（英语语言文学专业论文）跨文化交际语境下会话含意的推理.pdf

i descriptive chinese abstract 一九六七年，美国语言哲学家格赖斯首次提出了“合作原则”和“会话含意”理论，该 理论立刻成为语用学的核心内容， 在言语交际中起着非常重要的作用。 但是正如 sperber the researches of chinese and foreign scholars such as gazdar, horn, atlas, levinson, xu shenghuan, he ziran, xiong xueliang and so on also show: grices conversational implicature theory offers no theoretic explanation to the comprehension and inference of conversational implicature in cross-cultural communicative context. therefore, the inference of conversational implicature under cross-cultural background becomes a significant task in front of us. as we know, verbal communication is a highly context-dependent dynamic interactive process; the traditional static context could not explain the dynamic communicative process; according to the opinion of dynamic context, context is the product of the communicative process, participants can actively manipulate and choose proper context for production and interpretation of conversational implicature on the basis of mutual manifestness. under the theoretic framework of dynamic context, this essay aims at studying the dynamic construction of context in verbal communication under cross-cultural background and exploring its application on a pragmatic point, regards context as the product of the constant adaptation and coupling of the contextual factors. the recognition of the speakers intention resolves the result of pragmatic inference of conversational implicature. in the inferential process of conversational implicature, context plays an essential role. contextual information is usually used as a given premise. together with the assumptions made by the receiver, it is put into the pragmatic inferential rules and a conclusion is produced; this conclusion is the assumption made by the hearer concerning the implied or intended meaning of the utterance, sometimes the hearer has to make inference for more than one time in order to get a satisfactory conclusion. iv this dissertation consists of five parts. the first part is a brief review of researches about the theory of conversational implicature and the development of its pragmatic inferential model. chapter 1 starts with the concept of conversational implicature, then turns to explain how the conversational implicature is produced, it may help the hearer in communication understand the speakers intended meaning embedded intangibly in his/her utterances. in addition, in this part, broader discussions of the properties and classification of conversational implicature is introduced in detail to get the readers to fully grasp the necessity of advocating this saying. in fact, the pragmatic inferential model of grices conversational implicature is based on cooperative principle. chapter 2 gives an overview of studies on context in china and abroad, then focuses on the introduction of context in the framework of relevance theory and theory of adaptation respectively; they prove to be two important theoretical foundations to support the dynamic construction of cross-cultural communicative context. chapter 3 is centered on the discussion of contextual factors in cross-cultural communicative context and how they are adaptatively coupled and interacted, which leads to the dynamic construction of context in the pragmatic inference of conversational implicature, communication is intentional, the effective recognition of communicative intention is the guarantee of successful communication. then discuss the inference process of conversational implicature on the foundation of relevance theory and theory of adaptation. the last part draws some conclusions and provides suggestions for further research. key words: conversational implicature； cross-cultural communicative context； relevance theory； theory of adaptation introduction 1 introduction in 1960s american linguistic philosopher grice proposed “cooperative principle” and “conversational implicature.” and “conversational implicature theory” becomes the core of pragmatics and has been attached great importance in verbal communication; it also develops a new inferential form, i.e. pragmatic inference, which brings in the western countries significant impacts to both circles of linguistics and philosophy. grice aimed to discover the mechanism between what is said and what is implicated in a verbal utterance and try to draw up general rules governing all conversations. in his logic and conversation (1975), grice summed up his generalization as the cooperative principle (cp)and set four different maximsquality, quantity, relation, and manner to account for how cp was in practice observed. in grices terms, a maxim has been flouted or violated, and a conversational implicature generated, so grices theory of implicature is also an inferential approach to pragmatics, it is bound by the cooperative principle and its maxims, there are, however, some problems with this inferential model, for examples, we have no sufficient evidence to prove these maxims are sufficient for the description of all kinds of communication and for the generalization of the evidence of inference, the principle does not tell us the inferential process and the factors involved in the inference. what are the rules and steps of its inference? is the context uniquely determined, or given? later, g. gazdar, j. atlas, l. r. horn and s. levinson do some revising and improving to make it more explanatory. horn propose two principles of conversational implicature, levinson outlines the “three principles of conversational implicature”, that is, the q-, i- and m- principles, on the basis of generalizing the researches of other scholars. in his 1991s paper “pragmatic reduction of the binding conditions revisited,” he formally renames his tripartite model “neogricean pragmatic mechanism,” which is called later by other scholars neogricean conversational implicature theory; however, neogriceanism tries to study by appealing to formalization of the generalized conversational implicature or the conventional implicature and seeks the generative rules of them. since contextual factors are involved, the inference of the generalized and the particularized conversational implicature, no matter maximal or minimal, is hard to be described by means of formalization. realizing that verbal communication is a complex form of communication and involves both the coding and inferential processes, sperber and wilson propose the ostensive-inferential model. according to them, the communicators communicative introduction 2 intention can be neither decoded nor deduced, the best he can do is to construct an assumption on the basis of the evidence provided by the communicators ostensive behavior. second, they explicitly assumed that any conceptually represented information available to the addressee could be used as a premise in this inference process. (sperber other choices are made almost automatically; these are the problems that verschueren does not deal with in adaptation model. at the same time the chinese scholars such as xu shenghuan, he ziran, he zhaoxiong, xiong xueliang and so on have achieved great accomplishments in the pragmatic research of the inference of conversational implicatures, but to the pragmatic inference of conversational implicature under cross-cultural background. they also pay little attention. with the development of economic globalization, the cross-cultural communication is getting more and more frequent, facing the practical situation, i find the current researches conducted are far from sufficiency and the pragmatic inference of conversational implicature under cross-cultural background is of necessity. so, my dissertation mainly concerns about the pragmatic inference of conversational introduction 3 implicature in cross-cultural communicative contexts in particular based on the above-mentioned three theories (grices conversational implicature theory, sperber and wilsons relevance theory (rt), verschueren theory of adaptation). categorizes contextual factors into five macroscopic levels (cultural, linguistic, situational, cognitive and logical), reveal the dynamic construction of cross-cultural communicative context and the inference process of conversational implicature. i also point out that the construction of context under the cross-cultural background is the result of relevance-adaptation coupling of contextual factors (cultural context, situational context, linguistic context, cognitive context logical context). the importance and functions of these contexts, especially the cultural context in pragmatic inference of conversational implicature are highlighted. in the inference process of conversational implicature in cross-cultural communicative context, culture is essential. understanding cultural norms and rules of communicators is important in improving cross-cultural communicative ability, with the good understanding of the contextual factors, we will find it relatively easier to interpret the speakers conversational implicature in cross-cultural communicative context. meanwhile the effective recognition of communicative intention is the guarantee of successful communication. chapter 1 grices theory of conversational implicature 4 chapter 1 grices theory of conversational implicature 1.1 what is conversational implicature at the beginning of the dissertation, what i want to emphasize is that in my topic “the inference of conversational implicature in cross-cultural communicative context,” the conversational implicature mainly refers to the particularized conversational implicature. as the core of pragmatics, conversational implicature was originally put forward by the oxford philosopher paul grice, who later went to america. the earliest written reference to conversational implicature was made in his 1961 article “the causal theory of perception.” but it was in his william james lectures delivered at harvard in 1967 that he formally presented this theory to the public. in 1975, grice first notes that there are apparent divergences between the logical devices and their language counterparts, so he turns immediately to the question of the general conditions on conversation, and subtitles these conditions “implicature.” implicature is, in his papers, one of the most important concepts. his theory of implicature is meant to explain the apparent divergences between the logical devices and their language counterparts, that is, to explain how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning. he then makes a distinction between conventional implicature and nonconventional implicature, among which conversational implicature is a subclass, to which he attaches great importance. according to leech (1982), the proposition of grices conversational implicature fulfilled the transition from meaning to implicature, it was a great breakthrough in pragmatics study and offered an explanatory theory for the study of humans speech communication. therefore, after its generation, the theory attracted wide attention from both the philosophy and the linguistic field with its entirely new and important contents. linguists from various countries showed enormous interests, which led to numerous related studies. the proposition and effective carding of conversational implicature theory lightened the burden of logic semantics and poured fresh energy into the further development of pragmatics as independent subject. in order to understand comprehensively and thoroughly the purpose and the significance of grices “cooperative principle” and “conversational implicature,” i think that we should first have some idea about grices basic theory of “meaning.” chapter 1 grices theory of conversational implicature 5 1.2 natural meaning and non-natural meaning in 1957, grice issued “meaning” in philosophical review and he formally presented “non-natural meaning theory.” in this essay, grice divided “meaning” into two categories: natural meaning and non-natural meaning. natural meaning is the kind of meaning that we are speaking of something literally with conventional words, just like example (1): (1) (a) those spots meant measles. (b) those spots meant measles, and he had measles. (c) those spots meant measles, but he hadnt got measles. (d) those spots didnt mean measles, and he didnt have measles. (grice, 1957:377) in example (la), the relationship between spots and measles is a natural one; one cannot state this relationship and then deny that it is true (1c). non-natural meaning is the kind of meaning what a person means by his or her utterance over and above what his or her words literally mean. let us look at the following example (2): (2) (a) those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full. (b) those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full, and in fact, the bus is full. (c) those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full, but in fact, the conductor has got it wrong and the bus isnt full. (grice，1957:377) in the examples above, the relationship between the ringing of the bell and the bus being full is a nonnatural one. essentially，the meaning is conveyed because of a conventional link between that signal and the intended meaning. there is no natural reason why three rings rather than one or two should convey this meaning, it is simply an accepted fact. grice terms this as “nonnatural meaning,” and his contention is that much of language is concerned with this type of non-natural meaning. nonnatural sense, however, is not a single sense. it contains many senses in itself. we use “x” to represent what is said and “u” to represent the speaker. grice(1957:381) first chapter 1 grices theory of conversational implicature 6 distinguishes the following three cases: (1) the sense of x； (2) the relativized sense of u on a certain occasion； (3) the intention of u when uttering x in a certain occasion. we take temporarily the sense of x as the nonrelativized sense independent of context. when the speaker u utters x in a particular case, it gives x a relativized sense comparing with the speaker u. the relativized sense sometimes is not all the sense that the speaker wants to express in that particular case. still take an example, a is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: “dear sir, mr. xs command of english is excellent, and his attendance at the tutorials has been regular. yours, etc.”(the sense of x, that is, what a has said can be reported as “a man is good at english and has attended the lectures regularly”. and the relativized sense of the speaker, that is the teacher a, in this particular case can be reported as “his student mr. x is good at english and has attended the lectures regularly.” we can then infer that the intention of the teachers words is, “mr. x is not good at philosophy.” which of these three senses then is the most basic one? that is to say, which is the basic sense that we can use to interpret the other two senses or even more senses? the traditional way is to take the sense of x as the basic one and use it to interpret other senses. grice claim, from the point of view of “meaning is use,” that the basic meaning is that “u (utterer) did something by which u meant that p.” in his terms, the basic meaning is “by uttering x, u meant that p”. most discussions of grices 1957 article “meaning” have to do with the definition of “meaning” or “communication”. grice for the first time, in his article, makes an explanation of “by uttering x， u meant that p”. when what is uttered is a declarative, “by uttering x u meant that p” is true, if and only if the utterer utters x with an intention to make a believe that p, and a believes that p on the basis of recognizing the utterers intention. in his article “utterers meaning and intentions”delivered in the william james lectures, grice adopts a better formulation, which goes as follows: “u meant something by uttering x” is true if, for some audience a, u uttered x intending: (1) a to produce a particular response r; (2) a to think (recognize) that u intends (1); chapter 1 grices theory of conversational implicature 7 (3) a to fulfill (1) on the basis of his fulfillment of (2). (grice， 2002: 88) still in his article of “meaning,” grice proposed the following analysis of what it is for an individual s to mean something by an utterance of x (where “utterance” is to be understood as referring not just to linguistic utterances but to any form of communicative behavior): “s meant something by x” is (roughly) equivalent to “s intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention.” (grice， 2002: 220) grice uses this analysis as the point of departure for a theory of “meaning”, trying to go from the analysis of “speakers meaning” towards such traditional semantic concerns as the analysis of “sentence meaning” and “word meaning.” however, it, for reasons which should become apparent, is doubtful that much can be achieved in this direction. in order to answer how conversational implicature is generated, we then should have a look at grices cooperative principle and its maxims in the following content. 1.3 cooperative principle and conversational implicature grices cooperative principle has profound philosophical source. he imitated german philosopher immanuel kants four philosophical categories: quantity, quality, relation, manner and put forward the cooperative principle. according to grice (1957:383), all speakers, regardless of their cultural background