A Pragmatic Study Of Understatement With C-R-A Model

Understatement is a figure of speech which superficially lessens the magnitude of what itreally means for the purpose of communication. It is one rhetorical device to realize euphemisticexpression. It is refreshed by pragmatics as people see it as a kind of pragmatic strategy. It canachieve face-saving, humorous and satirical effects by employing different lexical, grammaticaland contextual devices.Liao Qiaoyun (2005) proposed a comprehensive model, C-R-A(cooperation-relevance-adaptation) model, to interpret communication which combines threeprevailing pragmatic theories, Cooperative Principle, Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theorywith cooperation being the prerequisite, relevance the necessary condition and adaptation theregulatory mechanism. It highlights the merits of the three theories while minimizing theirshortcomings to some extent and it works when employing it to analyze communication. Butthe interpreting power of it still deserves testing.This thesis is devoted to the qualitative analysis of understatement in the C-R-A model.We aim to solve the following four questions, that is,(1) as the previous studies on thedefinitions and classifications of understatement are diverged in terms of different perspectives,can we define and classify understatement according to our own criterion?(2) the cognitiveprocesses of the speaker and the hearer by saying and interpreting understatement under thesimple version of C-R-A model;(3) the general way understatement goes in the extendedversion of C-R-A model;(4) the improvement of C-R-A model based on our application.We find that:(1) understatement ca be classified into three categories, lexical,grammatical and contextual, according to its representative devices;(2) the simple version ofC-R-A model is kind of simple, so the cognitive processes of the speaker and the hearer shouldbe enriched in detail in interpreting the three key notions, cooperation, relevance and adaptation.(3) the general way understatement goes in the extended version of C-R-A model is acooperative, optimally-relevant and implicitly-adaptive process, which leads to successful communication, as stated in Figure5.9;(4) that the extended version of C-R-A model tends toconfine the communicative process of a conversation no matter how it is complicated, in onlyone demonstration model, is obscure and fuzzy. We propose that we should slice thedemonstration model into several slices according to the turn-takings it contains and thespeakers who have a shared communicative goal.