1、 （ 20_ _届） 本科毕业 设计 On Verbal Irony from the Perspective of Relevance Theory 关联理论对反讽言语的解读 英语 I 摘要 在日常言语交流和书面文体中，人们经常使用反讽，反讽是言语交际中一种常见的语言现象。然而比之于对隐喻、幽默的研究，人们对反讽的研究却少之又少。反讽可以分为三类：言语反讽 , 情景反讽和戏剧 反讽。本文将言语反讽作为研究的对象，尝试用斯泊伯和威尔逊 (Sperber Wilson)的关联理论 (Relevance Theory)来分析和解释反讽这一语用现象。关联理论摒弃了传统的交际代码模式，提出了明示一推理
2、模式，认为交际是一个涉及信息意图与交际意图的明示推理过程；关联原则包括关联的认知原则 (即：人类认知倾向于同最大关联相吻合 )和关联的交际原则 (即：每一个明示的交际行为都应设想为它本身具有最佳关联性 )。接着通过一系列的例证来揭示反讽其本质，并阐述如何在关联理论框架下辨别和理解反讽。得出较之于传统的反讽 研究，关联理论反讽观的合理性以及其对反讽本质和反讽理解机制的强大解释力。 关键词： 反讽；关联理论；本质；识别；阐释 II Abstract In our speech and writing, people often use irony. Irony is a kind of lingu
3、istic phenomenon commonly seen in our daily communication. However, compared with the studies on metaphor or humor, the study on irony is far from enough. Irony can be generally divided into three types: verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony. This thesis takes verbal irony as the focus of
4、research and tries to make a pragmatic study on irony from the perspective of relevance theory, which was put forwarded by Sperber relevance theory; nature; recognition; interpretation III Content Abstract . II 1. Introduction . . .1 2. Irony Cognition and Relevance Theory .2 2.1 Mutuality: the prec
5、ondition for ironic communication. . .3 2.2 Main points of relevance theory .4 2.2.1 Ostensive-inferential communication . .4 2.2.2 The principle of relevance. . .5 3. Irony within the framework of relevance theory . .6 3.1 The nature of irony from the perspective of RT. . .6 3.1.1 Irony as interpre
6、tative use . . .6 3.1.2 Irony as echoic use . . .7 3.2 The recognition of irony from the perspective of RT . .8 3.3 The interpretation of irony from the perspective of RT . . .10 4. Conclusion 11 Bibliography. 13 Acknowledgements .14 1 1. Introduction Irony is a kind of linguistic phenomenon which w
7、as frequently used in our daily communication. Each of us may have such kind of experience as making or hearing an ironic utterance in our daily communication. For example, your friend plans to meet you at 3:00 pm, but you arrived at 3:30pm, your friend might complain: “you are so punctual!” In this
8、 circumstance the speaker is making an ironic utterance and trying to ridicule the hearer. Indeed, irony is such a ubiquitous phenomenon that it has been widely explored and studied in many research fields, such as rhetoric, literary criticism, semantics, and pragmatics and so on. In rhetoric, verba
9、l irony is treated as a rhetoric device which the literal meaning of the words conveys or suggests an opposite meaning called figurative meaning. In another word, an ironic utterance has two meanings: the literal meaning and the figurative meaning. In the course of irony communication, the hearer ch
10、ooses the figurative meaning and rejects the literal meaning. Generally, in classical rhetoric, irony is seen as a kind of speech figures, which makes the context more pleasant and convincing without changing its content. For example: (1). A mother asked her son to clean up his messy room, but he wa
11、s busy playing computer games. After a while, the mother discovered that his room was still messy, and said to her son: You are so diligent! Here the figurative meaning of “diligent” is lazy from the perspective of traditional rhetoric. This example shows that irony is a wonderful rhetorical device
12、to make our speech and writing more vivid and effective. However, rhetorical approach has many limitations: First it fails to explain what exactly the opposite meaning is. Second it doesnt give a mechanism for deriving the figurative meaning of an utterance. Third it doesnt illustrate why the hearer
13、 prefers the figurative meaning to the literal meaning. Under Grices approach, irony is a case of violating the Cooperative Principle (CP), which consists of four categories: the maxim of quality, the maxim of quantity, the maxim of relevance and the maxim of manner. Grice, who first introduce the s
14、tudy of irony in the field of pragmatics, “treats irony as a special kind of conversational implicature and believes that a word means something because the speaker intends it to do so.”(Grice, 1975) Thus, ironic utterances would conversationally implicate rather than simply mean the opposite of wha
15、t they literally say. For example: (2) A says to B: “What a good job you have done!” Suppose in (2), B has just broken a precious vase. Obviously this utterance violates the Maxim of quality. So the intended meaning of this utterance is “What a mess you have done.” However, Grices theory of irony ha
16、s its deficiencies: First utterances that follow all four maxims or violate other maxims can also be ironic. Second it has limited explanatory power. 2 Lets see the following examples: (3) Before liberation, there were a lot of taxes to be charged. After liberation, there are a lot of meetings to be
17、 held. (Zeng Yantao, 2006) Apparently the utterance (3) follows the four maxims of CP for the speakers utterance is precise, unambiguous and efficient, but it is still ironic. In Allusional pretense theory, Clark and Gerrig claim that a speaker who pretends “to be an injudicious person speaking to a
18、n uninitiated audience; the speaker intends the addressee of the irony to discover the pretense and thereby see his or her attitude“ (qtd. in Ma Chunrong, 2007). (4): (Suppose Ann hates raining day) In a raining season, she says: “See, what a lovely day it is: rain, rain, rain.” According to the all
19、usional pretense theory, Ann is turning a blind eye to the fact. In such raining weather, the speaker couldnt make the utterance on her own behalf, she intends the addressee to discover the pretence that she is ridiculing the person who would accept it. However, it still has some problems. First, it
20、 fails to explain the fact that hearers interpret ironic utterances without recognizing their violations. Secondly, the notion of allusion is not clear enough to make a distinction between irony and non-irony. Thirdly, it does not address the function of ironic cues in interpreting irony From the ac
21、count above we can see that although the previous approaches have more or less contributed to the study of irony, there still have some flaws or deficiencies. So next well try to study irony by applying Sperber the other is communicative intention that the communicator wants the audience to realize
22、that he wants to convey something. It is essential to make the informative intention mutually manifest between the audience and the communicator. It means that certain information manifest to the communicator must be at the same time manifest to the audience. Both of them know well of the cognitive
23、environment. In order to have a successful communication, the communicator must draw the audiences attention. So an act of ostension must draw the audiences attention. The principal significance of ostensive communication is that it conveys a guarantee of relevance. People automatically pay attentio
24、n to ostensive stimulus, because they are accustomed to turn their attention to what seems most relevant to them. Since processing information requires effort, the request to undertake the task has to be accompanied by reward. The audience should be guarantee that the relevance information worth his
25、/her effort. 2.2.2 The principle of relevance The focus of relevance theory is cognition and communication. It holds that relevance governs every aspect of cognition and communication. This is expressed in two relevance principles by Sperber on the other hand they organize the most relevant represen
26、tation of given information and handle the representation in the context that maximizes its relevance. However, for the following reasons addressers cannot always produce the most relevant information directly: (a) the addresser may not have the information that the addressee perceives most relevant
27、; or he cannot put the most relevant information into words due to his ability or willingness; (b) the addresser may not have enough time to think of the best expression of the utterance; or he may have his own preferences which prevent him from choosing the most suitable expression. Thus addressers
28、 try hard to convey a presumption of relevance. That is to say, the addressers express that they have done what was indispensable to produce an adequately relevant utterance. Then the task of the addressee is to recognize the effects the addressers could have foreseen. 3. Irony within the framework
29、of relevance theory From the perspective of relevance theory, irony is defined as “a variety of echoic 6 interpretative use, in which the communicator dissociates herself from the opinion echoed with accompanying ridicule or scorn”. (Sperber (ii) the recognition of irony; (iii) the interpretation of
30、 irony. 3.1 The nature of irony within the framework of relevance The study of irony has a long history which has been discussed in the first part. However, it is strange that so little attention has been paid to the nature of irony by linguists and philosophers. Some scholars hold that the nature o
31、f irony is something that limiting the direction of irony understanding. In this part, we will show how to understand the nature of irony under the guidance of relevance theory. It accounts for not only the cases that within the reach of traditional accounts, but also the cases that remain doubtful
32、on traditional approaches. 3.1.1 Irony as interpretative use From the perspective of relevance theory, irony should not be treated as the figurative use of language, and should not be interpreted on the basis of the differences between literal meaning and figurative meaning. Sperber and Wilson claim
33、 that irony in nature is an echoic interpretation of another assumption, thought or utterance. This suggests that irony is a variety of implicit interpretative use. In this sense, utterances can represent any other object it resembles, and enter into a variety of resemblance relations. Generally “re
34、semblance involves a sharing of properties: the more shared properties, the greater the resemblance”. (Xiong Xueliang, 2007) Interpretative resemblance or resemblance in propositional content is analyzed as a sharing of contextual and logic implications. “The more shared implications, the greater th
35、e interpretative resemblance”. (Liu Shaozhong, 1997) As to an ironic utterance, Sperber and Wilson also point out that irony should not be regarded as literal interpretations of an attributed thought or utterance. Instead irony is an expression having an interpretative resemblance to an unexpressed
36、ideas or opinion, according to the principle of relevance. For example: (6) “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. (Jane Austen, 2008) (7)Mr. Bennet: “I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party”. (Jane Austen, 2008) These two examples are obviously ironic, and we can see that by (6) the author does not
