（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）言语交际中误解现象的认知分析.pdf

ii 摘摘 要要 误解发生在言语交际中，由于其频发性及其对言语交际有效性的影响,而引起国 内外许多相关学者的注意。他们分别根据自己的研究目标，采用不同的角度和方法 对误解现象进行研究，如哲学方法、跨文化交际方法、社会语言学方法等。近年来， 随着认知科学的发展，又有学者开始从认知的角度来探讨这一课题。 在认知语用学领域，对误解现象进行研究，影响较大的学者有西班牙的 yus 博 士和中国学者宗世海。yus(1998)运用关联理论对误解的概念和分类进行讨论，并简 单分析了在日常言语交际中误解发生的原因。 宗世海(2000)主要对汉语言语交际中的 误解现象及其相关理论问题进行研究，较有影响的研究成果之一是对误解形成机制 中心理因素的探讨。已有的研究成果为后续研究提供了宝贵的参考，但同时也表现 出某些不足。 通过认真的文献研读，本文试从认知的角度，运用关联理论对言语交际中的误 解现象进行描写和分析，着重探讨误解形成的认知根源。关联理论是一种交际推理 理论，它对推理过程的阐释源于认知科学。关联理论提出，在言语交际中，交际双 方认知语境的不同导致误解的产生。但它并没有深入探讨在言者显现听者推理的交 际过程中，误解的形成究竟涉及了哪些具体的认知因素，而这些因素又是如何相互 作用的。 通过研究，本文认为：在日常言语交际中，无论听者还是言者都对误解的产生 负有责任。言者的预设偏差，会影响话语的明示性和关联度，进而影响听者的认知 推理，导致误解的产生；在听者依据言者的话语进行推理的过程中，其已有的知识 和经验，以及双方注意焦点的不同，均会影响听者的语境假设选择，从而导致误解 的产生。 对误解现象进行深入研究，有其重要的理论和应用价值。本文的研究有助于深 化人们对言语交际规律的认识，为有效交际提供理论指导。此外，这一研究对跨文 化语言教学也具有现实的指导意义。 关键词：关键词：言语交际；误解；关联理论；预设；认知推理 iii abstract since misunderstanding is unavoidable and even pervasive in verbal communication, it has been explored by scholars in a few different fields. various approaches are adopted by to meet the aims, with the philosophical approach, ethnographic approach, and the pragmatic approach as the most popular ones. as the rapid development of the cognitive sciences, some scholars begin to do researches on misunderstanding from a cognitive perspective, hence the cognitive approach. in the field of cognitive pragmatics, there are two representative scholars working on the issue of misunderstanding: the spanish yus (1998), and the chinese zong shihai (2000). drawing heavily on the relevance theory, yus (1998) discusses about the definition and classification of misunderstanding, analyzes its causes in verbal communication. zong shihai (2000) mainly deals with misunderstanding in chinese verbal communication. one of his most fruitful researches is to probe into the psychological factors in the generation of misunderstanding. although studies on misunderstanding are well documented, there still exists room for further working. from a cognitive perspective, this thesis attempts to make a systematic explication on misunderstanding, focusing on a further and detailed analysis about the cognitive roots of misunderstanding. for the relevance theory, the different context used by the communicators may result in misunderstanding. however, this theory doesnt point out what the specific factors are involved in the generation of misunderstanding, how they work on each other, and why they consequently bring about misunderstanding. this thesis holds that in daily verbal communication, both the speaker and the hearer should take the responsibility for misunderstanding. the speakers inappropriate presupposition can result in the less ostensive and relevant utterance, so as to leave possibility for misunderstanding. in the inferential process, the hearers previous knowledge, experiences and the different focus of the communicators attention can iv influence the choice of contextual assumptions. as a result, misunderstanding comes into being. researches on misunderstanding have both the practical and theoretical significance. the present study will deepen the pragmatic theories and be contributive to the further understanding of verbal communication. key words: verbal communication, misunderstanding, relevance theory, presupposition, cognitive inference 烟台大学学位论文原创性声明和使用授权说明烟台大学学位论文原创性声明和使用授权说明 原创性声明原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，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，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体 已经发表或撰写过的作品或成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已 在文中以明确方式标明。本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 论文作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文使用授权说明学位论文使用授权说明 本人完全了解烟台大学关于收集、保存、使用学位论文的规定，即：按照学校 要求提交学位论文的印刷本和电子版本；学校有权保存学位论文的印刷本和电子版， 并提供目录检索与阅览服务；学校可以采用影印、缩印、数字化或其它复制手段保 存论文；在不以赢利为目的的前提下，学校可以公布论文的部分或全部内容。 （保密论文在解密后遵守此规定） 论文作者签名： 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 版权声明版权声明 任何收存和保管本论文各种版本的单位和个人，未经本论文作者同意，不得将本 论文转借他人，亦不得随意复制、抄录、拍照或以任何方式传播。否则，引起有碍 作者著作权之问题，将可能承担法律责任。 v acknowledgements it is a collective effort for the completion of this dissertation. there are a number of people to whom this thesis owes a great deal. first of all, i would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, professor chen zhonghua, whose warm-hearted encouragement, patient instructions and thought-provoking comments inspirit me to make continuous improvement on this thesis. without his help, the completion of my thesis would have been impossible. moreover, his serious attitude towards academic research will benefit me in my whole life. i would also like to thank all the professors who have instructed me during my three years of postgraduate study and research process. their earnest and enlightening instructions are of great help for my study of applied linguistics and the accomplishment of this thesis. my thanks are further due to my dear classmates and friends who have shared their viewpoints with me and offered great help in many aspects during my study life. my grateful thanks also go to my parents. they are the source of confidence and strength for me, their love has carried and will carry me through challenges one after another. 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 the significance of the research verbal communication is a two way interaction which involves two parts: speech production and interpretation. the speaker expresses his or her intention in utterance, and the hearer interprets the intended meaning of the utterance. as the communication proceeds, the interlocutors will change their roles and take turns in a regular way. to be an effective communication, it is necessary that the hearer understand the speakers utterance completely and correctly. however, for some reasons, it is sometimes rather difficult for the hearer to do so. and misunderstanding would happen in this case. communications in our daily life show that misunderstanding seems unavoidable. though some misunderstandings do not cause serious consequences, and on some occasions, they may even obtain unexpected rhetoric effects, most misunderstandings make trouble: they may either cause a face-losing situation for the interlocutors, or affect the efficiency of the communication, or even result in the abnormal solidarity. so in order to reduce the side-effects of misunderstanding and maintain a normal solidarity in verbal communication, it is helpful to have an intellectual study of misunderstanding. besides the practical value mentioned above, the study of misunderstanding is of theoretical significance. misunderstanding is an objective phenomenon of utterance interpretation, which, as a most important part of language use, falls within the research scope of pragmatics. known as an unsuccessful interpretation, misunderstanding has been studied by different scholars from various perspectives, among whom are taylor (1992）, austin (1962) , grice (1989), tannen (1990), gumperz (1978), gudykunst (1997),miller (1994) , sperber the other is explanatory, directing the exploration of the causes of misunderstanding and the revelation of the generative mechanism of misunderstanding. both kinds are necessary for the study of misunderstanding, and actually they are complementary. so for the research methods of this thesis, a combination of descriptive and explanatory is adopted. as for the data in this thesis, we only emphasize those misunderstanding cases that happen in natural conversation. because this kind of data are more close to the nature of verbal communication, and are regarded as the most suitable language materials for the study on a pragmatic subject. all the natural language data in this thesis, including the misunderstanding examples, are mainly from two resources: those observed and recorded by the author, and those offered by classmates or friends. in addition, we excerpt some typical examples from other scholars works. 1.4 the organization of the thesis this thesis is composed of five chapters. chapter one is an introduction of the present study, in which the significance of the research, the methodology, and the macro-structure of the thesis are presented. chapter two makes a literature review of misunderstanding studies, including the theoretical base, approaches, and critical points on the previous studies. chapter three presents the theory of verbal communication applied in this thesis, and makes a description of misunderstanding in verbal communication. chapter four is the key part of the present study, dealing with the cognitive explanation of misunderstanding in verbal communication. the author holds that in verbal communication, both the speaker and the hearer should take the responsibility for misunderstanding. the speakers presupposition and the hearers cognitive inference may all create misunderstanding. chapter five draws a conclusion to the present study, which summarizes the major findings and also limitations of this thesis. beside, it offers some suggestions for the further study. 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 4 chapter two a review of relevant literature being active or passive, misunderstanding is unavoidable and even pervasive in verbal communication. therefore, the study of misunderstanding is of significance, either theoretically or practically. actually, the issue of misunderstanding has been explored by scholars in many different fields. this chapter starts with a brief review of studies on misunderstanding, in respect to definitions, classifications and causes of misunderstandings. it proceeds to make an overview of the related studies. due to the scope of the present study, the overview will be mainly confined to the studies that are relevant to pragmatics. finally, we will put forward some critical points on the previous studies. 2.1 verbal misunderstanding: theory in brief 2.1.1 definitions of misunderstanding explorations of misunderstanding are well documented, yet we find that definitions of misunderstanding are scarcely put forward definitely. following are the ones that are typical and influential, which present us a definitional picture of misunderstanding. some scholars define misunderstanding in terms of mismatch or disparity. according to grimshaw (1980, p. 34), misunderstanding, in a narrow sense, is a phenomenon that the hearer develops a specific interpretation, which does not match with the speakers intended one. in bazzanella and damianos opinion (1999, p. 821), misunderstanding is a kind of discrepancy between the speakers meaning and the interlocutors interpretation of a given turn. these two viewpoints show that it is widely accepted that misunderstanding is a mismatch of the speakers intended meaning and the hearers interpretation in a particular context of verbal communication. milroy (1984, p. 15) points out that misunderstanding is a simple disparity between the speakers and the hearers semantic analyses of a given utterance. humphreys (1986, pp. 108-109) believes that misunderstanding is the hearers incorrect understanding about propositional meaning of the speakers utterance. a common ground can be found that 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 5 both of these two definitions take a semantic perspective on misunderstanding. there is another way to the access of definition. some scholars regard misunderstanding as a kind of “inability”. thomas (1983, p. 93) argues that if the addressee is unable to recognize the force of the speakers utterance, misunderstanding may arise. for yus (1998, p. 84), misunderstanding can be defined as two kinds of inability of the addressee. one is the inability to select the precise interpretation from all the possible interpretations in a given context; and the other is the inability to deal with optimally the (non)verbal information, which is conveyed unintentionally. it is a kind of information coming from the environment, called the “accidental transmission of information” by wilson and sperber (1995, p. 102). in addition, zong shihai (2000, p. 34) emphasizes that misunderstanding is a mental process. he considers misunderstanding as a conversational phenomenon in language understanding, in which the hearer does not understand the meaning of an utterance in the way intended by the speaker. it is evident that, different scholars define misunderstanding from different perspectives. in this thesis, the author attempts to define misunderstanding as a phenomenon of utterance interpretation, in which the hearer unintended and incorrectly interprets the meaning of the speakers utterances. 2.1.2 causes of misunderstanding what causes misunderstanding in verbal communication? scholars involved in the field, both at home and abroad do have different explanations. in his paper “sociocultural knowledge in conversational inference”, gumperz (1978) concludes three causes of misunderstanding, namely the different cultural assumptions about appropriate acts and intentions in various situations, various approaches to the organization of information or views in the conversations, and the different ways to talk. according to cahour (1996), when people communicate, they often stand in the interlocutors shoes to consider some ideas. this intersubjectivity, on the one hand, allows the speaker to adapt to the hearers knowledge or interests, anticipate the hearers interpretation. on the other hand, this conversely allows the hearer to understand the speakers meaning in a way that is intended by the speaker. however, when the interlocutors mistakenly attribute to the other the same attitudes, which are not appropriate, misunderstanding may happen. 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 6 yus (1998) suggests that there exists a semantic continuum between the explicature and implicature of the speakers utterance. if the hearer can not be able to locate the speakers intended meaning in this continuum, there would be a chance for misunderstanding. he further claims that the location of referents for indexical and inadequate encyclopedic or mutually shared information between the interlocutors may result in misunderstanding. zong shihai (2005) points out that there are two causes for the occurrence of misunderstanding: one is the speakers utterance which is characterized by the discrepancy or mismatch between the two interlocutors linguistic knowledge, the indeterminacy of the utterance meaning or the fuzziness in the expression of language; and the other is the mentality of the hearer, including the common mentality and the social mentality, which is related to the hearers social status and the social distance between interlocutors. these two causes work constantly with each other, and are indispensable for the generation of misunderstanding. sun ya (2003) studies misunderstanding within a framework of idealized cognitive models (icm) put forward by lakoff. he attributes the causes of misunderstanding to the indeterminate reasoning of icm, believing that it is the conflict between the speakers icm and that of the hearers that leads to the emergency of misunderstanding. besides the causes of misunderstanding discussed above, there are still other scholars who have put forward some more different opinions on the issue. they believe that the language transfer, some linguistic items, the context, or psychological factors, and the mismatch between systems of memory and perception can also create the possibility for misunderstanding (thomas, 1983; zhao, 1995; wilson, 1994). 2.1.3 classifications of misunderstanding it is important to have a logic approach to the classification of misunderstanding. different standards are adopted by scholars to their research motivation and the theories they hold on. previous classifications are mainly based on the following standards: the standard of meaning, the standard of understanding result, and the standard of the treatment in dialogue. by the standard of meaning is meant that misunderstanding is classified in terms of content misunderstood. this way of classification can reveal the nature of misunderstanding correctly, and many scholars both at home and abroad have used. for 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 烟 台 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 7 example, thomas (1983) distinguishes two kinds of misunderstanding. one is that of the propositions expressed by the speaker, and the other is that of pragmatic force of speakers utterance. he points out that the utterance meaning and the force constitute the speakers meaning. thus misunderstanding is categorized into two kinds: utterance meaning is understood, not the force; neither the utterance nor the force is understood (thomas, 1995). so far as the meaning itself is concerned, in his thesis “the relevance of misunderstanding”, dascal (1985) puts forward an onion-like model of meaning: the propositional content is the inner part, the pragmatic force is in the middle, and then there is the outer part, conversational implicature. he believes that misunderstanding can occur in any of these parts. zong shihai (2004) classifies misunderstanding into two major types: misunderstanding of utterance meaning and that of implicature. the former is further categorized into misunderstanding of propositional meaning and referential meaning, and the latter comprises misunderstanding of pragmatic force and conversational implicature. by the standard of understanding result means to make a comparison of the information between the speakers utterance and the hearers interpretation. in terms of this standard, zhao yi (1995, pp. 8-12) distinguishes two types of misunderstanding: linguistic misunderstanding and pragmatic misunderstanding. he has worked out four categories of misunderstanding in verbal communication: (1) non-understanding, that is, the hearer does not get any interpretation of the speakers meaning, and the information received is zero; (2) part