches the development of dynamic vocabulary pragmatics,but also helps improving people's ability to express and enhancing communication effects.The thesis is based on the framework of relevance theory,takes Modern Family as an example,adopts the method of quantitative and qualitative analysis,tries to explore the application of nonce words from the perspective of lexical pragmatics,and aims to analyze the pragmatic enrichment process of nonce words meaning.The thesis consists of five parts:The first part systematically introduces the background,purpose and significance of the study.The second part first summarizes the research status of nonce words at home and abroad,and points out the lack of research on nonce words in the field of pragmatic enrichment.Then,this section elaborates the context and ostensive inferential communication in the relevance theory,which provides a solid theoretical basis for the analysis of the subsequent pragmatic enrichment process of nonce words.The third part makes a macro and micro analysis of nonce words in the Modern Family,so that the readers have a deeper understanding of the characteristics and forming rules of nonce words.Characterization of pragmatic enrichment process of nonce words is performed.The pragmatic enrichment of nonce words is not only the mutual effort of the speaker's self-enrichment and pragmatic enrichment of the listener,but also a transitional enrichment from the prototypical meaning to the contextual meaning.The fourth part focuses on the detailed discussion of the dynamic process and adjusting methods of pragmatic enrichment of nonce words.Meanwhile,cognitive model of pragmatic enrichment process of nonce words is constructed based on the analysis and summary of the whole text.According to the changes of reference units of nonce words,six adjusting methods of pragmatic enrichment process are figured out.In addition to general pragmatic narrowing adjustment and general pragmatic broadening adjustment,there exist omitting adjustment,repeating adjustment,phrasal adjustment and sentential adjustment.The last part systematically concludes the findings and limitations and puts forward some constructive suggestions for future study.