Abstract
Pragmatic ambivalence refers to a linguistic phenomenon in which the communicator uses vague or ambiguous words to convey the illocutionary force to the other party in a specific context. It is an indispensable communicative strategy for successful communication in daily communication activities. Relevance theory can explain pragmatic ambivalence from three aspects: intentional relevance, contextual relevance and relevance reasoning. Therefore, relevance theory has strong explanatory power and applicability for pragmatic ambivalence as a communicative strategy. Using relevance theory to study pragmatic ambivalence is conducive to people’s further understanding of pragmatic ambivalence as a linguistic phenomenon, and has a very positive significance for the research and development of ambivalence in pragmatics.
Highlights
Relevance theory is a theory that interprets communicative activities from cognitive perspective
Pragmatic ambivalence refers to a linguistic phenomenon in which the communicator uses vague or ambiguous words to convey the illocutionary force to the other party in a specific context
As a common communicative strategy in people’s daily communication, does pragmatic ambivalence still have the same strong explanatory power? If the answer is affirmative and clear, how does relevance theory explain the pragmatic ambivalence? Before in-depth analysis and discussion of this question, let’s first analyze the pragmatic ambivalence as a communicative strategy
Summary
Relevance theory is a theory that interprets communicative activities from cognitive perspective. It was first proposed by Dan Sperber, a famous French linguist, and Deirdre Wilson, a British linguist, in their book About Relevance: Communication and Cognition, which was published in 1986 and revised in 1995. As a successful theoretical mode, relevance theory has a very strong explanatory function for verbal communication activities. Relevance theory has been widely used in the field of linguistics and applied linguistics in recent years. Pragmatic ambiguity is widely used in people’s daily communication activities, which is an indispensable linguistic phenomenon for successful communication.
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