（英语语言文学专业论文）从明示推理交际视角分析关联理论对奥运广告中隐喻的阐释.pdf

ii内 容 摘 要 在当今社会中， 广告作为一种商业交流手段在人们日常生活和交际方面发挥着重要的作用。2008 年夏，第 29 届奥运会在中国北京举行，奥运精神再次深入人心。在全世界都关注奥运比赛和奥运健儿的同时，一批奥运广告也适时而生，采用与奥运会相关的主题宣传各自的产品。 无论是挑战极限和超越自我的奥运赛事， 还是努力拼搏，坚韧执着的奥运健儿，都为奥运广告的主题注入了更健康向上的意义。因此奥运广告与一般广告相比，更具有正面积极的寓意，这使得奥运广告更易于被受众所接受和喜爱。在奥运广告中，无论文字广告或是图片广告，商业广告还是宣传广告，广告人都采用了隐喻这一间接而非直接陈述的表达方式来宣传自己的产品或者宏扬奥运精神。隐喻在广告中的的运用不仅节省了广告的篇幅和时间， 其独特的表达方式也大大地吸引了受众注意力并引导受众主动挖掘其隐含意义，从而得出广告的最佳关联。本文旨在从明示-推理交际视角运用关联理论对奥运广告中的隐喻现象进行深入分析。 1986 年，斯珀伯和威尔逊合作出版了关联：交际与认知一书，书中首次提出了关联理论，并开始从认知视角来研究人类语言交际。关联理论认为人类交际是一个明示-推理的过程；说话者的话语作为一种明示刺激来吸引听者的注意，并引导听者在领会了说话者的交际意图的基础上，推理出说话者的信息意图。此外，关联理论认为明示-推理交际与关联准则相一致， 即明示-推理交际的每一个交际过程都具备最佳关联性。 在本文中， 作者首先将奥运广告中隐喻的广告语篇看作是一种广告人和广告受众之间的明示-推理交际。隐喻作为明示刺激吸引广告受众的注意力并引导他们进行联想和推理， 从而推导出广告人的信息意图， 最终得出隐喻和广告产品之间的最佳关联。在这种明示-推理的交际过程中，广告受众根据关联原则对广告中的隐喻进行分析，以最小的推理努力获取最大的语境效果， 实现广告的最佳关联。 比起直观的商品介绍，隐喻的运用能使广告受众获取更大的语境效果，同时加深广告印象。由此，本文作者致力于研究奥运广告中的隐喻如何作用于受众并取得最佳关联， 继而表明关联理论对于广告隐喻具有极强的阐释力。 关键词：关联 明示-推理交际 隐喻 弱隐含 奥运广告 关键词：关联 明示-推理交际 隐喻 弱隐含 奥运广告 iiiabstract advertising has become an important commercial communication means in the present world and has played an important role in peoples daily life and communication. in 2008, the 29th olympic games were held in china and it attracted full attention of the whole world. in this exciting and significant moment, a series of olympic advertisements were designed with olympic related theme to popularize their products. as we know, in olympics, both the challenging olympic competition and the diligent athletes represent an active and never-give-up spirit which makes the olympic advertising a more positive impression. so generally speaking, olympic advertising is easily accepted and favored by more audience. in olympics advertising, either the verbal form or the pictorial form, the commercial advertising or the public service announcements, the advertiser usually uses metaphors instead of the direct descriptions to describe and introduce the product. metaphor not only takes less space and time in an advertisement but also can impress the audience in a more effective way, leading them to discovering the implicatures and then achieve optimal relevance. this thesis attempts to use relevance theory to explain metaphors in olympic advertising from the perspective of ostensive-inferential communication. in 1986, sperber and wilson published their book relevance: communication and cognition in which they present a new approach of human cognition to the study of human communication. relevance theory states that human communication is an ostensive-inferential process in which the speaker makes an ostensive stimulus to attract the hearers attention in order to pass his informative intention, and then the hearer makes an inference after realizing the speakers communicative intention. ostensive-inferential communication complies with the principle of relevance that every act of ostensive-inferential communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. in this thesis, the author argues that the communication occurring in olympic advertising is also an ostensive-inferential communication. metaphors in olympic advertising are regarded as the ostensive stimuli to attract the hearers attention and direct them to realize the communicative intention and to gain the informative intention managed ivby the advertiser, finally reaching optimal relevance between metaphor and the advertised product. this thesis attempts to discuss how metaphors, including verbal and pictorial, help the audience to recover the advertisers informative attention and acquire optimal relevance, hence showing that relevance theory is a powerful tool in the interpretation of metaphors in olympic advertising. key words: relevance ostensive-inferential communication metaphor weak implicature olympic advertising i 三峡大学学位论文原创性声明 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，本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名： 日 期： 11. introduction advertising is a dispensable means to transfer a variety of information and make people be aware of some newly created products. it can be divided into several types according to different criteria and it can be studied from different angles. since olympic advertising is a kind of advertising as well, it can be made researched from the common methods mentioned above. but as olympics undertakes more social responsibility and possesses more cultural significance, it brings much more positive and meaningful factors than other kinds of advertising, which make it more acceptable favorable to audience. one of the most influential events in 2008 is the olympic games held in beijing by china. it attracts high attention from a huge amount of people so that the advertisers catch this chance to advertise their products by the use of some olympic related subjects. among those olympic advertising, it is metaphor that plays a great role in it rather than the direct representation. the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (lakoff and johnson,1980:3). so the olympic advertising publicizes its products within the range of olympic related theme, such as connected with the olympic competition or the olympic athlete. since olympic spirit is always positive and active, then the olympic-related advertising is easily accessible to the audience. furthermore, the use of metaphor in olympic advertising will save a lot of space and time spending in describing the product and express the subject more vividly. in 1986, sperber and wilson first introduced relevance theory (sperber & wilson,1995) in their book relevance: communication and cognition. with relevance theory they study human communication from the view of human cognition and regard that it is the search for relevance that makes a communication take place successfully. instead of talking about the general communication, sperber and wilson choose to explain relevance theory in the ostensive-inferential communication. they suggest that in ostensive-inferential communication there is a guarantee of relevance between the participants. in order to achieve this relevance the hearer attracted by the ostension need first recognize the speakers communicative intention and then discover his informative intention. in this thesis the author regards the olympic advertising communication as an ostensive-inferential communication, and views the metaphor in olympic advertising as a kind of ostensive stimulus in the ostensive-inferential communication. hence under the 2principle of relevance and the presumption of optimal relevance, metaphor is used first to attract the customers attention, then to lead them to discover the information intended by the advertiser, and at last to achieve optimal relevance between the metaphor and the product being advertised. in a word, the author of this thesis attempts to use relevance theory to explain the metaphors in the olympic advertising from the perspective of ostensive-inferential communication. the thesis is divided into five parts. chapter one gives a general introduction to the whole thesis, talking about the research target and the main theory applied in it. chapter two reviews the main studies which have been done about the metaphor in general and its drawbacks, and then points out that it is relevance theory that can best explain metaphor in olympic advertising. chapter three introduces the basic concepts of relevance theory, which serve as a theoretical foundation for the study of metaphor in olympic advertising. chapter four illustrates how relevance theory provides an explanation of the mechanism of metaphor interpretation and how the interpretation is done within the scope of ostensive-inferential communication, and then the author cites some latest olympic advertisements, both verbal and pictorial, to prove this explanation. chapter five concludes the whole thesis and highlights the major points in it. 32. a general outline of metaphor metaphor is a linguistic phenomenon in the long linguistic history. in this chapter the author will introduce metaphors from three periodsrhetorical, semantic and multidisciplinary study of metaphor, and emphasize the last onecognitive-pragmatic metaphor. after considering the previous studies on metaphor, the author points out both their merits and demerits, and at last suggests that relevance theory is a most accessible way to explain metaphor. 2.1 literature review of metaphor the word metaphor is a greek composition, consisting of meta (over or beyond) and phor (to carry). the definition of metaphor according to the collins english language dictionary (1987: 910) is “an imaginative way of describing something, by referring to something else which has the qualities that you are trying to express.” the study of metaphor has experienced a long period of history, from the ancient originator aristotle to the present multidisciplinary linguists, and this development can be divided into three periods as follows. (1) rhetorical study of metaphor: from aristotle to quintillian, strengthening from 300 b.c. to the 1930s. both the comparison theory and the substitution theory during this period regard metaphor as a rhetorical device on the lexical level and a deviation from the normal language use. (2) semantic study of metaphor: from logical, philosophical and linguistic perspectives, strengthening from the 1930s to the early 1970s. the interaction theory by richards can apply only to the metaphorical uses of expressions in sentences containing literal uses of expressions, but for the sentences in which all the words are used metaphorically, such as the allegory and the proverb, the interaction theory proves to be useless at all. (3) multidisciplinary study of metaphor: from a multidisciplinary field consisting of linguistics, cognitive psychology, philosophy, semiotics, pragmatics, etc. strengthening from 1970s to the present day. this period can be subdivided into two steps, that is, the cognitive study of metaphor and the pragmatic study of metaphor. the beginning mark of the cognitive study of metaphor is the publication of a book 4metaphors we live by by lakoff and johnson, who indicate a new perspective of human cognition for metaphor study. in contrast to the above traditional theories of metaphor as an extraordinary language in terms of a simply rhetorical device, lakoff and johnson argue that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but also in thought and action. (lakoff and johnson, 1980:3) since peoples concepts structure what they perceive, how they get around in the world, and how they relate to other people, it plays a central role in defining their everyday realities. as communication is based on the same conceptual system that they use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like. primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, most of the ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorically in nature. lakoff and johnson consider the essence of metaphor from the cognitive perspective as understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (lakoff and johnson, 1980:5). thus the concept, the activity and the language are all metaphorically structured; that is, people talk about something that way because they conceive of them, and act according to the way they conceive of them. consequently, metaphor is not just a matter of language. on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical. this is what it means when it says that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. metaphors as linguistic expressions are properly possible because there are metaphors in peoples conceptual system which means metaphorical concept. in metaphors we live by, lakoff and johnson classify metaphors into structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphpr. the structural metaphor occurs when one concept is “metaphorically an abstract concept in terms of a concrete one.” (lakoff and johnson, 1980:3) the orientational metaphor has to do with spatial orientations like up-down, in-out, on-off, deep-shallow, front-back, central-peripheral, etc., and is grounded in our physical and cultural experience. the ontological metaphor views events, activities, emotions ideas, etc. as entities and substances on the basis of our experiences with physical objects. lakoff and johnson study metaphor by using a new approach, the cognitive approach, which makes it possible to construe the frequent appearance of metaphor in our ordinary life. however, this theory has its own disadvantages. tanaka (1996: 85) suggests, “lakoff and johnsons claim that the linguistic representation in a specific language is identical to the cognitive representation employed by the people of that linguistic community requires 5further evidence.” 2.2 the study of metaphor from the pragmatic perspective after the past development, metaphor has become a more and more popular linguistic phenomenon, and there are more advanced theories applied to give it a reasonable explanation. in this section metaphor will be analyzed in pragmatic perspective, which is also the theory connected up with relevance theory. as metaphor becomes a common language use in peoples everyday communications, more and more linguists begin to treat it from a pragmatic perspective. in this way metaphor happens within a certain context, which is one essential condition for making sense of it in this domain. the author of this thesis also tends to explain metaphor from a pragmatic perspective. this period is represented by two typical theories, that is, grices conversational implicature theory and searles speech act theory. grices conversational implicaure raised in 1967 transfers the hearers attention from what is said to what is meant, from the expressed meaning to the implied meaning. according to grice (1975), conversational implicatures are inferences that arise during conversation, on the basis of some maxims underlying interaction that the interlocutors seem to observe or violate, while cooperatively communicating with each other. he establishes a general standard to govern verbal communication which is called the cooperative principle (cp), but he also admits that the maxims will be flouted on many occasions. in his view, metaphor is a kind of implicature, for what is said is not identical to what is intended by the speaker. grice suggested that metaphors are floutings and exploitations of his maxim of quality: “do not say what you believe to be false.” (grice, 2002:34) although this way of understanding metaphor is exciting in some ways, it incurs many differences from other linguists. nam sun song (1997:88) argued: “grice offers some account of how a metaphorical interpretation is triggered but it contributes little to understanding how metaphors are interpreted or why they are used.” tanaka (1996:87) points out that grices view of metaphor fails to explain the richness of metaphor and also fails to account for creative metaphors. levinson (2001:187) holds that the approach suggested by grice offers “little insight in the nature of metaphor” for the reason that it cannot differentiate metaphor from other figures of speech, such as metonymy, litotes, hyperbole, or irony, which, it is claimed, also trigger the calculation of implicatures by 6flouting the first maxim of quality. another substantial problem, as shown by levinson (2001:157), is that some utterances can be read both literally and metaphorically in the same context. there is no flouting of maxims to trigger the calculation of metaphorical reading. searle argues that the literal sentence meaning and the speakers utterance meaning are identical in literal utterances whereas they are not the same in metaphorical utterances. searle wants to answer how it is that a speaker can say metaphorically “s is p” and mean “s is r”, when p plainly does not mean r” (searle, 1979:103). his answer, stated briefly, “is that the utterance of p calls to mind the meaning and, hence, the truth conditions associated with r in the special ways that metaphorical utterances have of calling other things to mind.” (searle, 1979:104) this “calling to mind” is accomplished by a number of generalized steps. first, we must recognize that a metaphor is present. second, we attempt to discern what “r” could be by applying various principles. one of which is as follows: discover the relation of similarity between s and p, and search for things that s might have a similar relation in order to find r. searle gives a number of other possible principles: a salient, obvious, feature of p is r; p is sometimes r, etc. searle ends up cataloging eight principles by which metaphors can be understood. the significance of searles account for metaphor lies not only in facilitating people to account for metaphors mechanism and interpretation through the cooperative principle, but also in distinguishing between metaphor, irony and indirect speech acts. despite these merits, searles view on metaphor also gives rise to some problems. morgan (1979: 136) thinks that searles main weak point is that “his discussion of call to mind casts the net too wide, capturing some things which are not in the same boat as clear cases of metaphor.” nam sun song (1997: 89) argues that searle regards literal and metaphorical interpretations as clearly distinct from each other and bases his analysis on this, but the distinction between these two is not always clear. this fact makes the principles proposed by searle inadequate in some cases. with regard to these disadvantages of theories, the author of this thesis holds that sperber and wilsons relevance theory gives a brand new perspective to the analysis of metaphor. in relevance theory, ostensive-inferential communication takes place with the guarantee of the presumption