英汉会话语篇中沉默的认知语用探析
关键词 沉默 话轮沉默 关联理论 认知语用 交际
毕 业 论 文 外 文 摘 要
Title Cognitive-pragmatic Study of Silence in English-Chinese Conversational Discourse
Abstract
Silence is a common phenomenon in communication, which works together with verbal language to transmit rich information for interlocutors. In the classification of silence, turn-silence is the most worthy of discussion because it is silence of significance which has conversational implicature. By applying qualitative and quantitative methods of analyzing data collected from English-Chinese conversations, this paper discusses the mechanism of silence from pragmatic-cognitive perspective that how silence works in communication based on the Relevance Theory and proposes a referential model of interpreting silence. In addition, with cognitive interpretation of silence, it is aimed at helping people to communicate effectively by using silence.
Keywords Silence Turn-silence Relevance Theory
Cognitive-pragmatic Study Communication
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The Objective of the Study 1
1.2 The Previous Study of Silence…2
1.3 Research Design3
2 Definition of Silence in Conversation4
2.1 Classification of Silence in Conversation4
2.2 Definition of silence within conversation analysis…4
3 Pragmatic-Cognitive Perspective of Silence 6
3.1 Cognitive Study of Silence6
3.2 Relevance Theory7
4 Relevance-theoretic Approach to Silence…10
4.1 Informative and Communicative Intentions of Silence…10
4.2 Relevance and Contextual Effect of Silence…12
4.3 Functions of Silence…16
4.4 Factors Affecting the Interpretation of Silence18
Conclusion…19
Acknowledgments20
Bibliography…21
1 Introduction
As a saying goes, "there is meaningless speech and meaningful silence", silence is significant in the real world. It is a universal linguistic phenomenon, a metaphor for inner stillness in spirituality, a nonverbal expression of emotions whose functions can vary widely in various aspects of our lives. By serving alongside speech, fulfilling communicational functions, silence is sometimes to be seen as the preferred mode of expression .
1.1 The Objective of the Study
In linguistics, silence, being one of the most important way of nonverbal communication, plays a significant role in our daily life. According to studies by Birdwhistell (1970), 60-70% information in social communication is transmitted through nonverbal language. Although it has been studied in anthropology and psychology, silence has been merely deemed as absence of speech, which is meaningless, for a long time in linguistics. However, silence becomes an important topic for linguists to some extent mainly due to the following reasons. First, silence is the most ambiguous part of the conversation and misunderstanding of it easily leads to unsuccessful communication. Second, according to research, silence can make up 5-65% of the time in discourse and accounts for 40-50% average length of the time in daily conversation. Hence, its conversational implicature has triggered many interests of linguists from the 1970s. Besides, silence is functional which can reflect some social taboos or customs as well as the inpidual's state of mind.
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