On Text Coherence In Polyphonous Discourse

Polyphony originally is the musical term; it refers to the sound of several partsissued by a part that forms a special aesthetic effect which is similar to a chord. Inthe recent years, the scope of the term is extended and borrowed to the researchareas of the novel art. In addition to the meaning expressed by the text itself, itimplies another layer or multi-layer meanings, there are multiple and complexmeanings in the deeper level excepting the direct meanings in the literary level.A Dream of Red Mansion, is a highly ideological and artistic literature works.The author, Cao Xueqin, naturally applies the traditional aesthetic into the novel; Itgives the language full of polyphonous effect and creates the implicational infinitepoetic text.Text Coherence is the soul in discourse construction. From the cognitiveperspective, coherence is not the inherent feature of discourse, but a kind ofrelevance which is constructed by the two sides of communicative subjects in theprocess of communication. Once both sides of communicative subjects make therelevance realize the tacit understanding. Thus the bridge of Text Coherence can beconnected, and the Text Coherence in polyphonous discourses can be realized. Inthe interpretation of polyphonous discourses, Relevance theory gives the reasonableexplanation to language communication from the cognitive perspective. Relevancetheory views communication as an ostensive-inferential process. According to somecertain law of thinking, people make the reasonable inferences in polyphonousdiscourses, and thus decode the discourse successfully.Based on the relevance theory the thesis takes the polyphonous text in A Dreamof Red Mansion as linguistic data and analyzes the process of psychological changesand language production of the characters in the cognitive context. In this way itexplores the Text Coherence.The thesis points out that there are a large number of polyphonous conversational texts that are full of literary and aesthetic value in A Dream of RedMansion. The thesis aims at analyzing the polyphonous conversational texts fromthe perspective of the relevance theory. There are some certain feasibility andoperability for deeply understanding the characters’ linguistic features.The thesis deems that the process of Text Coherence is completed under thedynamic cognitive context. The cognitive context is constructed, and the entirecoherence in the cognitive field is achieved by the following four steps. They areextraction in cognitive reserve, activation in relevant cognitive mode, selection inrelevant knowledge and formation in reasoning assumption. Thus the realization ofthe perfect coherence of the polyphonous conversational texts can be achieved.The thesis emphasizes that once we make a contextual coherence to thepolyphonous conversational texts in the view of cognitive theory, we can not onlybroaden the horizon and enrich the methods, but also improve the appreciativeability about the artistic language in the research of A Dream of Red Mansion.