Understanding Deliberate Misinterpretation With Conceptual Integration Theory

Communication is dynamic. Communication is pervasive. It is the field that wants attention and it is the field that is worth attention. Many linguists, from Saussure to Chomsky, from Grice to Sperber & Wilson, and from Lakoff & Johnson to Fauconnier & Turner, have all given their attention to the study of communication. They laid out linguistic theories and principles, such as Cooperative Principle, Relevance Theory, Mental Space Theory, and Conceptual Integration Theory, which are of great value to interpret various linguistic phenomena, such as metonymy, metaphor, irony, Euphemism, pun, and others.The thesis, in summing up the previous research on communication, especially on deliberate misinterpretation (DMI, hereafter), has a re-study of the functions played by DMI. It holds the view that, based on the materials available at present, DMI can only function in two ways, namely creating humor and creating irony. It is the humor and irony created that might be conducive to protect speaker's face, improve interpersonal relationship, resolve interpersonal conflict, withhold information, break ice in a strange situation, and so on and so forth.This thesis aims to interpret deliberate interpretation when it is used to create humor and irony, specifically focusing attention on Speaker1's cognitive process when he/she discerns the humor and irony created by Speaker2's deliberate interpretation. Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT, hereafter) is employed to detect Speaker1's cognitive process in interpreting Speaker2's DMI, which is supposed to be the process of integrating a series of conceptual network which is the core of integration theory. The conceptual integration network consists of four mental spaces: two input spaces, one generic space and one blended space. In the analysis, the thesis mainly focuses on the integration procedures, namely composition, completion, and elaboration. The thesis gives a detailed analysis on how these procedures work in the integrating process. At the same time, different types of integration network are mentioned because mappings and projections work differently at the variance of the integration networks. Integration networks include simplex network, mirror network, one-sided network (or one-scope network) and two-sided network (or two-scope network). In some cases, the blend only receives structure from one input, some from both of the inputs. In some cases, the structure projected from one of the inputs decides the structure of the blend, but in other cases, the structures projected from both inputs are fused. How the emergent structure is formed in the blend is rather complicated. The thesis is focused on what emergent structure will be produced in interpreting DMI and how the emergent structure comes into being.The thesis also finds that, although CIT is useful to describe the cognitive process of Speaker1 when he/she interprets the special effects produced, it does not differentiate humor and irony in the process of interpreting. The interpretation of the special effects produced depends largely on the linguistic context, encyclopedic knowledge, the shared cognitive environment and background knowledge between speakers, and Speaker's associative ability and inferring ability.Though the thesis is only a preliminary research because of writer's limited researching ability and researching time, its choice of CIT for researching will definitely help to improve communicators' interpreting power in communication and their strategic use of language, and it will shed light on future related researches.