Pragmatic Enrichment Of Nonce Words Meaning Under The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The thesis is intended to make a tentative study of pragmatic enrichment of nonce words meanings under the framework of "Relevance Theory" by virtue of the research method concerning the combination of theoretic interpretation and corpora. Its aim is to construe the way nonce words meanings are pragmatically enriched multi-dimensionally based on corpora of the scripts from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. The research has the following four findings.Initially, as far as nonce words meaning is concerned, pragmatic adjustment of their meaning has turned out to be totally distinguished from the existing relevance-theoretic illumination of simply two outcomes of a lexical-pragmatic process in the construe of token concept. On the one hand, such a word coinage must be constructed into the normal word form by the pretext, context and co-text. On the other hand, pragmatic adjustment of nonce words meaning has proved to possess five possible outcomes:zero adjustment, narrowing, broadening, transferring and overlapping.Secondly, the five possible outcomes:zero adjustment, narrowing, broadening, transferring and overlapping, are triggered by the search for relevance, follow a path of least effort in whatever direction it leads, come about through mutual adjustment of token concept, contextual assumptions and implications so as to fulfill the expectations of relevance raised by the utterance, and stop as soon as these expectations are satisfied.Thirdly, it is universally accepted that nonce words meaning is flexible and extremely context-dependent. The notion of token concept exactly right offers a dynamic, general and flexible perspective for the enrichment of nonce words meaning. The dynamic, general and flexible property of a token concept lies in its being constructed online in the understanding of utterances. In the process of the construction of a token concept, the cognitive context-dependent information is started to be retrieved to activate its corresponding type concept by means of the communicative goal; therefore, the type concept is integrated into the token concept construed.Fourthly, the token/type concept basically provides an effectively universal approach to the pragmatic enrichment of nonce words meaning spontaneously, automatically and unconsciously by virtue of the framework of Relevance Theory.The significance of the present study can be summarized from two aspects: theoretically and practically. Theoretically speaking, the study of the pragmatic enrichment of nonce words meaning is a rewarding supplement to the rapidly developing lexical pragmatics and simultaneously offers a better approach to the semantic underspecification of nonce words meaning dynamically. From the practical perspective, the findings of the study are of highly applicable value to the nonce words teaching and the appreciation of the English-written movies. This token/type concept approach can offer the students a better way to understand the implied pragmatic meanings of the deviated word form.