The Study Of Intentional Misinterpretation In Daily Conversation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The present study analyzes the phenomenon of intentional misinterpretation in verbal communication on the basis of relevance theory. In human verbal communication, misunderstanding occurs when the hearer's understanding of the speaker's utterances is not identical with the speaker's intended one. However, in some cases, the hearer may intentionally choose the interpretation diverging from the speaker's intended meaning in order to achieve certain communicative effects. This kind of linguistic phenomenon can be called intentional misinterpretation, which is the object of this study.An intentional misinterpretation occurs when the second speaker (speaker 2) correctly understands the significance of the first speaker's (speaker 1) utterance, but speaker 2 subsequently produces an utterance which is purposely employed to present the mismatch between the significance of the two utterances in order to reach certain communicative intentions and functions.With Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (1986/1995) as the general theoretical framework, this thesis concentrates on the causes and functions of intentional misinterpretation occurred in daily verbal communication. Methodologically speaking, this study is mainly a qualitative one based on the data collected from a TV series, with a quantitative analysis as a supplement.This thesis begins with a brief introduction of the phenomenon of intentional misinterpretation, and the rationale, objectives and outline of the thesis are described. Chapter one gives a literature review of the previous studies related to this phenomenon and their achievements and limitations. In chapter two, an introduction of relevance theory, which is the theoretical basis of this study, is given, and how it works in explaining intentional misinterpretation. Chapter three introduces the methodology of the study. The objectives, procedure, data collection, research approach are presented respectively. Chapter four makes a detailed discussion and analysis of the findings, revealing different categories of causes and functions of...