Relevance: Construction And Reconstruction Of Meanings In Fictional Communication

This thesis is interdisciplinary study. From the perspective of pragmatics, it regards the process of fictional communication as the subject, which is seldom studied by traditional literary theories and linguistic studies. Based on relevance theory (RT), this thesis proposes Pragmatic Interpretation Model (PI-Model) of fictional communication.Reviewing various studies of fictional communication in literature and linguistics, the thesis first points out the feasibility to study fictional communication from pragmatic perspective. Then, it discusses the reflections on RT in literary studies. After that, it explores fictional communication by studying the participants taking part in fictional communication and the contextual knowledge of fictional communication. Finally, based on RT it builds PI-Model of fictional communication to interpret construction and reconstruction of meanings in fictional communication, i.e. in an ostensive—inferential process of dynamic interpretation with the text as medium, the author (including the narrator and the characters) constructs the meanings and the reader reconstructs the meanings.PI-Model of fictional communication is constituted of the text, the participants taking part in fictional communication, the contexts of fictional communication and the contextual knowledge of the author and the reader. PI-Model of fictional communication holds the following positions:①The text as the medium of fictional communication is composed by the author. The narrator and the characters constitute the text world created by the author.②It is claimed that not only the author and the reader but also the narrator and the characters take part in fictional communication.③Fictional communication between the author and the reader is carried out by means of communication between the narrator and the reader and communication between the characters. Based on the characteristics of fictional communication, it is claimed that fictional communication takes place in four types of contexts: the context where the author writes fiction, the context where the reader reads fiction, the context where the narrator tells the fictional story, and the context where the characters of the fictional story use language.④To carry out fictional communication successfully the author and the reader should share sufficient contextual knowledge about the four types of contexts. Contextual knowledge includes linguistic knowledge, co-textual knowledge, inter-textual knowledge, situational knowledge, background knowledge and mutual knowledge.PI-Model of fictional communication stresses the author's (including the narrator and the characters) ostension and the reader's inference, holding that the participants of fictional communication constitute a dynamic coordination relationship.In fictional communication, the author (including the narrator and characters) makes some expected assumptions according to the reader's cognitive system, and makes such assumptions much clearer by the means of narrator's language, the fact of the fiction, the structure of the fiction and the subject of the fiction. The author constructs author's meanings in addition to abstract meanings and contextual meanings in various kinds of contexts. It is argued that three meanings have hierarchical relationship with each other: at the lower level, the first meaning is abstract meanings (literal meanings); the second level is contextual meanings (situational meanings); the third level is author's meanings (narrator's meanings and character's meanings). The author constructs three meanings from the lower level to the higher level. The construction at the lower level is the means of the construction at the higher level and the construction at the higher level is the purpose of the construction at the lower level.In fictional communication, depending on ostensive stimuli the reader reconstructs cognitive context and recognizes the author's intention. After attainment of linguistic knowledge, co-textual knowledge, inter-textual knowledge, situational knowledge, background knowledge and mutual knowledge, the reader reconstructs the cognitive contexts. The reader recognizes the author's intention by means of reconstructing abstract meanings (literal meanings), contextual meanings (situational meanings), and author's meanings (narrator's meanings and character's meanings) from the lower level to the higher level.PI-Model of fictional communication has great practical value. By making a case study on the novel The Golden Notebook written by Doris Lessing with PI-Model, it can be found that PI-Model is reasonable and effective. PI-Model of fictional communication built in this thesis attempts to provide new perspectives and approaches for literary studies and linguistic studies.