A Study Of Cognitive Mechanism Of Pun Based On The Relevance-Integration Model

Pun, as its name implies, means that one word or sentence can involve two things at the same time. As a pervasive language phenomenon with distinctive charm, it is widely used in literature and people’s daily communication. For centuries, many scholars both at home and abroad have studied pun from various angles. Pun was first regarded as a rhetorical device. Lately, with the deep understanding of pun, a great many scholars study pun from linguistic perspectives, such as semantic perspective, pragmatic perspective, cognitive perspective and so on. And fruitful achievements have been made. On the basis of former researchers’abundant studies, the author attempts to propose a new relevance-integration model by combining relevance theory and conceptual integration theory with the aim to explore the meaning construction of pun.Relevance theory and conceptual integration theory, which are the fundamental theories of cognitive linguistics, have their respective merits and demerits in the interpretation process of pun. Neither of the two theories can make out the cognitive mechanism of pun alone. Relevance theory and conceptual integration theory both regard the meaning construction as a dynamic inferential process of cognition. Relevance theory can give a general guiding principle in communication, but it fails to reveal the inner dynamic mechanism of meaning construction. Conceptual integration theory can make out the inner dynamic mechanism of pun by using conceptual integration network, but it lacks a directive principle. Therefore, there are necessity and possibility in the integration of the two theories.In order to make up the respective deficiencies of the two theories, on the basis of previous studies of combining relevance theory and conceptual integration theory, the author attempts to propose a relevance-integration model to explore the cognitive mechanism of pun. According to relevance-integration model, under the guidance of relevance, the receiver (reader or hearer) selects the optimal relevant information from the cognitive context which is stimulated by the information of input spaces. Through cross-space mapping and selective projection, partial information of input spaces and the optimal relevant information of cognitive context are integrated in the blended space, in which the emergent structure produces. With the production of emergent structure, the interpretation of pun is finished.Through this research, we hope that the present study can leave some inspiration for the later studies of pun. Since this thesis sets up a relevance-integration model for the interpretation of cognitive mechanism of pun from the perspective of cognition, we hope that this study can promote the development of cognitive linguistics.