英语语言学读书报告 英文

2021年1月25日发(作者：典礼)

Book report of
Pragmatics: Theories and Applications

Pragmatics: Theories and Applications
was written by Jiang Wangqi who was a
famous professor in Pecking University. Professor Jiang has contributed a lot to the
development of Functional Linguistics and published more than 30 theses as well as
two
books
in
this
field.
This
book
is
one
of
his
masterpieces.
It
was
published
by
Pecking University Press in 2000.
There are several reasons pushing me to choose this book. Firstly, pragmatics is
an important branch in linguistics and many problems in linguistics can be explained
by pragmatics. Secondly, pragmatics pays attention to the regular patterns of language
use. That
’
s what interests me. I want to learn more about these rules and use them to
explain
utterances
in
our
daily
life.
Thirdly,
conversational
implicature
is
the
most
essential content in this book. I really desire to learn more about relevance theory and
prepare to design a paper based on this theory.
There
are
seven
chapters
in
this
book.
Through
these
chapters,
the
author
introduces
pragmatics
from
different
aspects
and
tells
readers
the
whole
content
of
pragmatics.
It
isn
’
t
a
book
just
about
theories
but
also
about
applications
which
is
different
from
and
much
better
than
other
books.
Then
the
author
explains
these
content in detail in the following chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of this
book
which
contains
an
informal
definition
and
the
original
of
pragmatics.
The
second
chapter
is
about
deixis
in
pragmatics.
I
am
shocked
that
there
are
so
many
deixis
in
our
daily
life
but
we
just
ignore
them.
If
we
want
to
find
something
in
Linguistics, we must pay
more
attention to
those details
in
our daily life. The third
chapter and the fourth chapter are the essential parts of this book. They are all theories
about
conversational
implicature.
They
contain
the
most
famous
theories
in
pragmatics and these are what I am going to talk in the latter report. The fifth chapter
introduces
presupposition.
The
following
chapter
is
about
speech
acts.
This
is
also
another
field
that
attracts
many
researchers
and
learners
in
pragmatics.
The
last
chapter is about conversation analysis. It pays more attention to application than other
chapters and are very close to our daily studies. After reading these chapters in this
book, readers can learn a lot of regular patterns in linguistics and grasp more skills to
use language correctly.


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Among
this
book,
the
third
and
fourth
chapters
interest
me
most.
Nearly
everyone who knows conversational implicature knows the Gricean theory but not the
relevance
theory.
After
learning
this
two
chapters,
I
am
more
interested
in
the
relevance theory. So in the latter report, I will introduce the relevance theory in detail.

Relevance Theory

In
order
to
explain
the
conversational
implicature
clearly,
Grice
develops
his
cooperative principle and its four component maxims. Many latter linguists develop
their theories based on Grice
’
s principle but there are also many other linguists against
this
theory
such
as
Wilson
and
Sperber.
Wilson
and
Sperber
are
the
founders
of
relevance
theory.
Relevance
theory
is
based
on
a
definition
of
relevance
and
two
principles
of
relevance
which
are
the
cognitive
principle
and
the
communicative
principle. The central claim of relevance theory is that the expectations of relevance
raised by an utterance are precise enough and predictable enough , to guide the hearer
towards the speaker
’
s meaning. In the following part, I will introduce this theory from
four different aspects.

1


The development of relevance theory


Recognized the problems in Gricean theory, the French linguist Dan Sperber and
British linguist Deirdre Wilson published their thesis in this field named
Relevance:
Communication and Cognition
in 1986.
After the publication of this thesis,
many researchers began to pay attention to
this
theory.
There
were
many
linguists
using
relevance
theory
to
analyze
those
problems in pragmatics especially in conversational implicature. Linguists also found
some problems of this theory. In order to make their ideas much clearer, Sperber and
Wilson published their theses on relevance theory in 1995, 1998, and 2002. Through
those theses, they tried to solve those problems that occurred in practice.
With
the
effort
of
Sperber
and
Wilson,
more
and
more
linguists
recognize
relevance theory and use this theory to solve problems in linguistics. In abroad, many
popular books and magazines treat relevance theory as a very important part.
Lingue
had
published
two
monographs
on
relevance
theory.
Mey
and
Asher(1998),
Crundy(2000)
and
Marmaridou(2000)
are
all
based
on
relevance
theory.
University

2
College
London
publishes
some
theses
on
relevance
theory
in
Working
Papers
in
linguistics every year and the school also creates Relevance-List for learners who are
interested in relevance theory to communicate.
In China , after the population of relevance theory in 1990, many linguists began
to
analyze
relevance
theory
and
published
lots
of
books
and
theses
based
on
this
theory.
These
works
include
Gui
shichun(1991),
Xiong
xueliang(1997),
Jiang
wangqi(2000), He ziran(2002) and so on. Until now many pragmatics theses based on
this theory are published every year.


2


The main points of relevance theory


The population of relevance theory is based on its reasonable points. It is not the
explanation of Grice
’
s relevance maxim but a systematic theory.


2.1

Relevance and cognition
We
can
easily
recognize
that
relevance
is
not
only
of
utterances
and
other
observable
phenomena
but
of
thoughts,
memories,
and
conclusion
of
inferences.
In
order
to
understand
the
relevance
under
utterances
and
phenomena,
we
must
first
grasp the cognitive principle.
In
the
cognitive
process,
people
will
recognize
lots
of
relevance
and
produce
cognitive
effects
based
on
contexts,
strengthening,
revision
or
abandonment
of
available
assumptions.
Based
on
the
relevance
theory,
any
external
stimulus
or
internal representation which provides an input to cognitive process may be relevant
to an individual at some time. The problem is that not all those relevance is useful to
people.
Only
a
positive
cognitive
effect
is
worthwhile
difference
to
the
individual.
Then it comes to the issue that how to achieve the cognitive effect. The characteristics
of
cognition
can
lead
people
to
find
the
positive
cognitive
effect.
Relevance
theory
claims
that
what
makes
an
input
worth
picking
out
from
the
mass
of
competing
stimuli is not just it is relevant, but it is more relevant than other input at that time. In
this circumstance,
according to
relevance-theoretic terms,
other things be equal,
the
greater the processing effort required, the less relevant the input will be.
Based
on
the
cognitive
process
that
we
have
introduced,
we
can
conclude
the
relationship
between
relevance
and
cognition
in
order
to
pick
out
the
most
useful
information. Firstly, other things being equal, the greater the positive cognitive effects

3
is
achieved
by
processing
an
input,
the
greater
the
relevance
of
the
input
to
the
individual at that time. Secondly, other things being equal, the greater the processing
effort is expanded, the lower the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.
After understanding the
relationship
between
relevance and cognition,
now we
can conclude the cognitive principle of relevance: human cognition tends to be geared
to the maximization of relevance.

2.2

Relevance and communication




Relevance
theory
will
finally
be
used
in
communication
and
understanding
speaker
’
s intention. So in order to fulfill the purpose of communication, one should
learn to analyze and understand the real meaning of the speaker. In relevance theory,
there
are
some
parts
created
just
for
realizing
this
purpose
such
as
ostensive- inferential communication, communicative principle of relevance, optional
relevance and relevance-theoretical comprehension procedure.
The
purpose
of
communication
is
to
express
one
’
s
ideas
and
let
others
understand.
This
is
called
ostensive-inferential
communication
in
relevance
theory.
Ostensive- inferential
communication
is
not
just
a
matter
of
intending
to
affect
the
thoughts
of an
audience but
a matter of
getting
them to
recognize that one has this
intention.
It
contains
two
parts.
The
first
part
is
the
informative
intention
which
is
about
the
intention
to
inform
an
audience
of
something.
The
second
part
is
the
communicative intention which is about the intention to inform the audience of one
’
s
informative
intention.
In
a
conversation,
if
the
communication
intention is
fulfilled,
understanding is achieved.
The fact is that there is a gap between understanding and believing. So in order
to achieve the understanding, an ostensive stimulus is used. This can help to attract
the
audience
’
s
attention
and
can
help
the
audience
to
find
the
maximize
relevance.
Affected
by
the
ostensive
stimulus
and
the
cognitive
principle
of
relevance,
the
audience can finally grasp the real meaning of the speaker. Based on this process, we
can
understand
the
communicative
principle
of
relevance
that
is
every
ostensive
stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optional relevance.
The optional
relevance is
also
connected with
the cognition.
The
audience can
use his or her cognitive ability to do optional relevance. There are two principles for
the audience to choose an optional relevance. Firstly, it is relevant enough to be worth
the audience
’
s processing effort. Secondly, it is the most relevant one compatible with

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