关联理论述评

Review of Relevance Theory (RT)

关联理论从认知学的角度阐述并修正了Grice的会话理论,提出语言交际是一个认知过程,是必须依靠推理思维来进行的新的语用学观念,并建立了颇具解释力的关联原则,希望依靠这一原则说明自然话语理解中的诸种语用现象。这对克服以往语用理论的笼统性和任意性,使之逐渐成为一门严谨系统的语言科学,无疑是一种有益的尝试。关联理论现存的主要问题是,它趋于肯定语用推理结论的必然性,对其或然性认识和论述不足;并且采取了将主体思维在话语交际中的作用理想化、形式化和运算化的作法,忽视了主体间的差异的复杂多变性及其对语言交际可能产生的重要影响。

This paper elabortrtes on the usefulnoss of the Relevance Theory (RT) in explaining one as-peet of discourse interpretation. RT stresses that verbal communication as a whole is inferentialrather than rule-governed decoding. RT, the paper says, tries to expand the Gricean theory ofconversational maxims to include both implioatures and explicatures in an inferential account ofdiscourse. It concludes with stating the two major problems RT faces in discourse interpretation.