On Language Communication And Pragmatic Inference

This thesis is trying to sythnesize the achievements of the theory of application which advocated by the later Wittgenstein, the theory of speech act which developed by J.L. Austin and J. R.Searle and the conversational meaning which originated by Grice, so as to research the natural language reasoning through predicating and communicating of daily language.There are two functions for natural language: expression and communication. The latter one is most important which has been regarded as a motivation for the development of the language. Language communication can be expressed in various forms. First of all, it can be divided into real world communication and hypothetical world communication. This thesis will discuss the real world communication and its pragmatic reasoning. Language communication is always undertaken in a certain context. A so-called context refers to the total conbination of the language knowledge which using language symbols to express a certain particular meaning in the course of language communicating and the implicated non-language knowledge. A context is a basis of elucidating language apprehension. It has the function of creation and restriction. All the pragmatic actions are related to its correspondence context. Context is a basic point of pragmatic inference. Pragmatic inference should be used to research, understand and grasp the pragmatic meaning in communication , of course, it does not study the unique meaning of a particular commication environment, but to explore theuniversal principles, rules and characteristics of the language communication. In the thesis, I divide the pragmatic inference into a macro- pragmatic inference and micro-pragmatic inference. I proposes the reasoning model of the unilateral context to reveal the potential process of possible context when the addressee tries to comprehend the illocutionary information in the domain of macro-pragmatic inference. I also demonstrate that this model has profound significance and broad prospects. For the purpose of analyzing the meaning of special conversation, I put forward a micro-pragmatic reasoning, too. And this reasong is called a temporary pragmatic reasoning. Meanwhile, the author points out that the enthymid reasoning is a reasoning with enthymeme. It is also a non-proved logic congitive phenomenon used to confirm the hypothesis. After that, the author reviews all the pragmatic inference research of our country and stresses that humanism is a basic character of pragmatic inference. Pragmatic reasoning is a dynamic reasoning and it can't be formalized. Finally, the author makes a comparison between the pragmatic inference and static syntax inference , then comes a conclusion that can not be hold by the syntax inference: the wideness of the premise, the extensiveness of inference and the profoundness of conclusion.