A Study On The Function Of Silence In The Film Prison Break Based On Relevance Theory

Silence, as same as verbal language, is an important tool in human communication. As a normal social phenomenon, silence sends various messages nonverbally, when presented in different forms. After the literary review is done, it is found that silence has experienced a time of ignorance, but now is emphasized again in many fields, especially in linguistics. Due to the primary role silence plays in human communication, it is indeed worthy to study further the functions of silence, and interpreting and using silence correctly can make interpersonal or intercultural exchange more smoothly and mutual understanding easier. In the present study, relevance theory offers a new perspective for the cognitive study of silence.The theory of the thesis is mainly based on the Relevance:Communication and Cognition, which is authored by Sperber and Wilson in 1986/1995. With the examples of silences in conversations, the thesis interprets each silence in every conversation and describes the communicative effects produced by such communication intergratedly, in order to reveal that silence, as an important tool in human communication, has richness of meaning, diversity of function, and complexity of use. The core of study is focused on the interpretation of silence in conversation. After introduction of relevance theory, the thesis firstly describes the research methods in the study:the qualitative analysis, the functional analysis, descriptive analysis, and empirical analysis. And then, three study questions are put forward:(1) How does the addressee or listener interpret silence? (2) Does silence need more processing efforts than other communicative means in relevance theory? (3) Why does the addressor or speaker employ silence but not direct communicative means to get his intention? In order to strengthen the validity of the theoretical approach, some examples from Prison Break (season I) are taken and analyzed. The corpus in this thesis is mainly from American classical television series Prison Break (season I). In order to make study convenient, the author classifies corpus into five parts according to functions of silence imposed by Jensen in 1973:the linkage function, affecting function, activating function, revelation function and judgment function. After a brief introduction of plot in each conversation, main applications of relevance theory concerning silence are discussed firstly, and then the silences occurring in conversations are analyzed thoroughly. Through these analyses, it is easy to find that silence, same as all stimuli, can produce three contextual effects:contextual implication, strengthening and eliminating a former assumption. Successful communication not only comes true in story, but also out of story. Although there exist more or less misunderstandings in the process of analysis, such analysis still helps audience follow the development of the plot, and besides, it can improve language learners to interpret and use silences in various situations.