A Relevance-Theoretical Communicative Approach To The Master-Servant Conversations In A Dream Of Red Mansions

Summing up the current studies on A Dream of Red Mansions in the fields offoreign language studies in China, cultural or cross-cultural studies, translation andpragmatic studies can be sorted out as the three major fields. Among them, translationtakes a larger proportion while the pragmatic study to A Dream of Red Mansionsshares a very small proportion. The present study attempts to make a pragmaticanalysis of the master-servant conversations in A Dream of Red Mansions from theperspective of relevance theory, by which, we find that both the servants'communicative intentions and the author's communicative intention can well bedisclosed. Thus, the applicability and practicability of relevance theory in the analysisof novel conversations are further proved.The present study, guided by the relevance theory (henceforth RT) proposed byDan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (henceforth SW), aims at analyzing themaster-servant conversations in A Dream of Red Mansions. The notion of"communication" is both the core and premise to comprehend RT. SW's relevancetheory views communication as an ostensive-inferential process. Ostension andinference are two sides of the same thing, which are respectively referred to theaddresser's production and the addressee's interpretation of the same utterance. Forthe speaker, the communication is a process of making ostension, namely to showhis/her informative intention clearly to the hearer; for the hearer, the communicationis a process of inferring the speaker's communicative intention, namely, the hearer,combining with contextual assumptions, gets adequate contextual effect by constantlysearching for the optimal relevance, thus achieving the speaker's communicativeintention.Characters' conversation, as one of important parts of a novel, is quite often usedby the author to depict the inner world of the characters. When reading a novel, wecan find the characters' intentions which are clearly showed through the dialogues. Every individual character in A Dream of Red Mansions has his/her intention, amongwhich, the girl servants' intentions appear especially strong and obvious. Xirenintends to be Baoyu's concubine(Chapter19); Yuanyang is determined to serve theLady Dowager for her life (Chapter46); Zijuan wishes for the marriage of Baoyu andDaiyu(Chapter57); Xiaohong intends to serve Xifen---a more powerful master in JiaMansion (Chapter27); Lingguan is eager for a free human life(Chapter36), etc. Andit is their intentions that make the activities in their inner world more active andintensive. In addition, the author of A Dream of Red Mansions takes these dialoguesas his ostensive act to show his communicative intention to the readers. Through therelated exploration and discussion, the thesis attempts to answer the question of howto get a better understanding of the conversations between the servants and themasters in A Dream of Red Mansions as well as how to make more effective use ofcharacters' conversations to convey the writer's writing intention. The study resultsshow:1) Relevance-theoretical communicative approach gives a satisfactory reply tothe question of how the communication between the master and the servant in ADream of Red Mansions is achieved;2) The master-servant conversations can betaken as the author' ostensive act, by which, the readers can infer the author'scommunicative intention.