Research On Non-conventional Indirect Speech Acts From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

In daily communication, communicators usually do not utter something directly, but choose indirect ways to convey their thoughts. This phenomenon is indirect speech acts proposed by American philosopher Searle. Since this concept was put forward, it has aroused great interest among linguists and researchers. This thesis focuses on why indirect speech acts are used and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Searle classifies indirect speech acts into conventional indirect speech acts and non-conventional indirect speech acts. The latter deserves more attention because it is more complex, uncertain and needs more inference. This thesis aims to analyze non-conventional indirect speech acts from the perspective of Relevance Theory. Research indicates that in ostensive-inferential communication, ostension provides two layers of information:informative intention and communicative intention. What the hearer needs to do is to recognize the communicative intention (implied meaning) of the speaker from the informative intention (literal meaning). The understanding process of indirect speech acts is:the hearer understands the literal meaning of the utterance (informative intention) and acquires secondary illocutionary act, then maximal relevance generates; while when the hearer finds such understanding is not relevant enough in the current cognitive context, he will use his knowledge to extend the context in order to develop the meaning of the utterance with least processing effort; if the hearer thinks his understanding of the utterance accords completely with his expectations of relevance, he will stop inferring and optimal relevance generates, thus the primary illocutionary act of the utterance (communicative intention) is recognized.