A Study Of Metonymy In Romantic Poems From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Traditionally, the researches on metonymy are mainly under the framework of rhetoric and cognitive linguistics. And there are theories on metonymy comprehension like Contact theory, Conceptual Highlighting Theory, Conceptual Integration Theory, etc. The diversity of theory suggests that there is no theory can perfectly describe and explain metonymy. Even the Conceptual Integration Theory, which has absorbed the essence part of many theories, can only partly explain the necessary condition and essential condition of a metonymy; they can’t illustrate the function of metonymy and its processing procedures (Sheng Jiaxuan,2006). The interpretive power of relevance theory for metonymy derives from the fact that it disregards the strict distinction between literal and metonymical utterances. Sperber and Wilson claim that there is no substantial difference between the two. Thus, metonymy understanding needs no special mechanism but simply results from the search for an interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance in different contexts.The process of metonymy understanding still follows the ostensive-inferential model, which is applied by Sperber and Wilson to explain common verbal communication. It includes three sub-tasks:the identification of explicatures, the construction of contextual assumptions and the recovery of implicatures. Through the exploration of metonymy understanding in romantic poems, the present study leads to the following findings:Firstly, metonymy understanding is with the "mutual manifestness" as its prerequisite. And the metonymy is decoded into semantic representations which are then completed into a full propositional form through an inferential process. Then, the construction of contextual assumptions is constrained by the working memory. Meanwhile, the hearer follows a path of least effort, activating no more context than is necessary to understand a metonymical utterance. Based on these constraints, the assumptions are constructed by the non-demonstrative tool-bridging inference, which is from one assumption to another. It is an essential part of the whole cognitive progress. Finally, implicatures are obtained from the contextual assumptions under the guidance of optimal relevance. Metonymy understanding is mainly derived from the weak implicatures, which is the nature of metonymy understanding in romantic poems.Through the study, the thesis analyzes the understanding procedure of metonymy, aiming to better illustrate the effectiveness of the relevance theory to the function and its processing procedure of metonymy. Meanwhile, a tentative relevance-oriented model of metonymy understanding is proposed. The studying of metonymy understanding procedure provides us a more comprehensive and deep understanding of metonymy, offers a better appreciation of romantic poems involved with metonymy as well.