Metaphor And Relevance

This thesis is to explore how metaphors are understood within the framework of relevance theory. Relevance theory suggests that communication can go smoothly only because the two communicators follow the principle of relevance — to understand the world according to related information. It also reveals the nature of metaphor interpretation, thinking that metaphor belongs to ordinary utterances, which requires no special interpretive abilities or procedures: it is a natural outcome of some very general cognitive and inferential abilities in verbal communication. The explanation of relevance theory for metaphors develops the existing metaphor theories and further indicates that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but more important, a way of thinking, which can help us understand the world in a better way.This thesis gives the definition of metaphor from the perspectives of traditional rhetorical view, pragmatic view and cognitive view, etc.; it also takes a general historical survey of some classical metaphor studies abroad, such as the traditional comparison/substitute view, cognition view and pragmatic view, and some present metaphor research at home. This thesis gives a brief introduction to relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson on a comparative approach from three points: relevance, context and ostensive-inferential communication, by which some motivations of relevance theory's explanation for metaphors are explored, then the ostensive-inferential mode/ is further described. This thesis adopts Shu Dingfang's classification (2000) and attempts to put the ostensive-inferential mode to the practical application by interpreting different types of metaphors. This thesis also gives a follow-up thinking about relevance theory's explanation for metaphors, which mainly refers to its theoretical value and significance, and some existing problems in practical application as well.