（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）会话含义理论在大学英语专业听力教学中应用的实证研究.pdf

iv 摘 要 近年来， 对大学英语专业学生听力能力的培养越来越为广大外语教师和学习 者所关注。研究者们对如何提高学生的听力能力做了不少的研究。听力理解被视 为是听者积极地、创造性的构建意义的综合过程，而不只是被动的接受知识。然 而， 在当前的听力教学中存在这样一种普遍的现象： 听力的内容本身并不难理解， 既没有晦涩难懂的生词也没有不易分析的从句，但是在练习过程中，听者就是无 法理解听力内容。笔者认为其主要原因为听者不能对所听内容进行意义上的推 导。因此，引导学生推断出话语的真正含义，理解说话人的意图和态度，培养学 生依据上下文的语境来推断出会话含义是解决上述问题的主要途径。 语用学与英语学习密不可分。g r i c e的会话含义理论是语用学的重要组成 部分，此理论主要是研究话语的言外之意。在日常环境中，人们出于不同的目的 通常会使用各种带有隐晦意义的句子。因此，本研究尝试结合听力教学内容与 g r i c e 的会话含义理论来提高学生的听力理解能力。 本文的研究重点在于如何使对语言学完全陌生的本科学生逐渐掌握会话含 义理论包括合作原则，并将此应用到听力理解中以此提高听力理解能力；创新之 处在于在教学实验中通过对实验班的教学融入会话含义与合作原则， 以期达到提 高学习者听力理解水平的效果。 本文分为五部分。第一部分介绍了本文的研究背景及选题价值。第二部分对 研究的理论进行历史回顾。介绍了会话含义的发展状况以及相关理论。第三部分 为实证研究部分。实验研究的对象为沈阳师范大学渤海学院（现辽宁财贸学院） 0 8级英语专业的三班（控制班）与四班（实验班） 。采用的测试内容为 0 7年与 v 0 8 年的 t e m 4 真题试题。第四部分对实验的搜集数据进行分析讨论。根据得出的 结论证明将会话含义理论应用到大学英语专业听力教学中有利于提高学生的听 力理解能力。 第五部分就如何培养学生运用会话含义理论提高听力理解能力做出 总结并对教师与学生在今后的教学和学习提出了相应的建议。 关键词：会话含义；合作原则；听力理解能力；隐含意义 ii abstract recently, college english majors listening comprehension has attracted more and more teachers and learners attention. researchers have done a lot of work on how to improve the learners ability in listening comprehension. listening comprehension is considered as a process of active, creative construction rather than receiving the knowledge passively. however, there is a common phenomenon nowadays that the learners can t understand some conversations which include no new words or complex clauses. the writer of this article thinks that the main reason is that the learners can t infer the implied meaning of the conversation. so guiding the students to infer the implied meaning of the conversation, to understand the speaker s purpose and attitude and cultivating the students to infer the real meaning can solve the mentioned problem. pragmatics closely associates with english learning. grice s conversational implicature plays a significant role in pragmatics which is mainly the research of the illocutionary meaning. in our daily life, people usually use many kinds of sentences containing implied meaning in order to achieve some purposes. this article tries to combine the listening material with the conversational implicature in listening teaching to improve the learners listening comprehension ability. the significance of this article is to apply the conversational implicature theory to english listening teaching of the students who have never been involved in linguistic field and improve their listening comprehension. the creative point of this iii article is that the conversational implicature theory and the cooperate principle are used in the teaching experiment. in this way the learners ability of listening comprehension has been improved. there are five parts in this article. in the first part, the researcher makes a brief introduction about the background of the study and the significance of choosing this topic. the second part is literature review, which is mainly about the development of the conversational implicature and the related theories. the third part is the empirical study. the experiment subjects are english major students in shenyang normal university bohai college (now is called liaoning finance and trade college). two parallel classes were selected to be taught in the language lab. the experimental class, class 4 grade 2008, has 30 students; and the control class, class 3 grade 2008, also has 30 students. the tem 4 test papers (the test paper of 2007 as the pre- test material and 2008 as the post- test material) were chosen as the test material to make sure the test is precise. in the fourth part, the researcher discusses the data collected from the experiment and draws the conclusion that the application of conversational implicature theory to college english majors listening teaching is effective. the last part is the conclusion part, in which some suggestions for the further teaching and study both for the teachers and the students have been put forward. key words: conversational implicature, cooperative principle, listening comprehension, implied meaning 学位论文独创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的硕士学位论文，是本人在指导教师的指 导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容 外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成 果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确的 方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 学位论文使用授权声明 本人授权沈阳师范大学研究生处， 将本人硕士学位论文的全部或 部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索； 有权保留学位论文并向国家主管 部门或其指定机构送交论文的电子版和纸质版， 允许论文被查阅和借 阅； 有权可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存、 汇编学位论文。 保密的学位论文在解密后适用本规定。 作者签名： 日期： i acknowledgments i am greatly indebted to a number of people. without their help, this thesis would not have been finished. i would like to express my gratitude, appreciation, and thanks to them. firstly i am most grateful to my supervisor qu yanna. i owe her special thanks for the reason that her individual suggestions, insightful comments and painstaking corrections have contributed a lot to the completion of this thesis. secondly, sincere thanks go to all the teachers who teach me in the field of applied linguistics. their lectures enlightened me on my interest of linguistics and greatly widened my horizons. and lastly, my genuine thanks must be given to my family and my friends, who provided me with great consolation and support. 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 background of the study communication is one of the most important functions of language. listening is the prominent aspect of communication. linguistic competence is not integrity and the communication would be obstructed if a language learner doesn t have the ability of listening. at present, we have some misunderstanding about the listening comprehension of the college english majors. it is believed that listening to the material over and over can improve the learners listening ability. but the problem is that sometimes, no matter how many times the listening material is played, the students still can t have a clear idea about the implied meaning or inner purpose of the speaker. that s to say, they can not make difference between what is said and what is implied. how to solve this problem is an essential part in the teaching and testing of english listening. though many researchers have pointed out that it is necessary to teach implicature to esl students, the situation is that people still don t pay enough attention to the importance of applying this theory to listening teaching. firstly, traditional method is used by a lot of teachers in listening class. that is, the teacher as the instructor of the class plays the tapes, and students do the listening comprehension exercises and then give the feedback. in this way, the teacher s role is like a machine operator and students are like mechanical audience. this kind of lesson only provides practice in listening but fails to teach skills or strategies. in other words, the listeners 2 are told what to listen but not how to listen. secondly, in traditional listening class, the evaluation of listening is measured by correct responses to the listening materials. teachers only care the results of listening other than the process of listening, or the product rather than the process. when a listener puts forward a correct answer, there is no further explanation on how the answer is reached. thirdly, in the listening class, many students often suffer from anxiety. the students are often called by the teacher to speak out the correct answers. when they hear something that they don t understand, they get nervous. all the above problems manifest that the listening teaching needs reforming urgently. teachers should also instruct the students on how to infer the real meaning not only by giving them the right answers. in order to achieve this, the pragmatic concept conversational implicature should be applied to the teaching of college english majors listening. 1.2 purpose of the study to master a language, it is not enough to learn its intonation, vocabulary and grammar only. also, when listening to a language, it is not enough to listen to just the pronunciation, stress, words, sentences or some other types of language units. we should learn something more, such as various relations between language and language users. several related levels of discourse processing appear to be involved in listening: implied meaning, propositional identification, interpretation of illocutionary force, and activation of real- world. however, because of the lacking knowledge of the 3 pragmatic theories as the guidance, students have some difficulties in dealing with the utterances during the listening of authentic materials. the present situation about the teaching of listening in many colleges in china is not encouraging. it is high time to reform the current instruction model in college english listening classroom, and suitable methodology in teaching the interpretation of conversational implicature can help further develop the students ability of listening comprehension. the purpose of the study is to improve the students ability of listening. the study can not only help the students have a better understanding of real conversation, but also help the students have a chance to know the knowledge of pragmatics which will be helpful in their english study. in this way, both their listening ability and their pragmatic competence can be enhanced because they can use the pragmatic theories in their practical english listening. 1.3 overall structure of the thesis there are five parts in this article. in the first part, the researcher makes a brief introduction about the background of the study and the significance of choosing this topic. the second part is literature review, which is mainly about the theory of conversational implicature and the development of the conversational implicature and the related theories, such as the leech s politeness principle, horn s two principles and levinson s three principles. also, in this part, the researcher introduces the current situation of conversational implicature in listening comprehension. the third part is the empirical study. the experiment subjects are english major students in 4 shenyang normal university bohai college (now is called liaoning finance and trade college). two parallel classes were selected to be taught in the language lab. the experimental class, class 4 grade 2008, has 35 students; and the control class, class 3 grade 2008, also has 35 students. the tem 4 test papers ( the test paper of 2007 as the pre- test material and 2008 as the post- test material) were chosen as the test material to make sure the test is precise. in the fourth part, the researcher discusses the data collected from the experiment and draws the conclusion that the application of conversational implicature theory to college english majors listening teaching is effective. the last part is the conclusion part, in which some suggestions for the further teaching and study both for the teachers and the students have been put forward. 5 chapter 2 literature review the main idea of conversational implicature was brought forward by h.p.grice in his lectures at harvard in 1967. in the 1960s, grice s lectures about conversational implicature were collected in a collection which mainly studied speech act. this means that grice s theory of conversational implicature has become mature. the main content of conversational implicature was embodied in cooperative principle. in 1983, leech and levinson respectively published their own pragmatic monographs and elaborated grice s theory in some certain chapters. leech even proposed “ politeness principle” and other principles to supplement cooperation principle. in the past 20 years there are many scholars in china who have paid their attention to the subject of conversational implicature. the early studies focus on the introduction of theories (cheng yumin, 1983; he zhaoxiong, 1989; zhong baichao, 1994; xiong xueliang, 1997), while the latest researchers (li yaling, 2003; he qiong, 2003; liu shijuan, 2001) begin to apply the theories to the course of instruction and try to work out the pedagogical implicatures that are applicable in china. scholars from abroad also have a great interest in the subject of conversational implicature inference. bouton l.f. (1988) suggests that a student s unfamiliar with a particular theory may cause the student to derive different interpretations of culture- specific implicature. in another study he (1990) finds that almost no attention at all is paid to raise the students awareness of implicature. he contends that implicature can and should be taught in the classroom. 6 2.1 cooperative principle grice s cooperative principle is to tell us how people use language. grice s suggestion is that there is a set of over- arching assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation. these arise from basic rational considerations and may be formulated as guidelines for the efficient co- operative use of language. 2.1.1 definition of cooperative principle grice noticed that in daily conversations people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them. for example, when a and b are talking about their mutual friend c, who is now working in a bank, and a asks b how c is getting on, b might answer “ oh, quite well, i think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn t been to prison yet.” here b certainly implies something, though he does not say it explicitly. grice argued that we can make a distinction between what b says in this case and what he implies, suggests or means. in order to avoid the logical use of implication, grice coined the term implicature. and he explored the question of how people manage to convey implicature, which is not explicitly expressed. grice considered that there is some regularity in conversation. “ our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. they are characteristically cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction.” (grice, 1975). the principle was defined by grice like this: make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted 7 purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (grice, 1975). and this principle is known as the cooperative principle or cp for short. that s to say, the speakers try to produce meaningful, productive utterances to continue the conversation. at the same time, the listeners assume that the conversational partners are doing the same. the question is that why people might be uncooperative in conversation. the answers may vary: maybe they are being interrogated for information they don t want to give out; maybe they don t like the person they are talking to, etc. however, in most conversations both the speakers and the listeners are trying to be cooperative. two things can be explained by this assumption: (1) why are speech errors often ignored or unnoticed in conversation? as long as the meaning the speaker is trying to get across is clear, the listener usually gives them the benefit of the doubt and focuses on meaning. (2) why can we find meaning in statements which, on the surface, seem ridiculous, untrue or unrelated? rather than assuming that our partner is lying, crazy or speaking at random, we assume they are trying to get across some meaning and we can figure out what the meaning is. 2.1.2 the maxims of cooperative principle in addition to the general cooperative principle, grice also postulated four maxims specifying how to be cooperative. it is common knowledge that people generally follow these rules for efficient communication. the four categories of maxims are as follows: 8 the maxim of quality try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: () do not say what you believe to be false () do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence the maxim of quantity () make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange () do not make your contribution more informative than is required the maxim of relevance make your contributions relevant the maxim of manner be perspicuous, and specifically: () avoid obscurity () avoid ambiguity () be brief () be orderly (adapted from levinson, 2001) in short, these maxims specify what participants have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rationally and clearly, while providing sufficient information. from these four maxims, we can conclude cp as the following: 9 cooperative principle content form quantity quality relation manner what to say how to say it. 2.2 conversational implicature the notion of conversational implicature is one of the single most important ideas in pragmatics. there are five distinguishing features of this concept in recent work in pragmatics. first, implicature stands a paradigmatic example of the nature and power of pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena. the second important contribution made by the notion implicature is that it provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is actually “ said” . thirdly, the notion of implicature seems like to effect substantial simplifications on both the structure and the content of semantic descriptions. fourthly, implicature seems to be simply essential if various basic facts about languages are to be accounted for properly. finally, the principles that generate implicatures have a very general explanatory power: a few basic principles provide explanations for a large array of apparently unrelated facts. 10 2.2.1 definition of conversational implicature convers