A New Research On Pragmatic Twist In Daily Talk

The present study is titled "A New Research on Pragmatic Twist in Daily Talk" There are four "new" points in this study, that is, 1) the author, for the first time, proposes an innovative term "Pragmatic Twist" to name the phenomenon studied in this thesis; 2) on the basis of synthetically analyzing the theory of register and adaptation, the author propose the notion of "register adaptation"; 3) this thesis raises a challenge to the commonly-acknowledged functional theory and illustrate the remedial measures for those misuses of Pragmatic Twist; 4) the author makes a deep survey into the psychological factors and discloses the psychological mechanism behind the utilization of Pragmatic Twist.Firstly, in order to avoid terminological vagueness, the author borrows the term "Pragmatic Twist" from Grice (1989) et al to name the phenomenon previously termed "deliberate misinterpretation" and the like. Five reasons for this innovative terminology are offered here.①Previous studies on this phenomenon haven't reached a consensus on naming it. Different researchers define it differently, such as:fake failure to understand (Fisher,1987), planned misunderstanding (Weigand,1999), non-standard misunderstanding (Dascal,1999), intentional misunderstanding (Tzanne,2000), deliberate misinterpretation(何自然申智奇,2004),and so on. We need a unified terminology to denominate it.②The term "Pragmatic Twist" distinguishes itself from the similar but different phenomenon misunderstanding.③The term Pragmatic Twist evades the terminological tautology in the term "deliberate misinterpretation". Because "deliberate" is of consciousness and being a communicative strategy, "misinterpretation" is also highly motivated, the term deliberate misinterpretation is conceptually overlapped.④The Term of "misinterpretation" is abandoned because it is featured of unintentionality, but "twist" is a conscious act.⑤The phenomenon discussed in this thesis is obviously a pragmatic one, and it is studied in the framework of pragmatics, therefore, this thesis nominates it in the combination of twist in pragmatics, i.e. Pragmatic Twist.Secondly, the author synthetically analyzes Halliday's register theory and Verschueren's theory of adaptation, and finds that the two theories share a lot of common ground, with the "social settings" and "physical world" in adaptation theory corresponding to "the field of discourse"; the "social relationship" in the adaptation theory to "the tenor of discourse"; the "linguistic channel" to "the mode of discourse". On this basis, the author proposes the new notion of "register adaptation", which serves as the theoretical foundation of repairing the misuses of Pragmatic Twist.Thirdly, this thesis breaks through the conventional researching framework and undertakes a new and original perspective to challenge the universally acknowledged functioning of this communicative phenomenon. It is found out that register theory imposes a lof of restrictions on the fulfillment of Pragmatic Twist functions, that is, a speaker must pay attention to the field, tenor and mode of discourse, which are three dimensions of register theory. At the same time, while using Pragmatic Twist which doesn't comply with the register, a speaker is able to repair his communicative strategy by utterance negotiation and "register adaptation". These remedies fall into two groups: verbal measures and nonverbal measures.Fourthly, this study fills a vacancy of the psychological mechanism of Pragmatic Twist, which is hardly touched upon in the past literature. The psychological mechanism of Pragmatic Twist includes four factors:cognitive basis of both parties in a communication,multiple interpretations of an utterance (loopholes to Pragmatic Twist), the speaker's psychological roots and the speaker's psychological process during Pragmatic Twist, none of which is dispensable with each other, and integration of which will trigger Pragmatic Twist inevitably. Meanwhile, the communicative effects of Pragmatic Twist in turn verify the speaker's strategic competence.This thesis doesn't aim at a holistic and systematic analysis of Pragmatic Twist strategy, only to center on the deficiency and vacancy of early researches on the similar phenomenon, viz. restrictions of the utilization of Pragmatic Twist and its psychological mechanism, which will improve people's ability to appreciate, study and utilize this pragmatic strategy in their daily talk.