从语用学的角度分析英语中的言语幽默

英语专业全英原创毕业论文，是近期写作，公布的题目可以用于免费参考（贡献者ID 有提示）

最新英语专业全英原创毕业论文，都是近期写作

42 透过《德伯家的苔丝》看哈代托马斯的宗教观守望爱情的孤独勇士－－论电影《暮光之城》爱德华的永恒魅力职场女性的言语行为的礼貌原则高中英语新课标在xx中实施情况调查与分析论增加英语国家文化背景知识在初中英语教学中的策略以篱笆和围墙看中西方居住文化差异文类、历史与受众心态——论小说《红字》的电影改编对英语政治新闻的批评性话语分析从习语来源看中西文化之不同 An Analysis of Fagin in Oliver Twist 关于照料母婴的市场分析《杀死一只反舌鸟》文本和电影的比较研究身体，规训与自我意识——《可以吃的女人》之福柯式解读从功能翻译理论看记者招待会口译—以“两会”记者招待会口译为例从合作原则谈影视翻译策略——以《功夫熊猫》为例网络环境下小组合作学习模式研究论《红字》的模糊性 “省力原则”在口译过程中的应用 Cultural Differences and Idiomatic Expressions in Translation 尼斯湖和西湖—中西方旅游性格差异研究从归化和异化的角度看电影片名的翻译电影《海上钢琴师》的浪漫主义解读圣诞节对大学生的影响的调查研究 On Misreading in Reading Comprehension from the Perspective of Discourse Analysis 从叙事结构分析电影《撞车》中对种族歧视问题的诠释 The Cultural Identity Dilemma of Colonized Afro-Americans: the Study of The Bluest Eye 《儿子与情人》恋母情结分析 Two Trapped Roses—A Comparative Study on Emily and Miss Havisham 论《亚瑟王之死》中的骑士精神 “集体无意识”理论观照下艾米莉的悲剧性论《飘》中斯嘉丽的精神源泉希腊罗马神话典故成语英汉翻译评析从概念整合视角解析《小王子》 A Study of Adaptation Theory in Advertising Translation 英汉颜色词的文化象征意义及翻译论《西游记》中文化因素的翻译策略——以詹纳尔和余国藩的英译本为例教师身势语在英语口语教学中的应用浅论简?奥斯汀在《傲慢与偏见》中的婚姻观及其女性主义意识《蝴蝶梦》中的女权主义梅赛德斯-奔驰汽车广告语言特点分析浅析李尔王的陷落从电影《阿甘正传》分析委婉语的交际功能

英语专业全英原创毕业论文，是近期写作，公布的题目可以用于免费参考（贡献者ID 有提示） 43

86 《荆棘鸟》的女性主义解读《傲慢与偏见》中的三层反讽《哈利波特》系列里哈利波特与伏地魔的二元对立分析不伦，还是不朽？－－从柏拉图的哲学理论视角解读《洛丽塔》初中英语教学中的角色扮演中西方传统女权主义思想异同比较——王熙凤与简爱之人物性格对比分析 Scarlett’s Pragmatism in Gone with the Wind 从“信”“达”标准分析英译药品说明书中存在的误译 A Comparison of the English Color Terms On Metaphor Translation Strategies from Cultural Perspective 对《呼啸山庄》中凯瑟琳的悲剧性分析英语习语的认知分析从心理学角度看霍尔顿的内心世界功能对等视角下汉语广告的英译策略张培基散文翻译赏析化妆品商标的文化内涵与翻译 The Differences of Beauty Standards Between China and America 英汉基本颜色词文化内涵对比研究《奥罗拉?李》中的女性形象解读论《呼啸山庄》中人性的转变中西方诚信文化对比歧义的语用研究命运与性格－－浅论《哈姆雷特》的悲剧因素《哈利波特》的原型——亚瑟王传奇 A Study of Luxury Situations Nowadays in China from Sister Carrie 美狄亚的女性主义分析《红字》中海斯特性格分析目的论下英语广告仿拟格的汉译目的论在英语儿歌翻译中的应用《呼啸山庄》和《暮色》系列的对比研究：《呼啸山庄》再次热销引发的思考 A Research on the Symbolic Meanings of“Ghost”in Anil’s Ghost 论叶芝政治诗歌中对爱尔兰民族主义的矛盾性态度 Tragedy of a Woman and Society—Comment on Far from the Madding Crowd 从十字军东征看中世纪宗教冲突《海的女儿》中安徒生的悲剧情结分析论《小妇人》中女性人物塑造的两重性美国情景喜剧《老友记》中幽默的翻译研究中医术语翻译方法研究中西葬礼文化的对比研究《红字》中丁梅斯代尔的灵魂救赎群体隐私和个体隐私——中美家庭中隐私观念的对比研究试析《远大前程》中匹普性格发展与社会环境的关系 English Vocabulary Teaching in Junior Middle School “到十九号房间”的悲剧成因

英语专业全英原创毕业论文，是近期写作，公布的题目可以用于免费参考（贡献者ID 有提示） 87 英语语音学习中的母语负迁移现象研究

88 旅游景点名翻译的异化与归化

89 艾米丽·勃朗特《呼啸山庄》中男主人公希斯克利夫的形象分析

90 浅谈电影名称的英汉互译

91 中式菜肴名称的语言特点及其英译

92 英语动结式V+PP的语义整合研究

93 文化与幽默欣赏

94 跨文化交际意识与中文旅游文本翻译

95 On Mark Twain's Contributions to Realism

96 优秀小学英语教师课堂词汇互动教学的运用分析

97 《傲慢与偏见》中经济对婚姻的影响

98 英文歌曲在提高英语专业学生口语能力方面的作用

99 论托妮莫里森《最蓝的眼睛》中的母女关系

100 《野草在歌唱》中野草的象征寓意解读

101 从女权主义角度对比分析《纯真年代》两位女主人公的爱情悲剧

102 On Virginia Woolf’s Feminism in A Room of One’s Own

103 言语行为理论在意识流作品中的应用——以弗吉尼亚?伍尔夫的作品为例 104 Discourse, Immigrants and Identity in In the Skin of a Lion

105 从叔本华的哲学思想角度简析《德伯家的苔丝》中苔丝的悲剧

106 《魔术与童年》翻译中英汉词汇衔接对比研究

107 《月亮与六便士》中查尔斯?思特里克兰德的追寻自我

108 从摩尔?弗兰德斯看世纪英国女性地位

109 《智血》中主要人物生命历程解读（开题报告+论）

110 中英商标翻译中的文化障碍与翻译策略研究

111 澳大利亚传记文学中的土著文化：以《我的位置》为例

112 英语习语的认知分析

113 《双城记》中的象征手法分析

114 从《喜福会》看美国华裔女作家身份探求

115 英语中源于希腊罗马神话主要神祇姓名词汇的认知探索

116 试析海明威《丧钟为谁而鸣》中的人物形象

117 礼貌原则视角下奥巴马演讲技巧的分析

118 古诗词英译关于夸张的翻译策略研究

119 Living in the Crack: A Study of the Grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio

120 从数字的联想意义研究中西文化的差异

121 从关联理论角度看电影台词翻译—电影“小屁孩日记”的个案研究

122 《快乐王子》中的唯美主义

123 合作学习模式在高中英语口语教学中的应用

124 疯女人的呐喊——《简爱》中失语疯女人的解析

125 英语中介语无标志被动语态的错误分析

126 从主人公的悲剧命运看《推销员之死》的现实意义

127 English-Chinese Advertisement Translation

128 爱伦坡侦探小说中恐怖气氛的营造方法

129 On Hardy’s Meliorism: An Analysis of Tess of the d’Urbervilles

130 母语正迁移在初中英语教学中的研究与应用

英语专业全英原创毕业论文，是近期写作，公布的题目可以用于免费参考（贡献者ID 有提示） 131 从功能对等理论谈汉语成语的英译

132 被忽视的主人公——析《简爱》中的疯女人

133 从《红字》看霍桑的道德思想观

134 论《爱玛》的反讽艺术

135 论《红字》中的象征

136 译者的身份

137 英汉称呼语的对比研究

138 苔丝悲剧原因探究

139 海丝特与卡米拉爱情观的对比分析

140 “三美论”观照下的《再别康桥》英译本比较研究

141 浅谈英语教学中课堂活动的应用

142 《愤怒的葡萄》中的圣经原型

143 试谈黑人英语在美国电影中的渗透

144 An Analysis on Shear's Personality in The Bridge on the River Kwai

145 广告英语的语言特征

146 An Analysis of Beauty and Ugliness in The Picture of Dorian Gray of Oscar Wilde 147 中国英语初探

148 解读艾丽斯?沃克《紫色》中的家庭

149 A Comparative Study of Chinese and French Higher Education

150 中西方礼仪文化差异比较

151 从翻译美学探究散文英译

152 从心理学角度试析简爱性格的对立性

153 清教主义和超验主义观照下霍桑的救赎观——以《红字》为例

154 五官习语的翻译

155 对《最蓝的眼睛》黑人的悲剧命运的分析

156 浅析好莱坞类型电影文化

157

158 文化负迁移对翻译的影响

159 论接受理论对儿童文学作品的影响——以《快乐王子》中译本为例

160 从《哈克贝里﹒费恩历险记》看马克﹒吐温的幽默讽刺艺术

161 工业化进程中的人性异化——解读D.H.Lawrence《儿子与情人》

162 英语词汇教学中联想记忆法之研究

163 论《愤怒的葡萄》中的生态批评思想

164 汽车商标词的翻译特征和方法

165 On Transcendentalism in Thoreau’s Walden

166 任务型教学中策划对高级英语学习者写作任务完成效果的影响

167 论叶芝的写作风格

168 [会计学]资产减值会计的应用研究

169 从生态视野解读狼图腾

170 功能对等理论视角下《越狱》字幕翻译的研究

171 Key Factors to Cause the Tragedy of Mariam

172 从《红楼梦》和《飘》看中美恭维语比较

173 《麦田里的守望者》中霍尔顿的精神之旅

174 《达洛维夫人》中的生死观初探

英语专业全英原创毕业论文，是近期写作，公布的题目可以用于免费参考（贡献者ID 有提示） 175 关于《麦田里的守望者》中霍尔顿成长历程的研究

176 对《名利场》中女主人公的性格特征分析

177 从麦田里的守望者到中国的青少年

178 中国英语与中式英语的对比研究——从英汉民族思维差异的角度

179 A Contrastive Study of Politeness Principle in English and Chinese

180 Analysis on the Chapter Titles Translation of The Story of the Stone

181 语篇分析在阅读教学中的运用

182 历史与个人叙事：拉什迪《午夜之子》的后殖民解读

183 An Analysis of the Translation of Film Titles

184 从《飘》中人物性格分析看适者生存的道理

185 Americans’ Understanding of Chinese Culture as Viewed from Two Movies Mulan and Kung Fu Panda

186 浅论英文原声电影在英语教学中的应用

187 中美大学生请求语策略对比研究

188 The Impact of High and Low Context on Intercultural Communication

189 论《月亮宝石》的现实主义手法

190 中国跨文化交际学研究存在的不足与建议

191 《理智与情感》中的姐妹情谊

192 从语用学的角度分析英语中的言语幽默

193 中西方饮食文化的差异

194 On the Character of Scarlett O’Hara and the Transition of American Society

195 麦都思眼中的中国宗教形象

196 日常生活中手势语的应用

197 Escapism in The Picture of Dorian Gray

198 Psychological Analyses of Sethe in Beloved

199

200 叶芝：无望的爱情，多变的风格

第二篇：英语修辞格的语用学分析

Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

题目名称：

题目类型：

学生姓名：

院 (系)：

专业班级：

指导教师：

辅导教师：

时间：毕业论文杨梦外语学部 20xx年09月29日至2012 年5月30日

英语修辞格的语用学分析

Pragmatic Analysis of Common

English Figures of Speech

A Thesis

Presented to the Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

By Yang meng

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts

May 2012

Thesis Supervisor: Yu Minglan

任务书???????????????????????????????I 开题报告??????????????????????????????Ⅱ 指导老师审查意见??????????????????????????Ⅲ 评阅教师评语??????????????????????????Ⅳ 答辩会议记录????????????????????????????Ⅴ 英文摘要??????????????????????????????Ⅵ 中文摘要??????????????????????????????Ⅶ 正文目录??????????????????????????????Ⅷ 论文正文??????????????????????????????1 参考文献??????????????????????????????24 致谢????????????????????????????????25 附录一中文译文?????????????????????????26 附录二英文原文??????????????????????????30

长江大学文理学院毕业论文(设计)任务书

学部外语专业英日班级英日5082班学生姓名杨梦指导教师/职称余明兰教授

1. 毕业设计(论文)题目:

英语常用修辞格的语用分析

Pragmatic Analysis of Common English Figures of Speech

2. 毕业设计（论文）起止时间

20xx年01月12日～20xx年5月30日

3.毕业设计(论文)所需资料及原始数据（指导教师选定部分）

[1] Black. Models and Metaphors [M]. Cornell University Press. 1962:25

[2] Goong, Winfield Rhetoric in Practice [M]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Press Council 1973:25

[3] Leech, Geoffrey N., A linguistic Guide to English Poetry [M]. London: Longman

Group Limited. 1983:21

[4] Leech, Geoffrey N., Principles of Pragmatics [M]. London: Longman Group Limited. 1983:x, 25,131-148,142-145,143-144

[5] Verschueren, Jef. Understanding Pragmatics [M]. Edward Arnold Publishers Limited 2005:1,148一165

[6] K. M. Jaszczolt Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning in language and discourse

[M]. Pearson Education Limited. 2002

[7] Stephen C. Levinson Pragmatics [M]. Cambridge University Press 2005:I, 6

I-2

[8] Sperber D.&D.Wilson Relevance: Communication and Cognition.Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1986/1995:2

[9]何兆熊.新编语用学概要[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000: 9

[10]何自然.语用学与英语学习[M].上海外语教育出版社.1997

[11]李鑫华.英语修辞格详论[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000:5,17,8

[12]戚雨村语用学说略[J]，外国语1998 ( 4 ) :34

[13]束定芳.隐喻学研究[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000: 72

[14]束定芳.中国语用学研究论文精选[C].上海外语教育出版社，2001: 34

[15]覃先美.李阳英语修辞学概论[M]湖南师范大学出版社2006: 236

[16]徐鹏二修辞和语用一汉英修辞手段语用对比研究[M].上海外语教育出版社.

2007

[17]熊学亮.认知语用学概[M].上海外语教育出版社，1999

[18]张秀国.英语修辞学[M].清华大学出版社北京交通大学出版社2006:185

[19] /grid20/detail.aspx

[20] /grid20/detail.aspx

4.毕业设计(论文)应完成的主要内容

（一）修辞格与语用学的关系

1.1 修辞格的具体介绍和含义

1.2 语言学的概括

1.3 语用学中常用的修辞格

（二）修辞格的余勇学分析

2.1语用学中常用的修辞格的种类和作用

I-2

2.2 相应的修辞格的具体分析

5.毕业设计(论文)的目标及具体要求

1）在学校图书馆查阅相关的文献,为论文的写作做准备；

2）拟订粗线条的论文大纲，指导教师认可后撰写详细的论文大纲；

3）论文大纲获得指导教师的认可后，开始准备任务书和开题报告；

4）按照规定的时间上交任务书和开题报告；

5）开题报告获得通过后，进入论文的写作阶段。在论文的写作阶段要保持与指导教师的经常性联系，并且定期向指导教师汇报论文的写作情况及进展；

6）按时提交论文的初稿和修改稿，并做好论文答辩的准备；

7）通过对以上任务的完成，对修辞格的运用有了进一步认识

6、完成毕业设计(论文)所需的条件及上机时数要求

1).查阅一定的与本论文有关的中英文资料

2).在校内图书馆，校外图书馆查阅大量相关的资料

3).至少200小时的上机时间

任务书批准日期 2011 年 10 月 10 日教研室(系)主任(签字) 任务书下达日期 20xx年 09 月 29 日指导教师(签字) 完成任务日期 2012 年 5 月 30 日学生（签名） I-2

毕业设计（论文）开题报告

英语常用修辞格的语用分析

Pragmatic Analysis of Common English Figures of Speech

一、题目来源

修辞格对文章的作用

二、研究目的和意义

传统的修辞学大都注重从运用的角度阐释词语的锤炼、句式的选择、辞格的运用、喻体和风格等研究,很少尝试从语用学的角度去研究修辞问题。基于此,本文试图从语用学中Grice提出的合作原则的角度来分析修辞格中故意违背合作原则的用法,以发现修辞学和语用学之间的联系

三、阅读的主要参考文献及资料名称

[1] Black. Models and Metaphors [M]. Cornell University Press. 1962:25

[2] Goong, Winfield Rhetoric in Practice [M]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Press Council 1973:25

[3] Leech, Geoffrey N., A linguistic Guide to English Poetry [M]. London: Longman

Group Limited. 1983:21

[4] Leech, Geoffrey N., Principles of Pragmatics [M]. London: Longman Group Limited. 1983:x, 25,131-148,142-145,143-144

[5] Verschueren, Jef. Understanding Pragmatics [M]. Edward Arnold Publishers Limited 2005:1,148一165

[6] K. M. Jaszczolt Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning in language and discourse

[M]. Pearson Education Limited. 2002

[7] Stephen C. Levinson Pragmatics [M]. Cambridge University Press 2005:I, 6

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[8] Sperber D.&D.Wilson Relevance: Communication and Cognition.Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1986/1995:2

[9]何兆熊.新编语用学概要[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000: 9

[10]何自然.语用学与英语学习[M].上海外语教育出版社.1997

[11]李鑫华.英语修辞格详论[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000:5,17,8

[12]戚雨村语用学说略[J]，外国语1998 ( 4 ) :34

[13]束定芳.隐喻学研究[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000: 72

[14]束定芳.中国语用学研究论文精选[C].上海外语教育出版社，2001: 34

[15]覃先美.李阳英语修辞学概论[M]湖南师范大学出版社2006: 236

[16]徐鹏二修辞和语用一汉英修辞手段语用对比研究[M].上海外语教育出版社.

2007

[17]熊学亮.认知语用学概[M].上海外语教育出版社，1999

[18]张秀国.英语修辞学[M].清华大学出版社北京交通大学出版社2006:185

四、国内外现状和发展趋势与研究的主攻方向（要求至少1000字）

在语言学和外语教学界，研究语法的人很多，研究修辞的人相对较少，

以致外语修辞教学在外语教学中一直是个薄弱环节。20世纪80年代初，

我在主编《修辞学习》杂志时，除介绍外国修辞学理论外，还发表过宿锡

尧等写的关于英语修辞格的文章。同一时期，我在所主编的“修辞学丛书”中，专门编了一本《外国现代修辞学概况》。去年，我又在我主编的“21

世纪修辞学丛书”中，出版了李国南的《辞格与词汇》。所有这些，其目

的在于引起修辞学界和外语教学界对外国修辞学和外语修辞的重视，并在

外语教学中加强修辞教学。日前，复旦大学出版社出版了一本直接用于大

学英语教学的《英语修辞简明教程》（李树德、冯奇编写），翻阅之后，发

现它有以下特点：

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一、整体把握英语辞格脉络。众所周知，从20世纪二三十年代以来，中外修辞学界对辞格作了很多研究，在辞格分类上做了很多的工作。从开始的二三十种到现在的一两百种，不厌其烦。这一方面反映了语言的丰富多彩，研究的精雕细琢；另一方面又的确过于烦琐，不利于学习和掌握。复旦版《英语修辞简明教程》把英语中比较常见的明喻、暗喻、拟人、移就、提喻、低调陈述等22个修辞格，根据它们的特点和共同之处，归纳为喻类、代类、对照并列类、反复类、双关类、仿拟类、节略类、颠倒类等8类，分别进行论述，这样仅使英语的辞格系统化，而且对初学英语的学生来说很有助益。

二、突破单一研究和叙述方法。该教材摒弃了定名称、下定义、罗

列例句的辞格研究方法，对每一种英语辞格从定义、源流、表现手法、

成格结构、修辞效果入手，通过例证分析多角度地进行阐述，并与汉语

类似的辞格进行对比，在论述过程中纠正了英语辞格研究中的某些错误

和模糊的概念，如对提喻和轭式搭配的分析，就根据作者个人研究成果，引述作者收集的最新资料，提出不同的观点。此外，该还突破了“长期

以来随意按照一种语言现象，取一个辞格的名称，下一个定义，举一两

个例句”的单一的研究和叙述方法，对提高修辞教学效果会起一定的作

用。

三、例证接近师生言语，能解决教学实际问题。该书中引述的例证

除少数来自经典著作外，大多数是作者在多年教学和阅读中收集和积累

的新鲜语料。由于这是一本大学英语的修辞教材，作者特别注意引用现

行的大学英语专业和非专业的教材，如《大学英语》、《21世纪大学英语》、《大学英语教程》、《核心英语》等教材中的例句，时代感强，使读者有

亲切感。此外，教材中的理论阐述深入浅出，例证丰富而接近师生言语

实际，能解决教学中遇到的问题，这也是该书的一个重要特色。

五、主要研究内容、需重点研究的关键问题及解决思路

本文从语用学的角度研究了英语的常用修辞格:夸张，反语，拟人，矛盾修辞法和隐喻，并探索了这些修辞手段如何使人类言语交际更为成功，有效。语用学在解释许多语言现象中起着极其重要的作用。语用学与修辞学是密切相关的。两者都旨在研究人类的言语交流，追求同义表达中的最佳选择问题。语用是语言符号和语言交际者之间的情景交际行为。

本文要解决的问题是:1.从语用学角度看这些英语常用修辞格是如何产生的?2.如何从语用的角度理解和应用这些英语修辞格以更为有效，成功地达到语言交际目的。

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本文期望达到的效果是:通过对以上修辞格的语用分析，基本弄清修辞效果的产生以及更易于理解和更为贴切的使用修辞。

本文使用了一些语用学原理和方法如合作原则;礼貌原则;面子理论和关联理论来分析修辞。本文还提出了一种基于关联理论的语用推理模式。修辞的语用研究所涉及的范围很广，如果我们从广义来理解的话，需要把语用学看作是一种结合语境和使用过程的语言研究方法。随着语用学研究的加深，未来的修辞语用研究有待新的理论和方法的提出.

六、完成毕业设计所必须具备的工作条件（如工具书、计算机辅助设计、某类市场调研、实验设备和实验环境条件等）及解决的办法

1. 所需工作条件：(1) 相关的中英资料、文献

(2) 计算机网络资源及辅助设备 (3) 校内中英文图书期刊室 (4) 中英文图书期刊室及数字图书馆

2. 解决方法： (1) 在学校图书馆、阅览室查阅大量相关的资料文献

(2) 充分利用网络资源及文献检索系统，查阅下载丰富

的论文资料

(3) 利用计算机辅助设备再现网络资源

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七、工作的主要阶段、进度与时间安排

1. 考研方向的学生在考研结束后与指导教师联系，商定论文选题，在寒假期间

做好论文的选题和开题报告，并在寒假期间开始论文第一稿的写作，寒假结束后于开学一周内上交论文任务书、开题报告等相关材料以及论文第一稿。

2. 2011-2012学年第二学期的第3-7周考研研学生开始论文第二稿的写作，2012

年3月30日前向指导老师提交论文第二稿。

3. 2011-2012学年第二学期的第8-10周考研研学生开始论文第三稿的写作，

20xx年4月20日前向指导老师提交论文第三稿。

八、指导教师审查意见

指导教师签字 ________________

20xx年10月30日

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长江大学文理学院毕业论文(设计)指导教师评审意见

英语修辞格的语用学分析

III

长江大学文理学院毕业论文(设计)评阅教师评语

英语修辞格的语用学分析

长江大学文理学院毕业论文(设计)答辩记录及成绩评定

英语修辞格的语用学分析

Abstract:

The thesis analyzes such common English figures of speech as hyperbole, irony, personification, oxymoron and metaphor from the perspective of pragmatics and explores how these rhetorical devices make human utterance communication more successful and effective. Pragmatics is of great importance to the explanation of many language phenomena. Rhetoric is closely associated with pragmatics. Both of them aim to study human utterance communication and pursue the optimal choice of synonymous words or sentences. Pragmatic use of language behavior between linguistic signs and language users.

The problems that will be settled in the thesis are: 1.How do these common English figures of speech produce the rhetorical effects from the pragmatic perspective?

2. How do we comprehend and apply these English figures of speech from the point of view of pragmatics to effect successful language communication?

The effects which are expected to achieve in the thesis are: through the analysis of the English figures of speech listed above, the production of rhetorical effects is basically made clear, and the comprehension of rhetoric turns out to be easier and their application more appropriate.

In the thesis, some pragmatic principles and approaches are adopted to analyze English figures of speech. The representative ones are the Cooperative Principle presented by Grice; the Politeness Principle put forward by Leech; the Face-Saving Theory presented by Brown& Levinson; the Relevance Theory involving cognitive pragmatics raised by Sperber D.&D.Wilson the Pragmatic Inferential Model based on Relevance Theory is raised in the thesis. The area that the pragmatic study of rhetorical devices involves is extremely wide. If we comprehend it from a broad sense, we need to see pragmatics as an approach to language study that combines context and process of language use. With the study of pragmatics deepened, more new pragmatic theories and approaches are expected to support future study of rhetoric.

[Keywords] figures of speech; English; pragmatics; appropriateness; adaptability

中文摘要

本文要解决的问题是:1.从语用学角度看这些英语常用修辞格是如何产生

的?2.如何从语用的角度理解和应用这些英语修辞格以更为有效，成功地达到语言交际目的。

本文期望达到的效果是:通过对以上修辞格的语用分析，基本弄清修辞效果的产生以及更易于理解和更为贴切的使用修辞。

小四、宋体、加粗，

行首空两个汉字符，与上文空一行 ]修辞;英语;语用学;

Contents

Ⅰ. Introduction..……………………………………………............…………………..1

1.1Relationship between rhetoric and pragmatics………………………............ 1

1.2Classification of English rhetorical devices…………………………….……2

1.3Purpose,approach and significance……………………………………...……4

1.4Literature review……………………………………………………...………7

1.5The main content of the thesis………………………………………………..9

II.Literature review………………………………………………...………..................10

2.1Definition of hyperbole..…………………………….……………..……….10

2.2 Production of the rhetorical effect of hyperbole..…………….…………….11

2.3Pragmatic function of hyperbole………………………….……………...…..6 III. Relationship between rhetoric and pragmatics…………………….……...……...7

3.1Definition of irony………………………………………………………...…..7

3.2 Positive expression of the negative meaning………………………………....9

3.3 Negative expression of the positive meaning……………..………….…10

3.4 Pragmatic function of irony………….…..……………….………..……..13 IV. Classification of English rhetorical devices.………………….…………………...15

4.1 Definition of oxymoron.…………………………………......…....................15

4.1.1 Introduction to the interaction theory….…...………………………...15

4.1.2 Some defects of the interaction theory.….……………………….16

4.2Production of the rhetorical effect of oxymoron……………………………...19

4.2.1 The philosophical basis of lakoffian theory…………...……………...19

4.2.2 Lakoffian theory on the mechanism of metaphor……………..…21

4.3 Pragmatic function of oxymoron…...………………...…….…………….….29

4.3.1 An introduction to the conceptual integration theory………………....29

4.3.1.1 Four mental spaces……………….……………...……………..29

4.3.1.2 Three processes of BT……...………..…………..……………..33

4.3.1.3 Optimality principles of BT………….………………...……….34

4.3.2 The advantages of BT in solving the paradox of former theories……34

4.3.2.1 The generic mental space……..…………………….…...……...34

4.3.2.2 The blending space and emergent structure……..……….……..35

4.3.2.3 The other advantages of BT……...………..……………………40

V.Pragmatic Analysis of Common English Figures of Speech

5.1Hyperbole

5.1.1Definition of hyperbole..

5.1.2Production of the rhetorical effect of hyperbole

5.1.3Pragmatic function of hyperbole

5.2Irony

ⅥChapter Six Metaphor

6.1 Definition of metaphor

6.2 Metaphor and Simile

6.3 Production of the rhetorical effect of metaphor

6.4 Pragmatic function of metaphor

ⅦConclusion……………...…………………………………….…………………41

Bibliography…………………………………………..………….……………45 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………46

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

I Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Relationship between rhetoric and pragmatics

It is universally acknowledged that rhetoric originated in Greece about 24centuries ago. During the time of Aristotle (384-332B.C.), rhetoric was considered to be one of the few important branches of learning. It was Aristotle who was the first one to define rhetoric as the art of persuasion. So he was regarded as the father of rhetoric. Today, rhetoric is regarded as a science of heightening linguistic effective expressions, and the art of effective communication. Rhetoric studies the optimal selection among multiple expressions of the similar meaning. 'The purpose of rhetoric is to help people express themselves better and communicate effectively in order to secure a desired result by employing rhetorical means efficiently. The highest principle of rhetoric is to adapt to specific situation, that is, "adaptability" or "appropriateness". In order to achieve the best results, we have to understand the person being written or spoken to, and do what is appropriate for that particular occasion. In other words, we use different words or different expressions for different situations. Rhetorical device is a practice of utterance, which pursues the optimal language effects.

Atics is of great importance as a branch of linguistics that has been developing rapidly in recent years. The modern usage of the term atics is attributable to the philosopher Charles Morris (1938), the founding father of pragmatics, who was concerned to outline the general shape of a science of signs, or semiotics. Within semiotics, Morris distinguished three distinct branches of inquiry: syntactics, being the study of "the formal relation of signs to one another", semantics, the study of "the relation of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable",and pragmatics, the study of "whatever relations between signs and their users or interpreters""'. Yule defines it as the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). `9' Leech defines it as the study of how utterances have meanings in situation. }" Pragmatics studies the appropriateness and effects of language communication. Pragmatic use of language is the communicational behavior between language signs and language users.

Pragmatics is closely associated with rhetoric. Leech holds that pragmatics itself is a kind of rhetorical study. Morris also argues the inseparable relationship between V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

pragmatics and rhetoric and calls rhetoric as the guiding discipline of pragmatics. "s' Rhetorical phenomena are also the matter that pragmatics attempts to resolve, because rhetorical phenomena are inevitably concerned about conversational implicature. Grice once includes irony, hyperbole and metaphor into one category that floats the maxim of Quality, for those phenomena can all be viewed as having "untrue utterance content". There are various convergences between pragmatics and rhetoric. First, Adaptability, appropriateness and context of language are the important elements that both pragmatic study and rhetorical study are involved in. Second, it is the utterance meaning that both pragmatics and rhetoric study. Both of them regard utterance meaning as the special skills of language use. If we traced back to see rhetoric in Greece more than 2000 years ago, the adoption of utterance meaning in language use was frequent then, for the devices such as irony, hyperbole and metaphor in rhetoric were the use of utterance meaning. Third, generally speaking, both belong to the study of the level of sentence or the unit above sentence. Figures of speech study the matter of utterance requiring a certain context rather than that of sentence or the unit below sentence while such meaning beyond the scope of sentence meaning is the objective of pragmatics study.

1.2 Classification of English rhetorical devices

Figures of speech refer to all kinds of striking or unusual configurations of words or phrases. They involve the variation of any unit of the language system-graphic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. Figures of speech aim at increasing vividness of language. Vivid language can arouse the audience's interest, hold their attention and enhance their comprehension with imagery and leave the audience with a fresh impression. To increase the impact of language, figures of speech are employed in both literary and non-literary, both written and spoken forms. They are used to embellish, emphasize or clarify expressions, to make language morecolorful, more forceful, or more explicit, thus making communication more efficient and more effective. On many occasions, figures of speech are the necessary means of communication, without which we cannot get across our idea. Similar to many other languages, English is abundant in figures of speech. Developed out of the long tradition of the English language and culture, most English figures of speech remain alive today and new ones are being created every moment in people's life.

Literary interest in, and use of, figures of speech reached its zenith in the V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

Renaissance: Peacham's handbook (1577) lists nearly 200 different types. }9} Although a decline in the study of classics and a growing suspicion of the rhetoric have led to a decline in their use in literary composition and public speaking, a "hard core" of figures still persists, and some are known reasonably well by name, for example, devices of repetition are common in public speaking; And figurative language is generally characteristic of advertising. In the second half of the twentieth century renewed interest in figures of speech came from French structuralism influenced by the earlier Russian formalists; And from stylistics in work on text analysis, speech act theory and pragmatics-modern fields of traditional rhetoric in many way anticipated. As a result, there have been several attempts at classifications of figures on a more rigorous, linguistic basis. It is true that the Greek forms of figures of speech are admittedly difficult to pronounce and remember. Many of them confusingly overlap with others in meaning, or appear to have more than one meaning. Undoubtedly, however, certain knowledge of rhetorical figures is of considerable importance to both our understanding of stylistic effect in literary language of earlier periods and our verbal communication in today's world. There is no definite conclusion about how many figures of speech there are in English. There are no compromising methods to specify English figures of speech. Sometimes a given figure of speech will fall mainly into a single category, as, for example, an apostrophe is used mostly for emotion, but more often the effects of a particular figure are multiple, and a single one may operate in one more categories. For instance, parallelism helps to order, clarify, emphasize, and beautify a thought. Occasionally a figure yields certain effects not readily identifiable or explainable so it is not always easy to tell why or when certain ones are good or should be used. In the thesis, English figures of speech are classified into three categories in accordance with devices of usage of English figures of speech. 1) Figures of speech adopting phonetic devices: alliteration and assonance; 2) Figures of speech adopting lexical devices; e.g., metaphor, hyperbole, personification; 3) Figures of speech adopting syntactic devices; e.g., inversion and repetition. Some common rhetorical devices such as metaphor, hyperbole, personification, pun, irony and oxymoron are dealt with in this thesis.

1.3 Purpose, approach and significance

The intention of writing this thesis is to explore English rhetorical devices from the perspective of pragmatics and to promote the optimal comprehension and V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

application of English figures of speech in language communication.

The main issues in studying the topic are as follows: 1) English rhetorical device is numerous, and there are no definite categories of English figures of speech. 2) Current pragmatic theories are conventional and lack novelty.3)The area that pragmatic study of figures of speech covers is so wide that it is not only associated with such branches of linguistics as rhetoric, pragmatics, phonetics, semantics, syntax, grammar, psychological linguistics, cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, applied linguistics and cross-cultural communication but also related to psychology, aesthetics, literature, philosophy and logics. Pragmatic analysis alone seems to be insufficient to be persuasive.

Current conditions and solutions to these issues are the following:

In accordance with devices of usage of English figures of speech, they are classified into three categories in the thesis: 1 .1 figures of speech adopting phonetic devices, e.g., alliteration and assonance; 1.2 figures of speech adopting lexical devices, e.g., metaphor, hyperbole, personification; 1.3 figures of speech adopting syntactic devices, e.g., inversion, repetition. Because of the limited condition for the present writing task, only some common rhetorical devices such as hyperbole, irony, personification, oxymoron and metaphor are handled;

New theories are expected to be explored and applicable to future rhetorical study. With the study of pragmatics deepened, some pragmatic principles and strategies have been put forth. The representative ones adopted in the thesis are the following: The Cooperative Principle presented by Grice who believes that conversation is confined to certain conditions.. The reason why people's conversation could be possibly carried out is that the two sides of the conversation should all obey a principle called the Cooperative Principle that consists of four maxims and some sub-maxims; The Politeness Principle put forward by Leech who believes that the Cooperative Principle only interprets the relationship between literal sense and intended sense of utterance, explains how the inexplicit meaning is produced and comprehended, but it does not explain the reason why people deliberately violate the Cooperative Principle to convey their real intention. Leech has found the answer to the question: it's out of the consideration of politeness. The Politeness Principle is said to save the Cooperative Principle; the Face-Saving Theory advanced by Brown& Levinson who hold interlocutors should cooperate to save faces for each other while interacting in conversation. Face means honor, self-esteem, public self-image. People are governed by two desires: to be unimpeded in actions and to be approved of. The first is dubbed the negative politeness, the other positive politeness. Positive politeness can be realized as suggesting commonality, understanding, and joint action. Negative politeness is expressed in showing respect and maintaining social distance. Face is said to be a universal notion, there is no faceless communication. Whether a person loses face or not relies much on others. If one does not want to lose face, he/she should not damage others' faces. Therefore in order to save faces for both in communication, the best way is to use polite language. The shortcomings of the theory are: the content of face differs in different cultures; Sperber D. &D. Wilson raised the Relevance Theory from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics to substitute Grice's Cooperative Principle. Sperber D. & D. Wilson hold that language communication activity aims to convey the purpose of the speaker. Language communication activity covers a pair of information: the purpose of information and the purpose of communication. That is to say that the speaker shows not only his intention to pass some information but also the intention itself during conversation. In communication the speakers will always express themselves in explicit words so as to V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

make the audience comprehend their purpose while the audience will infer the implied information from the information provided by the speaker. The comprehension of utterance meaning is a dynamic process of cognitive inference, during which the two sides of the conversation obey Relevance Theory. The information provided by the speaker should be fully relevant; The audience will merely concern and process the information that is closely relevant to the speaker's words when he tries to comprehend the utterance correctly. Previous studies only focus on the utterance meaning of the speaker while the relevance theory shifts the pragmatic emphasis from it to the study of psychological process, during which the audience tries to catch the implied intention of the speaker. Relevance Theory has neither maxims nor principles that the speaker should obey during speaking. It only describes people's cognitive process in comprehending every utterance, namely, the relevance between utterance itself and context, enabling the audience to make reasonable inference to the speaker's intention. Correct cognition is based on searching for relevance. The relevance theory does not believe that the speaker makes the audience comprehend the intention by deliberately floating certain maxims. However, the context-sensitiveness of Relative Theory is not concrete sufficiently, namely the standard of context identification is vague and general. Moreover the theory has a trend to simplify pragmatics, ignoring the peculiarity of things. The Pragmatic Inferential Model based on the Relevance Theory is raised in the thesis, which holds that pragmatic studies can basically be embodied in the concept of "relevance" and the process of human verbal communication is none other than a process of searching for the optimal relevance under a certain concrete context. This process, with cooperation as its presupposition might use unusual relevance out of consideration for politeness and other factors. The proposal of a relevance-based pragmatic inferential model can either be applied as a whole, or can be divided into parts with each part practicing a certain function, that is, each of the pragmatic principles can stand on its own and work to explain linguistic and cultural phenomena.

With the rapid development of pragmatic study, the scope and depth of pragmatics are increasingly wider and further, new disciplines across pragmatics and other disciplines such as cognitive pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics and inter-language pragmatics occur, the obstacle will be removed. The area that pragmatic study of rhetorical devices involves in is wild. If we comprehend it from a broad sense, we need to regard pragmatics as an approach to language study that combines context and process of usage.

T'he significance of the thesis lies in exploiting the inseparable relationship between figures of speech and pragmatics. The thesis intends to study the English rhetorical devices at the pragmatic level comparatively thoroughly and systematically by means of combining theories quoted from both home and abroad. The thesis also raises its own points of view: With a synthetic analysis of the three major pragmatic principles, namely, the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle and the Relevance Theory. The Pragmatic Inferential Model based on the Relevance Theory is raised, which holds that pragmatic studies can basically be embodied in the concept of "relevance" and the process of human verbal communication is none other than a process of searching for the optimal relevance under a certain concrete context. This process, with cooperation as its presupposition might use unusual relevance out of consideration for politeness and other factors. This Inferential Model embodies the combination of the advantages of different pragmatic principles, and can more scientifically probe into the psychological process of human communication. This is a new trial since in the past most discussions on inference of conversational implicature V

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are based on a single pragmatic principle. It also raises a few opinions from the author's own points of view, for example, in Chapter 3, irony is divided into two parts: positive expression of the negative meaning and negative expression of the positive meaning, Face-Saving Theory is adopted to further analyze each separately, which is different from the conventional method that analyzes irony by treating it as a whole.

1.4 Literature review

A domestic and overseas view on relevant studies: rhetoric and pragmatics are the two marginal disciplines, each respectively having a wild study area. Rhetoric is an ancient learning that has a history of over 2500 years since its birth. And pragmatics is a new discipline that has merely a history of more than 30 years as an independent and systematic discipline. Pragmatic study of English rhetorical devices is also a new and developing topic. At domestic, the study of such a topic is mainly focused on the study of each of them independently. Rhetoric is more often considered the learning of appreciating the art of language. Pragmatic study of English figures of speech in China has been carried out in recent years. Much research, however, remains somewhat stale and for one reason or another lags behind the corresponding foreign studies for a few decades. A few rhetorical devices such as metaphor and irony have been much explored from different aspects (as from the perspective of cognition) by domestic linguists like Shu Dingfang in his Studies in Metaphor WHJ 2002 while many other devices have seldom been dealt with. Overseas study remains more on rhetoric and pragmatic study of a few figures of speech such as irony and hyperbole, much research focus on the study of metaphor Such study is generally conventional. Let's see the traditional views on metaphor: Searle (1979) discusses two views on metaphors: the traditional comparison view and the interaction view. Comparison theories say that metaphorical utterances involve similarity, resemblance or a comparison between objects. They are also called a referentialist view and have been traced back to Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian. Interaction theories claim that there is a verbal opposition between the content of the expression used metaphorically and the content of the literal context. They are also called a descriptivist view, in the sense that descriptive information is said to determine the interpretation of a metaphorical expression. Both views, Searle argues, are incorrect. Comparison theories are incorrect because, a metaphorical expression actually gets the truth conditions of the metaphor, not of the literal meaning, and because similarity between objects need not be the case. Interaction theories are also incorrect because they locate metaphor in sentence meaning rather than speaker meaning and because the opposition between the literal context and the metaphor may not be the case. There may not be any literal context. In recent years, there is a trend towards the reconciliation of truth-conditional and cognitive semantics in the study of metaphor. Cognitive theories stress the conventionalization of metaphors because metaphors are mechanisms of conceptualization. Hence, cognitive theorists diminish the role of live metaphor. Others, like Searle emphasize live metaphors to show that their meanings are open-ended. Similarly, relevance theory stresses that a metaphor may communicate an indefinite number of feelings and beliefs. Just as in non-verbal communication, in metaphorical communication speaker's intentions may not be precise. Metaphors approximate the speaker's thoughts rather than describing them faithfully The reconciliation strongly suggests that a future successful theory of meaning has to be founded on truth conditions after all. Pragmatic study of English figures of speech is therefore a promising and challenging field for those who are interested in the study of linguistics in future.

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1.5 The main content of the thesis

Chapter One is the introduction. First, it introduces the inseparable relationship between rhetoric and pragmatics. English rhetorical devices are divided into three categories in the thesis, five common English figures of speech: hyperbole, irony, oxymoron, personification and metaphor are dealt with in it. Then the purpose, approach and significance of the study are described. The pragmatic inferential model based on Relevance Theory is raised in this part.

Chapter Two to Six are the analysis of the five English figures of speech from the perspective of pragmatics respectively, which include the definitions, productions of the rhetorical effect and pragmatic functions of these rhetorical devices. Among them, irony is divided into two parts in Chapter Three: positive expression of the negative meaning and negative expression of the positive meaning, Face-Saving 'Theory is adopted to analyze each of them respectively.

The last part is the conclusion. It first sums up the achievements of the thesis and argues that English figures of speech are not absolutely independent of each other by giving some examples and then prospects for the future of this study field.

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II Chapter Two Hyperbole

2.1 Definition of hyperbole

Hyperbole comes from the Greek word "hyperbole", which means a throwing beyond, or excess. It is a common figure of speech popularly known as exaggeration or over-statement. As Geoffrey N. leech defines in his Principles of Pragmatics, "hyperbole refers to a case where the speaker's description is stronger than is warranted by the state of affairs described." }4} In terms of pragmatics, hyperbole superficially violates Grice's Maxim of Quality and Quantity: Accordingly, a hyperbole like "It made my blood boil" constitutes a violation, in some degree, of the Maxim of Quality: But hyperbole, which distorts the truth by saying too much, is not the same as telling lies. With hyperbole, there is no intent to deceive the audience. In fact, in the speaker's mind he is truly describing his intense feeling at the time. For example, when Hamlet tells Laertes of his love for Ophelia he thinks that he is telling the truth.

I loved Ophelia: Forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,

Make up my sum. (Shakespeare)

Of course, the audience, rather than feel being deceived, will infer the true state of affairs with the hyperbole一He loves her extremely. Hyperbole is commonly used as a sign of great emotion or passion as shown in the above examples. Among other examples are "it made my hair stand on end", which describes the feeling at the moment一being very much frightened, and "It made my blood boil", which shows that the speaker was really enraged. Both hyperboles imply an intensity of feeling. Idiomatic expressions of hyperbole are often found in ordinary conversations, as in "Her eyes nearly popped out of her head"; "He was all ears."; "That'll cost the earth." and "I've been working my fingers to the bone". Hyperbole is also found in the exaggerated use of universal quantifiers and references to the extremities of scales. For example, I'm completely broken; There is absolutely nothing on the telly this evening.

Hyperbole is the deliberate use of overstatement, it is the name given to a gross exaggeration of the facts. When we say: "Her face fell a mile" (meaning she showed mild disappointment), we are employing hyperbole, though, in fact, it was impossible that her face fell a mile. When a person says: "Come and look at the orchids. There V

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are thousands of new shoots on them" (In fact, there are only eighteen new shoots on the plants). It is, too, a case of hyperbole.

2.2 Production of the rhetorical effect of hyperbole

Hyperbole is strikingly characterized by exaggeration. The rhetorical device presents a question why the language exaggerated so much can exist in language communication and be readily accepted by people. In addition, from the perspective of pragmatics, hyperbole evidently violates the maxim of quality which requires that the speaker should not say what he believes to be false or say that for which they lack adequate evidence. Leech explained the pragmatic function of hyperbole from the perspective of the interpersonal rhetoric. Leech viewed the pragmatic function of utterance as a combination of illocutionary force and rhetorical force. The rhetorical force refers to the utterance meaning produced by the varied extent that the speaker obeys the interpersonal rhetoric, namely the degree of truth, the degree of politeness and the degree of irony. Leech's ersonal rhetoric consists of not only Grice's Cooperative Principle but also the Politeness Principle, Irony Principle, Interest Principle and Pollyanna Principle. The adoption of hyperbole floats the Cooperative Principle; it is yet to obey other principles of-the interpersonal rhetoric. Sperber D.&

D. Wilson who study rhetoric from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics argue that the adoption of hyperbole does not violate the maxim of quality, especially when the audience believes that the utterance meaning is similar to the viewpoints of the speaker, Namely, both have the similarity in logic and context. Sperber D.&

D.Wilson hold that when people use the rhetorical device, they aim to pass their viewpoints to others effectively and do not require their partner to comprehend in accordance with the literal meaning rigidly, but only get close to it. J. R. Gibbs argues that many rhetorical devices reflect people's identification of rhetorical thinking system and the comprehension of themselves and the objective world. In people's daily language, rhetorical devices are everywhere, which proves that human's thinking depends largely on the process of comprehension and application of rhetoric. To explain the pragmatic function of hyperbole from the perspective of cognition may help disclose the cognitive regularity and mode of language use governing pragmatic rhetoric to better comprehend and apply various rhetorical devices to communication. The use of hyperbole may arouse people's interest of communication, produce an effect of humor or show politeness. The use of hyperbole also concerns the question V

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of presupposition. The presupposition refers to the cognition of the context of the speaker.

Example 1.Hamlet: I lov'd Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum…(William Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Example 2.His eloquence would split rocks.

In the examples above, though what hamlet describes as "forty thousand brothers" is beyond imagination, this exaggeration that is based on his true love of Ophelia is absolutely true, its presupposition is: He loves her. Because it is in accordance with the fact in essence, whatever he exaggerates, what he says can be counted to be true. In Example Two, "Eloquence can split rock‖, which is out of the question in reality, but it is undeniable that the man was very good eloquence. Its presupposition is: he is eloquent.

Example 3: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. (Jane Austen, and Prejudice)

Example 4: It's so kind of you to take so great trouble to come here The examples above produce an effect of humor and politeness through exaggerating the facts. Their presuppositions are respectively: "It is a common sense" and "I appreciate your coming here". It is easy to see that the basis for this kind of rhetorical device is fact. Hyperbole is apparently untrue and beyond the fact. It is however true in reality. Hyperbole consequently does not violate the Maxim of Quality in essence, which guarantees the cooperation during the conversation. While exaggeration exists in conversation, dialogue may continue to carry out. The field of the language form of hyperbole belongs to the field of art and expression; Its primary function therefore lies not in expressing fact but in expressing feeling. The words of exaggeration cannot be verified and are to a large extent concerned about human feeling. Human feeling is fluctuating all the time, and hyperbole is thus produced. It strengthens to express the attitude towards people or things, stimulates the force and effect of expressions. Consequently hyperbole does not flout the maxim of Quality but is a rhetorical device that expresses human feeling based on certain facts.

2.3 Pragmatic functions of hyperbole

Hyperbole is fairly common and is used to heighten the effect of whatever we wish to say, to convey intensity of feeling, to emphasize a point, to create humor, or to V

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achieve some similar effect. It is frequently used in colloquial speech and fictitious writings, but is almost never used in scientific texts where precision of expression is necessary. Its form can vary from a word, a phrase, a sentence, to a paragraph of description. For example, 1.Your jokes really kill me. (Compare: Your jokes really amuse me very much). 2. She was hysterical over the new dress. (Compare: She liked the new dress very much). Dora cried her eyes out at the loss of the necklace. (Compare: Dora cried bitterly at the loss of the necklace.)

Hyperbole can strengthen to express the recognition and attitudes towards people or things, enhances the expressive force and expressive effect. For example:

1) No color so pure, so weightless, it's virtually irresistible

This is an advertisement for a brand of lipstick. The adoption of hyperbole here strengthens the language effect. The three adjective words "pure", "weightless" and "irresistible" arouse people's strong purchasing desire.

2) The difference is like night and day

This is an advertisement for a car. The outstanding peculiarities of the car are outlined through the skill of language.

3) If you drink, then drive, you are a bloody idiot.

It is a public welfare advertisement that vividly warns people not to drive when drinking.

Hyperbole can cause the interest of transaction or produce an effect of humor.

For example:

4) And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancour had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children, of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush onto the platform and call me PA! (Mark twain, Running for Governor)

These exaggerated words of Mark Twain caused an effect of humor and impressed the reader deeply.

5) On line trading is supposed to be as simple as the click of a mouse.

It is a web site's selling promotion that produces a strong effect to motivate people to have a try with the words "as simple as the click of a mouse".

6) When she saw the amount written on the cheque, her eyes nearly popped out of her head.

In this sentence the heroine's psychology is deeply depicted through the adoption of hyperbole.

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7) I'm all ears一tell us what they had to say.

"All ears" is an expression of humor and made the reader feel very vivid.

8) She worked her fingers to the bone to provide a home and food for seven children.

By means of the rhetorical device: hyperbole, here, the hardship of the heroine is deeply conveyed, which is incomparable by any other ways of expression.

9) That'll cost the earth.

It vividly shows the meaning of "expensive".

Hyperbole is used to show politeness. For example, when we invited someone to dinner, the guests would often say something for our kindness. The following example is the thanks for having finished the feast. "That was a delicious meal!". This example is the common phrase for appreciating other's help: It's so kind of you to take so great trouble to come here!

Hyperbole is commonly used in advertising. It is used to advertise goods in a most interesting and attractive way so as to induce customers to buy them. In advertising, the advertiser does not simply say a thing is "good". He overstates it: "It's perfect, colossal, spectacular, superb, fantastic. Hence, "big" will become "large", "giant", "ultra-large", "king-size", "jumbo", etc. However, it must be noted that, to the customers who are familiar with these exaggerated words and expressions, these exaggerations have lost their point and validity. They have become commonplace. People do not believe them. Therefore, we should refrain from overusing hyperbole. If we use hyperbole too often for ordinary things, it will be impossible for us to use it on the really significant and impressive occasions.

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III Chapter Three Irony

3.1 Definition of irony

Irony is a figure of speech in which the intended meaning of the words used is the direct opposite of their usual sense. For example, when someone hates the weather which spoils his trip and says, "what a fine day!" he is ironical, the word "fine" is actually intended to mean "bad", "awful" and "abominable" As irony is the replacement of an expression that is meant by its opposite, words used in irony are not to be taken literally. Most forms of irony involve the perception or awareness of discrepancy or ncongruity between words and their meaning, between actions and their results, or between appearance· and reality. In order to make irony recognizable and effective, the contrast between the words and the intended meaning should be poignant enough. For example, "what beautiful weather" is an irony at the time of a pouring rain. Irony, to say the opposite, is to convey the utterance meaning opposite to the sentence meaning by means of specific context and non-natural meaning is hence produced.

According to Grice's the Maxim of Quality of CP (Cooperative Principle): Do not say what you believe to be false, this rhetorical device obviously violates the principle, thus a special conversational implicature crops up in the utterance. Why does the speaker deliberately violate the Cooperative Principle in utterance communication and let the audience understand the real intention of the speaker? Leech holds that it is because people should obey the Politeness Principle in utterance communication. Irony is an adoption of PP in language communication. Leech asserts that irony "enables a speaker to be impolite while seeming to be polite" and that "we are ironic at someone's expense, scoffing off others by politeness that is obviously insincere, as a substitute for politeness". Leech maintains that irony has a positive function in permitting aggression to manifest itself in a less dangerous verbal form than by direct criticism, insults and threats. An insult can easily lead to a counter-insult, and hence to conflict, whereas, an ironic remark is less easy to answer in kind. He points out "Irony combines the art of attack with an apparent innocence which is a form of self-defense." He explains the function of irony as follows: "if the PP (Politeness Principle) breaks down, it is liable to break down on both sides: direct accusation leads to counter-accusation, threat to counter-threat, and so on. But because irony pays lip service to the PP, it is less easy to break the PP in one's V

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response to it. Hence the IP (Irony Principle) keeps aggression away from the brink of conflict." Sperber D.&D.Wilson put forward their Relevance Theory that is the core of cognitive pragmatics and has neither principles nor maxims that the speaker should obey. It only describes the process of cognition of every utterance made by people. Utterance itself has certain relevance with context that enables people to make reasonable inference to the speaker's intention so as to respond properly to the utterance. The search for relevance is the basis of correct co娜tion. The Theory believes that the speaker does not violate something, which makes the audience understand what the real intention of their words, nor see the ordinary rhetorical device, irony as the reflection of violation of the maxims. The standard of comprehension of utterance is the hypothesis of human cognition called Relevance Theory by Sperber D.&D.Wilson. In this way, the standard of comprehension of utterance is in accordance with Relevance Theory. When and only when what the speaker says provides the optimal relevance, will the audience have a correct comprehension of the utterance. One of the conditions to acquire the optimal relevance when understanding utterance is that the audience should make effort to achieve the effect of context. The Theory holds that if the cognitive process to comprehend the utterance is real, people can tell either the truth or falsehood in the conversation where they don't need to obey the maxim of Quality. Irony may occur in such communication without distracting the normal principles of communication. E.g.

(A mother says to her son:)You are such a clean child. The mother's words superficially cause the discrepancy in people's cognitive constitution between the standard of cleanness that child should have and the untidiness of her son. Sperber D. &D.Wilson believe irony has something to do with cognitive context. Pragmatics is usually regarded as the science of context. It studies how the dominant content (semantics) and implied content (meaning) have been linked. The traditional context covers nearly all while its language has its restriction, the auxiliary devices of language communication will not be the factors of specific context. A person who has heard a sudden sentence can respond correspondingly by virtue of the relative information being stored in the cognitive context while others will not necessarily do so, it is the cognitive factor that plays a decisive role in language communication. The language user has internalized and cognized the relative specific context through experience, so the inference to the additional part of the language information relies V

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mainly on the cognitive context rather than specific context, because human's structure of knowledge has structuralized the outside world. The characteristics of language usaee that are freauentlv used or occurring on specific occasions can be structuralized in brain. When a relative concrete occasion is mentioned, language expressions appropriate to this occasion will naturally occur, and when a certain language expression is mentioned, a concrete occasion relative to this expression will naturally occur. The structuralization of the pragmatic factors produces the cognitive context that is the relative knowledge of human language use. And the state of knowledge structure that is relative to language use has been conceptionized and patternized. When we use language, the communicator may consciously or unconsciously activate the relative cognitive context and put it into use according to the necessity of communicational occasion. Cognitive context includes not only the situational knowledge, context knowledge and background information involved in the use of language but also the collective awareness shared by all the social community, namely, means of conduction, thought or belief of the social community The collective awareness is stored in individual structure and makes individual's language and behavior appropriate to the society, culture and political surroundings. The formation of the collective awareness will not necessarily rely on individual's direct experience. In different cultures, collective awareness is varied. The relation between words is of macro-grammar; The relationship between language unit of lexicon formation and the meaning expressed by lexicon belongs to the scope of the macro-grammatical study. In the process of language use, what the lexicon or language expressed is sometimes the non-language meaning. Although thenon-language meaning needs to be achieved by inference, in the diachronic process, the non-language meaning may be conventionalized and regularized and may evolve into language meaning with constant form and meaning. The dividing line between the pragmatic factors and the grammatical factors is not always clear. A couple of functional factors of language or the content of conversational pragmatic factors can all be gradually regularized in the process of language use. The habitualized and grammaticalized pragmatic factors are the two aspects of the regularization of pragmatic phenomena. Conventionalization expresses the inclination of language use and to some extent, is regularized by the context and occasions; Grammaticalization expresses the constant relation between language form and meaning, not influenced by context and situation. For example: "Can you pass me the salt?" The intention of V

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the utterance is "Please pass me the salt". Searle, J.R. believes to make reference from similar language forms will follow ten steps of Grice's reference. Most of the British and Americans believe even if they didn't have meals at restaurant, they will understand the sentence without any inference. Generally speaking, they will not ask if others have the ability to pass the salt, for the pragmatic phenomenon closely related to the occasion has been to a largely extent conventionalized, which is a typical regularized phenomenon of indirect speech act.

Irony can be divided into positive expression of the negative meaning and negative expression of the positive meaning.

3.2 Positive expression of the negative meaning

Positive expression of the negative meaning is usually conveyed by apparently positive diction aiming at expressing the utterance meaning in opposite to its literal meaning. The reason is that the positive face of the listener will be ruined provided that the listener is criticized, scorned or denounced straightforwardly. According to Brown and Levinson's Face-Saving Theory(FST) (1978: 63)，if people are to cooperate with each other in communication, they should be cooperative to save face for each other, everyone's face should be saved or reserved by their partner in communication. The best way is therefore to adopt polite language in communication so as to save face for oneself and maintain face for others. The faces that people take into consideration in communication are positive and negative. The so-called positive face refers to an expectation to attain others' acclaim and praise, and the so-called negative face means people are free to self-control and not to be intervened or hindered to lose their face by compromising to’ others. Positive expression of the negative meaning is the speaker takes the audience's face into consideration and apparently allows the positive face of the audience to be respected and maintained while the implied conversational implicature aims to criticize, denounce and complain.

A strong pragmatic effect is achieved through the striking contrast between sentence meaning and utterance meaning.

Example 1):

A: I haven't any small change about me.

B. Well, of course. I knew that gentlemen like you carry only large notes

The shop assistant aims to satirize the shabby customer with the words: how V

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can a person like you have large note? Apparently the shop assistant called him gentleman , he really mocked the customer as a beggar. The shop assistant does not say it straightforward for the sake of apparent politeness, which is to allow the listener to comprehend it by himself.

Example 2):

He's a fine friend. (Grice, 1975: 53)

This famous example was illustrated by Grice: A and B got on well with each other, but recently B exposed A's business secrets to A's the business opponent. The audience and A all learnt it, but A said: "He is a fine friend." In this way, Grice specified the context and enriched its contents, which consisted of background information and the subjective comprehension of the speaker and the audience. But how does irony occur? Grice holds that the two parties of the communication should all obey the cooperative principle, if the utterance violates the cooperative principle, then illocutionary implicature will occur, irony is produced. Here, "He's a fine friend" apparently violates the maxim of quality which requires people not to say what is known untrue, it is thus an irony. When the speaker deliberately floats a certain maxim of the cooperative principle, the conversational implicature may occur, reflecting the speaker's true purpose in communication. The adoption of irony violates the cooperative principle, but it helps produce conversational implicature and achieves the expected purpose of communication. In the example, the speaker says "He is a fine friend", which actually means he is a bad friend. The utterance aims to satire B's disobedience and let the audience infer the implied meaning.

Example 3):

A: John has just borrowed your car.

B: Well, I like that.

In response to A, B deliberately violates the maxim of quality, by saying "I like that" rather than saying "I hate that" directly, which is probably out of politeness or out of apparently respect for John. Possibly the speaker is reluctant to express his dissatisfaction with A right in front of him.

3.3 Negative expression of the positive meaning

Negative expression of the positive meaning refers to the words that are negative in the ear but its utterance meaning is the positive praise.

Example:

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The whole outfit could be purchased for about $5 and Gandhi's sins; at least his fleshly sins would make the same sort of appearance if placed all in one heap. A few cigarettes, a few mouthfuls of meat, a few annas pilfered in childhood from the maidservant, one outburst of temper-that is about the whole collection. (George Orwell: Reflections on Gandhi)

The trifle things such as smoking and eating meat are the common things of the ordinary people in the contemporary Indian society and cannot be called "crime". Moreover, Gandhi merely smokes a few cigarettes, eats a small piece of meat, and does nothing harmful to others. Such a man is really a rare sage, and if a person only does such things all his Iife, that would be too trifle in contrast to the good deeds he had done, and on the contrary it really proves that all Gandhi's life is full of good words and deeds. It is called negative expression of the positive meaning. Why don't the speaker praise him directly? It is because if the speaker had said it straightly, it would have harmed the audience's positive face, for from the perspective of the audience's psychology, if the speaker praises somebody, he is to speak from the standpoint of the person, and regards the person as his own party, thus if the speaker praises Gandhi, it is undoubtedly equal to praising himself and thus destroys something, namely, the audience's positive face. According to Leech's maxim of Modesty of The Politeness Principle: Minimize praise of self; Maximize dispraise of other; Maximize praise of others. Negative expression of the positive meaning is the speaker's superficial disgrace of himself or the people of their own party to achieve an effect of indirect praise by means of the context called negative politeness principle: In other words, the speaker maintains the face of the audience by disgracing himself or his own party

3.4 Pragmatic function of irony

When the Cooperative Principle is in conflict with the Politeness Principle, irony is the best way to settle the problem for it makes the speaker release his dissatisfaction or praise in a more courteous or modest way, which apparently goes against the Cooperative Principle but in fact accords with the Cooperative Principle by way of conversational implicature to achieve the intention of criticism or praise, which protects the face of the other side so as to avoid direct conflict. Undoubtedly the principle of irony is to obey the Cooperative Principle by means of the Politeness Principle, it is apparently friendly but offensive in essence, and it is a kind of V

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superficial politeness.

The three features characterize pragmatic function of irony:

The speaker has to endow the sentence with a certain meaning, marking the sentence with the speaker's subjective intention. Irony is the marked sentence structure. When we observe the application of a sentence, we find that any sentences with a certain construction can trigger a certain psychological reflection. Irony is the marked sentence structure and is not the non-marked sentence structure, which is mainly considered from the psychological reflection. Take Grice's example for instance, under common circumstances, when someone says: "He is a fine friend", we will take it for granted that he is a fine friend without thinking whether the sentence has other meanings or not while the person who says the irony: "he is a fine friend", the person actually wants the audience to know he is a worse friend. That is to say the user of the irony puts it into a specific context, marks it with the speaker's subjective intention, makes the irony become the marked sentence structure, which make the audience produce a psychological reflection different from that of others to achieve the communication purpose of the speaker.

The subjective purpose of the speaker should be based on some background information. Irony is a typical pragmatic rhetorical device on the basis of context that is indispensable to it. Pragmatic context consists of knowledge in language and knowledge out of language. Knowledge in language is divided into two parts. One part is that the interlocutors must adopt a language (English, for example) comprehensible to both parties or the comprehension of irony is out of the question. The other part is to learn the context of the communication of both parties. Without context, a sudden irony would make people feel confused. The knowledge out of language consists of three aspects. One is the background information, another is the situational knowledge and the third is the knowledge of interlocutors. Although the adoption of irony cannot depart from the background information and situational knowledge, what is most important is to rely on the knowledge of conversation participants. The degree that irony depends on the knowledge out of language is increasing from the order of the background information, situational knowledge to the knowledge of interlocutors. If we look at "He is a fine friend" in isolation, that is to say if we ignore the knowledge of interlocutors out of the sentence in the context, and understand merely from the background information, not only the knowledge of encyclopedia, but also cultural regulations in a certain culture, or conversational rules V

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in certain culture, we can only comprehend the sentence from the literal meaning and cannot get into the scope of utterance meaning. So far as irony is concerned, the knowledge of interlocutors is of great importance. Let's see situational knowledge which consists of four aspects: time of communication; place, topic of communication; the degree of formality of communication; the inter-relationship of the participants of the communication, all of which have a great impact on formation of the pragmatic meaning of irony. We have the condition for using irony if we have the time, place, theme and the inter-relationship of the participants of communication. We can hypothesize that the speaker is A and the audience is B, under the specific time and specific place, the theme of communication is concentrated on another person C which provides A with the condition of speaking irony to satire C. As for background information, it is even more comprehensible that it includes the knowledge of encyclopedia (common sense), social regulation of specific culture, and conversational rules in certain culture that naturally regulate the adoption of irony but do not necessarily play a crucial role specifically under a certain context of irony. Because its influence on irony is presupposed by a general influence on communicative utterance, it is a large background but is not necessarily closely related to irony. The most important factor that decides whether the utterance meaning of irony comprehensible or not in communication is the inter-knowledge of A and B. that is to say, B must be aware that C has done something that is harmful to A, moreover A must also be aware that B has learnt the whole thing. Anyhow the context of irony must be complete. In this context when A says: "he is a fine friend", B can infer the sentence is an irony by means of context that A really means he is a bad friend. The reason why A employs the irony is he expects to better express his indignation in his mind and arouses As full attention and response through the sentence which contains some implicature. In addition, A who is mentioned above, namely, the speaker, is usually one person, but B and C are not necessarily the same people. A writer or a politician can usually act on A's role, thus in the articles of the writer or the lectures of the politician, when irony is adopted, the role of reader B or the audience will be numerous, but anyhow they must learn what C is like or how is C as much as A, that is to say, not until the principles of pragmatic context is satisfied, can the communication of irony be successful.

The audience should play a good role in irony. Having taken too much consideration for the utterance meaning of the speaker, people's attention is mainly V

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paid to the intention of the speaker in the pragmatic study of irony. Yet, in the communication of irony what is crucial to decide whether the communication is successful or not is based on the role of the audience. In what role will the audience play? First, he should have the relative knowledge of context. Secondly, he should comprehend the intention of the speaker. Thirdly, he should respond to what the speaker said, namely, he should have a certain sense of humor, and can appreciate the irony that the speaker had said. For example: if C has done something foolish, the speaker A said: "C is very clever" or "C is a genius!" All the effects of the irony can be counted successful only when B has responded to the irony. B must be aware of C's condition, understand the meaning of A's words and appreciate the ironical meaning of "clever" and "genius" at here. In sum, if the audience does not have the conditions listed above, the communication of irony is not successful.

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IV Chapter Four Oxymoron

In practical translation, green hands have never shown enough errors resulting from insufficient consideration of the different thinking modes between the English and the Chinese. Such translations are usually literally and grammatically flawless, and sometimes read native, yet genuine native speakers of English will feel awkward in reading such translation and yet stay at loss where the problem lies. Such problems can be categorized into five: stubborn rendering, misleading rendering, awkward transferring, wordy diction and inaccurate translation in sequential ranks in light of degree of inaccuracy.

4.1 Definition of oxymoron

Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory expressions are juxtaposed for witty or striking effect. As we know, some words have opposites (or antonyms), e.g. go-stop, single-married, bitter-sweet and proud humble. These opposites are mutually exclusive. They are called absolute opposites. But there are more opposites whose opposition is not so absolute as in the above. "Old", for instance, is not the absolute opposite of "young". Someone who is thirty is "young" when compared with someone of eighty, but he is "old" when compared with someone of eighteen. So in a certain context, "old" and "young" are comparative opposites of one another. ""

Sometimes, for some purposes, we may need to exploit the combination of the opposites. In Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Romeo responds to the feud between his family and Juliet's with contradictions:

Romeo: Why, then,

O brawling love!

O loving hate!

O any thing, of nothing first create,

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking sleep, which is not what it is!

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

Remeo's speech brings together contradictions一“lightness" that is "heavy", "health" that is "sick", "sleep" that is "waking". One purpose the speech might have within the play is to draw attention to the irony that love between family members can bring about fighting and bloodshed later in the play. The love between Romeo and V

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Juliet will bring them great joy and great sorrow. The combination of contradictory words or images is a well-established figure of speech一oxymoron.

Oxymoron, like paradox or antithesis, shows the complexity of a situation where two apparently opposite things are simultaneously true, either literally or imaginatively, for example, "darkness visible", "cheerful pessimist", "wise fool", "tender cruelty", "freezing fire" and "orderly chaos".

4.2 Production of the rhetorical effect of oxymoron

Why does the rhetorical device that is contradictory in meaning produce particular rhetorical effect? It is well acknowledged that rhetoric should be based on logic; Rhetoric however cannot be equal to logic. They have their own peculiar regularity. Apparently oxymoron has the inclination to go against the regularity of logic. Yet people can grasp the deeper information by inference through the inflection of what goes against the logic and human's high degree of imagination. Oxymoron should preferably be our own unique. We should not use others' unless it is arelatively obvious formulation (like "expensive economy"), of which anyone might think. Also, oxymoron is most effective when the terms are not common opposites. So instead of "a low high point", we might try "depressed apex" or something. Oxymoron combines the two antonyms which are apparently contradictory in meaning together, the two words containing the opposite meaning match by the contrast between referential meaning and rhetorical meaning to go through the seemingly contradiction between words and achieves unity in the deep sense. The referential meaning and the rhetorical meaning of vocabulary in context make the contradictory meaning possible. It is illogical to see it from sentence meaning, but it doesn't influence people's comprehension of its deep connotation. The reason for it lies in the context and the tight logic of sentence itself that provide reasonable meaning for comprehension and produce unexpected pragmatic meaning. It is the illogical semantic meaning that makes the reader to think it over and causes an unexpected effect to stimulate the mind and paves the way for deeper comprehension of the utterance meaning. Having carefully thought about the seemingly contradictory language expression, the reader will find the rhetorical device is not illogical; The contradiction however produces an effect of shock in context.

The two opposite aspects that oxymoron discloses may exist in primary V

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secondary, or in other,words, the relationship of being the related contrast toother. For example: dear enemy, true lie, sweet sorrow, clever fool. As the two parties

of the contradiction, dear, true, sweet and clever are the subjective feeling of people and act as an erect of contrast. Enemy, lie, sorrow and fool are the objective facts. The latter are foiled through the foil of the former and the striking contrast of meaning between the two parties.

4.3 Pragmatic function of oxymoron

Oxymoron, like paradox or antithesis, shows the complexity of a situation where two apparently opposite things are simultaneously true, either literally or imaginatively, for example, "darkness visible", "cheerful pessimist‖, ―wise fool""tender cruelty‖，"freezing fire" and "orderly chaos".

1) There was an audible stillness, in which the common voice sounded strange. (Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie)

2) The mother is undergoing the joyful pain, and painful joy of childbirth The two examples above are oxymoron, the combination of one semantic pole with another semantic pole is explicit. The combination of the two contradictory or contrasting words discloses the relationship of things that is both contradictory and integral, producing an effect of attraction, deep, exaggeration, humor, emphasis and comparison.

3) Here is a nice mess.

4) You are as eloquent as an oyster.

5) Your friends asked me to lend him the nice little sum of $100, 00.

Examples 3) to 5) are ironies, the combination of the two semantic poles are implicit in them, in this sense we can call irony as implicit oxymoron and oxymoron as explicit irony.

A good oxymoron, with its conflicting images or ideas, can bring out the hidden truth or subtle significance in a most impressive, emphatic and concise way. For example,

1) The parental discipline can be described as cruel kindness.

For the good of the children, parents have to be strict with them.

2) New York has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the naughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw (O Henry)

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In the writer's opinion, all those millionaires, great men, beggars, beauties, skyscrapers and pleasures in New York are despicable and abominably. The conveys the contradictions between the apparently things and people he see: "millionaires, great men, beggars, beauties, skyscrapers, pleasures" and his ehension of them in essence: "poorest, littlest, haughtiest, plainest, lowest, dolefulest" with brief and poignant words. This city holds the millionaires with the emptiest hearts, the great men who are most ignoble, the proudest beggar, the beauties are most looked down upon, the dirtiest skyscraper and the pleasures which made people feel sad most.

Oxymoron is useful when things have gone contrary to expectation, belief, desire or assertion, or when our position is opposite to another's which we are discussing. The figure used on certain occasion may produce an ironic contrast, which shows how something has been misunderstood or mislabeled:

3) Senator Rosebud calls this a useless plan; if so, it is the most helpful useless plan we have ever enacted.

4) The cost-saving program became an expensive economy.

Oxymoron can disclose the ambivalence of the character and unite the content with the form together, for example, Rovena…requested Rebecca to ride by her side, "it were not fit I should do so," answered Rebecca, with proud humility," where my society might be held a disgrace to my protectress (Walter Scott: Ivanhoe). Rebecca was the daughter of a Jews merchant and was discriminated with inferior born. She had taken care of Ivanhoe out of sympathy and was put into prison by the Norman nobles on her way back. Rovena was the descendant of the Saxon royals. Ivanhoe's father was her custody and was also put into prison by Norman nobles on his way back. Robecca felt inferior to Rovena for her low birth. Yet, a Jewish woman like her could possibly be invited and accompanied by a descendent of Saxon royals, a sense of pride rose from her heart, which was mixed with inferiority complex and formed the ambivalent psychology of Rebecca. The author adopted the oxymoron combining "proud" and "humility‖，and conveyed the ambivalence vividly.

Oxymoron has the striking contrast and strengthens the effect of expression. For example, "How amused everyone would be if they knew what really happened, "said Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball."

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly."

"How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said Miss Mebbin, with her V

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disagreeably pleasant laugh. In order to satisfy her vanity, Mrs. Packletise determined to shoot a tiger and get the hide. In the ball, she exhibited the hide that was claimed to have been shot by herself, however Miss. Mebbin found it was a goat that Mrs. Packletise actually shot rather than a tiger, and the tiger was frightened to death because of the exhaustion of the heart. After the ball, Miss Mebbin took advantage of the vanity of Mrs. Packletise to blackmail her so as to achieve her personal purpose. In this dialogue the author adopted oxymoron to combine "disagreeably" and "pleasant" together to form the striking contrast of the meaning. The pleasant laugher of Miss. Mebbin had a sense of satire as to Mrs. Packletide, which foiled the disgust feeling of Mrs. Packletise to the laugher while the disgusting emotion foreshawlowed the complacency of Miss. Mebbin. The contrast and match between the meaning deeply disclosed the psychological activity of the characters, and strengthened the force of expression.

Oxymoron exposes the discrepancy of the outer expression and inner nature, and produces an effect of satire, for example: Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. (Alexander Pope: Atticus)

Pope made Addison as the object of satire. Addison had a certain political authority, and used to be Pope's close friend. Out of different political beliefs, their relationship later became estranged. Addison was aware that Pope was working on the translation of the Epic of Homer, he helped others to publish another translation version of Epic of Homer, and sent the person to attack Pope in secret. Here Pope adopted oxymoron to deeply disclose the nature of Addison, and scorned his hypocrisy effectively.

To sum up oxymoron breaks through the contradictory of the outer information through the deeper semantic relation between words and unifies both the content and form and in the meanwhile satires the characteristic of the discrepancy between the outside and inside. With the ambivalence disclosed, language possesses the striking contrast.

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V Chapter Five Personification

5.1 Definition of personification

Personification is a figure of speech, which attributes human characteristics tc impersonal things, such as animals, inanimate objects, or abstractions. For example, it the long march across public speaking history, style has walked a road, which rise; and falls between high peaks of precision and deep valleys of neglect. Unfortunately in contemporary American speaking, style has been forced to build her home in theb valley-ignored, if not forgotten. (Carl Wayne Hensley)

Personification can be divided into the following types:

5.1.1Animals and plants

5.1.1.1 Flowers peeped out from amongst the leaves. (Charlotte Bronte)

5.1.1.2 The buffalo comes down to the bank and subsides with a groan of satisfaction into the mud. (Alan Moorhead)

5.1.2 Inanimate objects

5.1.2.1 The gentle breeze caressed my cheeks and soothed my anger.

5.1.2.2Overhead the stars winked mischievously at us.

5.1.3Abstract idea

5.1.3.1 Life has cheated her.

5.1.3.2Actions speak louder than words.

5.1.3.3 In November a cold, unseen stranger, the doctor called Pneumonia stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. (O. Henry)

5.1.4 Nouns of time and place used as subjects followed by such verbs as see, find, notice, discover, witness, take, etc.

5.1.4.1 The fifth century saw the end of the Roman Empire in the West.

5.1.4.2 This corner has witnessed many traffic accidents.

5.2 Production of the rhetorical effect of personification

When personification occurs in ordinary speech, we are often hardly aware of it as in idioms and proverbs: Time flies, the hand of a clock, or the leg of a table. Ships, planes and countries are also regularly personified: at least they co-occur with the pronoun "she". Personification imparts other animate or inanimate things in nature with the behavior, quality, feeling and attitude that originally belong to human being, and makes them possess the quality of human being. The purpose that people choose V

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this rhetorical device is to let the thing, object and thought become the person equal to the speaker, get human thinking so that the abstract conception is replaced by a concrete human behavior and produce a natural and vivid effect. Moreover, it is out of the necessity of feeling that people choose this figure of speech. Affection or colorful feeling expressed by language belongs merely to human being. When people need to release their feeling, what they saw and meet all had better become human being, as a result of it, their feelings can be reasonably released and get logical correspondence and comprehension.

E.g., The soft breeze kissed my face. "Kiss" belongs to the human's behavior, and by virtue of personification, this behavior is transferred to inanimate things "breeze", this kind of transformation makes the inanimate thing own the color of animate one. Why can this rhetorical device produce this vivid effect lies in human's behavior that shares certain common features with inanimate things movements, sometime it is the common feature of extension. This kind of common feature refers to an aspect of denotative meaning. The existence of personification relies on the common feature in most circumstances. Take this one for example; no matter kiss or blow, they share the common features of denotative meaning in the sentence for both contain the meaning of in touch with the face.

To study personification further, we must note on the one hand the speaker use personification to express his meaning in a straightforward manner, and on the other hand, he wants to take the audience or the reader's demand into consideration, he wants the audience to comprehend his words. From the perspective of pragmatics, the speaker guarantees the success of communication by adopting personification deliberately.

5.3 Pragmatic function of personification

Personification is a figure of speech that attributes human qualities to animals, or gives life or personality to inanimate objects or abstract ideas. The primitive people often treated such abstractions as truth as if they were sentient beings. Today personification is likely to be indirect, seldom pretending to address the personified thing, yet giving it human capacities.―The habit of personification perhaps grew out of a tendency for humans to see all things as comparable to themselves, or perhaps out of a psychological need for company, so that the rocks and trees, doors and chairs, hopes and fears became fellow creatures". In actuality, personification is, too, a thinking V

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mode.

Personification is usually employed to add vividness to expression. It is particularly associated with literary, especially poetic language. Writers, especially poets, like to use personification. For example, in the opening line to a sixteenth-century sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney,

1) With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies.

The poet addresses the moon as if it were a person who is sad and is slowly climbing stairs. Another poet, Robert Browning, describes the waves as a person that was startled and leapt from his sleep:

The gray sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Personification, also known as "anthropomorphism", occurs very frequently in children's books, where trains and animals have personalities and can talk.

For example, 2) On a cold, frosty day an Ant was dragging out some of the corn, which he had laid up in the summertime, to dry it. A Grasshopper, half perished with hunger, besought the Ant to give him a morsel of it to preserve his life. "What were you doing." said the Ant. "this last summer?" "Oh." said the Grasshopper. "I was not idle, I kept singing all the summer long", said the Ant, laughing and shutting up his granary, "Since you could sing all summer, you may dance all winter."

Winter finds out what summer lays by. (The Fables of Aesop).

Personification is often used in proverbs. For example,

Necessity knows no law.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

A great ship asks deep water.

Lies have short legs.

Time is the best healer.

Justice has long arms.

By adopting the device, we may see that the proverbs listed above are endowed with the vivid images that impressed in people's mind.

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VI Chapter Six Metaphor

6.1 Definition of metaphor

The word "metaphor" derives from the Greek word "metaphors", which means

transference, carrying over". It is a very common figure of speech in English. Metaphor uses words to indicate something different from their literal meaning一one thing is described in terms of another so as to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claim in Metaphor We Live By,―metaphor is

pervasive in everyday life,-not just in language but in thought and action." They point out, "Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." They show ample evidence to prove that metaphors partially structure our everyday concepts. The following are a few examples:

Everyday concept: Ideas are food.

Literal language:

What he said left a bad taste in my mouth.

All this thesis has in it are raw facts, half-baked ideas, and warmed-over theories.

There are too many facts

for me to digest them all.

That argument smells fishy.

This is the meaty part of the thesis.

Our preference for the concrete and the particular is deeply rooted in the human

mind. Evidently, metaphor is often used to add forcefulness. Forcefulness has close relation to sharpness and sharpness comes from detailed description, and detailed description has to resort to concrete words and expressions. Therefore, metaphor often becomes our last resource in conveving our thought.

According to the structure, metaphor can be divided into two categories: visible

metaphors and invisible metaphors. In the visible metaphor, both the primary term and the secondary term are present in the sentence. It takes the form of "x is y", as in the example blow:

You are my sunshine.

You are a pain in the neck

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He is the apple of her eye.

She was my worst nightmare.

The house will be paradise.

That pudding was an absolute dream.

1The invisible metaphor refers to either of the following two types.

1) The primary term (tenor) is present, but the secondary term (vehicle) is not-but it is hinted at by other words (in many cases by the verb or verbs). For example, Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. (Francis Bacon)

In the sentence, the secondary term "food" does not appear literally, but it is suggestec by the verbs "tasted", "swallowed", "chewed" and "digested".

2) The doctor was an affable local practitioner with white hair... "We all want a little patching and repairing…‖(Kipling)

Human beings are liable to illness the way clothes easily get caught; human beings need medical care the way the clothes need patching and repairing. In this sense, human beihgs can be compared to clothes. It is just natural for the writer to replace "clothes" with "we" (human being). In the sentence, "patching" and "repairing hint at the secondary term一(clothes).

2. The secondary term is present in the sentence but the primary term is not. Then primary term is suggested by the secondary term. This kind of metaphor leaves room for the reader's imagination. For example, The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New York broker... (O. Henry)

The primary term "Man" is not present, but it is suggested by the secondary term "machine". "Man" is replaced by "machine" because the man at the desk performed his duty mechanically. In the writer's mind the man was no longer a man but a machine.

Like similes, metaphors can also be used for three purposes: description illumination and illustration.

1) Description

(1) The hallway was zebra striped with darkness and moonlight. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr) A description of the alternate bands of light and shade in the hall, like a zebra's stripes.

(2) A perfect fountain of bubbling notes shook from the barrel organ, round, V

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bright notes, carelessly scattered. (Katherine Mansfield)

The full cheery notes of the barrel organ are likened here to the cheery sound of water from a fountain, bubbling out or falling in a spray.

2)Illumination

(1) The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the bloody of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure (Thomas Jefferson)

Liberty needs bloodshed as the tree needs manure. Without manure, the tree will not grow; without bloodshed, liberty cannot be achieved or defended. As we can compare liberty to a tree, we can compare bloodshed to manure. The sentence suggests that the blood of the defenders as well as the oppressors nourishes liberty. The metaphor illuminates that the bloodshed is necessary for liberty.)

3) Illustration

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! You hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. (Mathew Arnold)

In this poem, the poet compares the human being's vicissitudes to the ebb and flow of the tides. In his mind, human life is a struggle一having its progress and setbacks一like the movement of the waves that dash themselves against the cliffs and then recede; and then begin all over again.

6.2 Metaphor and Simile

Simile is an explicit comparison between two different things which are similar V

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in one respect, though quite unlike in actuality. A simile is usually made up of three parts: a tenor, the thing described; a vehicle, the thing compared to; a connective word (esp. a function word), which is used to connect the tenor and the vehicle and show the relationship of comparison, such as like, as, as if, as though, etc. A metaphor, like a simile, also makes a comparison between two things that are essentially different from each other yet are similar in a certain respect. But unlike simile, this comparison is only implied rather than explicitly expressed. When we say: "Life is like a journey", it is a simile. But if we say: "Life is a journey", it is a case of metaphor. LA. Richards analyzed metaphor into two terms, in the Meaning of Meaning: the expressed term一 vehicle, and the unexpressed, but intended, term一tenor. Thus in "Life is a journey", "journey" is the vehicle and the intended term "life" is the tenor. No function words are used in metaphor

Metaphor and simile share quite a few common qualities. Both simile and metaphor involve the comparison between two unlike elements. As metaphor is closely related to simile, it is sometimes referred to as a condensed or implied simile. But metaphor and simile differ from each other in various ways. For example, in simile, the comparison is explicit while in metaphor the comparison is implied. Unlike similes, which are mainly confined to nouns only, metaphors involve nouns, verbs, adjectives, attributive or adverbial modifiers. Therefore, metaphors require greater ability on the part of the reader to make out the hidden association or insight. Metaphors are generallv more complicated and much more involved than similecs.

6.3 Production of the rhetorical effect of metaphor

There is a long and respectable problem in tradition that views metaphor as a semantic process and not a pragmatics at all. Indeed the two traditional theories whose central tenets are laid out in the following are both usually construed as semantic theories of metaphor. The comparison theory: Metaphors are similes with suppressed or deleted predications of similarity. Thus lago is an eel is semantically equivalent to lago is like an eel; The interaction theory: Metaphors are special uses of linguistic expressions where one "metaphorical" expression (or focus) is embedded in another "literal" expression (or frame), such that the meaning of the focus interacts with and changes the meaning of the frame, and vice versa. To establish the need for a pragmatic approach to metaphor, we shall need to show, how such semantic V

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approaches fail to yield adequate accounts of the phenomena. To see how such semantic theories of metaphor can be given some plausibility, we will take a particular instantiation of each and examine its achievements and shortcomings. One particular version of the interaction theory can be formalized using the framework of semantic features as utilized by, for example, componential analysts. On such a semantic theory, the meanings of lexical items are specified by a set of features, each of which is an atomic concept or irreducible semantic prime drawn from a lager but restricted set, the members of the latter being in principle sufficient to jointly define all the complex senses of actually occurring lexical items. The main attraction of such theories is that they attempt to bring within the fold of standard semantics interpretive processes like metaphor that are not always clearly distinct form ordinary processes of language understanding. Consider the range of examples in below: where does literal interpretation cease and metaphorical interpretation take over?

Harriet came hurriedly down the stairs

Harriet ran down the stairs

Harriet rushed down the stairs

Harriet hustled down the stairs.

Harriet shot down the stairs.

Harriet whistled down the stairs.

Some have claimed in fact that natural language semantics has an inbuilt "elasticity" that allows such interaction between the senses of words to take place in standard processes of semantic interpretation, and not just in metaphors. However, there are numerous problems for any such account of metaphor, of which a few will suffice here. First, it seems fairly clear that the supposed readings of metaphors thus provided are not good paraphrases: the feature-mapping process is both too limited and too determinate to capture the metaphorical force of the expressions. Secondly, and relatedly, many aspects of that force have more to do with the contingent, factual (real-world) attributes of the referents of the metaphorical focus than with the semantic features that can be claimed to express its meaning. For example, if I say "Iago is an V

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eel" I may effectively convey that Iago is slimy, eats offal (and thu: perhaps, metaphorically at second remove, stoops to dirty deeds), and has the ability to wriggle off hooks (and thus out of difficult situations). But none of these associations is a semantic feature by any reasonable stretch of theory or imagination an unslimy, non-offal-eating, non-wriggling eel would still be an eel. An important part of the force of any metaphor thus seems to involve what might be called the "connotational penumbra" of the expressions involved, the incidental rather than the defining characteristics of words, and knowledge of the factual properties of referents and hence knowledge of the world in general. All of these matters are beyond the scope of a semantic theory, as generally understood within linguistics. A final and crucial argument against the feature-transfer variety of semantic theories of metaphor is that there are metaphors, intuitively part and parcel of the same phenomenon, which do not involve the initial semantic anomaly within the sentence required to trigger the "construal rules"(rules for feature-transfer). Suppose, for example, playing chess, I say to my opponent: "Your defence is an impregnable castle" This may be understood in a number of ways: literally, providing the defence in question is constituted by a rook; or metaphorically if the defensive position is in general impregnable; or, interestingly, both at example itself. Indeed once. But in no case is there any semantic anomaly in the metaphors are closely linked to parables and proverbs. If I say "A stitch in time saves nine" I generally mean it to apply metaphorically to the situation in hand. Whatever explains the understanding of these sorts of utterances is likely to explain metaphor, and it will not be a semantic theory however construed. We turn now to the so-called comparison theory of metaphor. The essential claim is that metaphors are derived from explicit similes. Thus one could hold that Happiness is sunshine is equivalent to Happiness is like sunshine One should note that there are various possible linguistic positions here: one could maintain that the former sentence shares the underlying syntactic structure of the latter one, or alternatively, whatever the underlying structure of the former, that the former sentence shares the semantic interpretation of the latter one. In any case, by relating the former and the latter the claim can be made that the problem of understanding metaphors is not really distinct from the problem of understanding some specific kinds of "literal" uses of language, namely those in similes. There are enough difficulties with any view that claims that metaphors are syntactically or semantically implicit similes to make that theoretical path quite attractive. We have found substantial problems for both of the two main semantic approaches to metaphor, V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

and it is reasonable to see what a pragmatic approach to metaphor, and it is reasonable to see what a pragmatic approach to metaphor has to offer in contrast. A pragmatic approach will be based on the assumption that the metaphorical content of utterances will not be derived by principles of semantic interpretation; rather the semantics will just provide a characterization of the literal meaning or conventional content of the expressions involved, and from this, together with details of the context, the pragmatics will have to provide the metaphorical interpretation. There have been many objections to a move of this sort on the grounds that a line is drawn between "literal" and "figurative" usages of linguistic expressions, and that consequently poetry and other highly valued uses of language find themselves treated as somehow bizarre or different from the rest of language usage. The objections are misplaced: all that is being suggested is that the full meaning of most of the sentences we utter is best captured by a technical division of labor between a semantic component and a pragmatic one. To claim that metaphor is in part pragmatic in nature is not to denigrate or isolate it, but merely to place it firmly among the other more straightforward usages of language. As an initial step we may revert to Grice's suggestion that metaphors are exploitations or floutings of the maxim of Quality. However this is not always true. So we shall have to say rather that metaphors taken literally either violate the maxim of Quality or are conversationally inadequate in other ways, especially with reference to the maxim of Relevance. A second problem with Grice's suggestion that then immediately emerges is that such a characterization of itself offers little insight into the nature of metaphor. All it does is offer us a partial criterion for the recognition of metaphor一only partial because all the other kinds of implicature due to maxim exploitation share the same property of being generated by an overt flouting of a conversational maxim一and how we get from the recognition to the interpretation remains entirely unclear. It seems that more concrete suggestions for a pragmatic theory of metaphor simply do not exist. Sperber&Wilson, experiencing the same sort of difficulties with other figures of speech, conclude that the theory of implicature does little to explain how certain utterances are decoded, and indeed that the problems lie largely beyond pragmatics in an essentially psychological theory of rhetoric. This is, however, to undervalue the role the maxims play in the location and recognition of tropes, and in the selection of interpretations relevant to the context. It may be conceded, though, that the theory of implicature alone cannot produce or predict such interpretations. One V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

important consideration with respect to metaphor is that it is, perhaps too much to ask of a pragmatic theory that it should actually give us an account of what is clearly a perfectly general and crucial psychological capacity that operates in many domains of human life, namely the ability to think analogically. Such an ability is basic not only to language usage but also to model-building of all sorts, from map-making to the construction of theories and metaphors, frozen and unfrozen, are perhaps best though of as the impingement of this sort of reasoning on the pragmatics of natural language. Taking such a view, there is much in the existing literature on metaphor that could be drawn upon to give an account of metaphor. Crucial, for example, seems to be the way in which what is involved in metaphor is the mapping of one whole cognitive domain into another, allowing the tracing out of multiple correspondences. It happens, as Black (1962, 1979) has argued, that a single metaphor reverberates through two entire conceptual fields, The weakness of any paraphrase a metaphor is much more than any mere omission of the literal semantic content the term used metaphorically; Such a paraphrase is talk within a single domain, while a metaphor links two domains in potentially elaborate parallelisms of indefinite depth. Sperber&Wilson argue that the interpretations of tropes are fundamentally non-propositional, and one way of construing this clim is precisely in terms of such domain correspondence. The correspondence theory helps explain why good metaphors usually substitute `concrete' terms for (metaphorically implied) `abstract' ones一as made clear by a comparison of the relative success of the following two metaphors: Love is a flame; a flame is love. For if a metaphor is like a model, or a map, or an analogue, of a domain, then just like models, maps and analogues in general, if they are to be useful and successful, metaphors had better be simpler, idealized, more easily grasped than the complex domains that they model. The correspondence theory also helps to explain the basis for other failed metaphors. For example, Morgan points out that Miller's simile schema for nominal metaphors should allow John is my father to be used as a metaphor just in case my father (who is not called John) is a machinist, to convey that John is also a machinist. The account would proceed in terms of the failure of the attempted metaphor to set up any proper correspondence between the two domains of which father and machinists are parts: not just any domain is a possible model for any other. The correspondence theory of metaphors therefore has the virtue of accounting for various well-known properties of metaphors: the "non-propositional" nature, or relative V

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

indeterminacy of a metaphor's import, the tendency for the substitution of concrete for abstract terms, and the different degrees to which metaphors can be successful. In summary, consider the broad outlines of a pragmatic account of metaphor. First, we need an account of how any trope or non-literal use of language is recognized; and Grice's maxims may be expected to play a central role. Then how metaphors are distinguished from other tropes, and here the search for a possible corresponding domain, relevant to the conversation in hand, may be a crucial element; another

heuristic may be the absence of all the features associated with other tropes like irony. Once recognized, the interpretation of metaphor must rely on features of our general

ability to reason analogically, If we had an account of this very general cognitive ability, we might expect it to apply directly to the interpretation of linguistic expressions used metaphorically. It is possible, though there is no real evidence for it, that such

processing would involve the conversion of metaphors into the complex simile form proposed by Miller. In any event it could be claimed that linguistic pragmatics alone should not be expected to provide such a general theory of analogy, without

considerable help from psychological theory. If there is to be a division of labor the psychologists' task might be to provide the general theory of analogy, while the

pragmaticists' job should be to locate the kinds of utterances that are subject to such interpretation, ide an account of how they are recognized and constructed and of the conditions under which they are used.

Metaphor is a comparison, which compares one thing to anther thing. Compared with simile, in this rhetorical device the tenor and the vehicle are more closely. In simile the tenor and the vehicle must appear in the sentence at the same time while in metaphor there are three circumstances: appearing in the sentence at the same time; only the vehicle without the tenor or the tenor without the vehicle. Metaphor is often called the condensed simile. Metaphor and simile are the same in the following two points: 1). Comparison must be made in two different things 2). Two different things are similar in one point but not in other points. For example: John and lion are of different kinds, if we say: "John is a lion". The two things are similar in one point: only courage can be analogized. In this metaphor, the tenor and vehicle are present at the same time. Let's see another two examples

1) The sunshine of life is made up of very little beams.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

2) Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.

In example 1, only the vehicle sunshine of life appears in the sentence, the tenor happiness is implied in the vehicle. The tenor and the vehicle have one similarity and are compared at this point from the aspect of their deeper sense. Comparisons including metaphor should be called transformation. At the level of literal meaning it is the transformation of sense; from the perspective of lexicon it is the transformation of words. Metaphor is transferred in a way that the literal sense is transferred to the figurative sense. For example:

英语修辞格的语用学分析

Non-figurative sense: John is transferred to figurative sense lion, the symbol "lion"

replaced the symbol "John". As to why people transfer the sense and replace the words, according to Goong: "We should often be at a loss how to describe a notion, were we not at liberty to employ in a metaphorical sense the name of anything sufficiently

resembling it"According to Leech "The jump from literal to figurative meaning or vice versa occurs at a point where literal interpretation is baffled, usually by a violation of selection restrictions.‖ The jump from the non-figurative sense to the figurative sense is usually the limitation of choice, the expression of words is baffled, other way of

expression is chosen, comparisons including metaphor thus occurred.

Metaphor is a phenomenon of utterance. It only occurs in the use of language.Metaphor must be decided from a certain context. In terms of the characteristics of metaphor, Black raised two conceptions: focus and frame, who holds that metaphor occurs in sentence. Metaphor is formed only when some words in a sentence are used as metaphor and other parts are comprehended from the literal meaning. The words or phrases comprehended as metaphor are called focus and the other parts comprehended from the literal sense is called frame. Therefore metaphor is a pragmatic phenomenon where the words are focus and context is frame. And context is the basis on which metaphor is determined and comprehended. When the literal meaning

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

cannot be established, metaphor is recognized and properly comprehended through the conversion of the reference of the subjects and words, only in a given context, a kind of things is described as another kind of things, is metaphor formed. Metaphor is a comprehension in accordance with the context when the literal meaning of the language adopted conflicts with the context. The comprehension of metaphor and the context is to try to search for relevance; in the examples above, there are many degrees of courage, the aim of the speaker is to express a metaphor: to be courageous like a lion. The effects of the context are achieved through the inference of the audience.

6.4 Pragmatic function of metaphor

A metaphor, like simile, can draw attention to the similarity between two unlike

things, so that the reader can get an immediate image of straightness, thinness, length, sharpness, and give the force of concrete reality to abstract things. A metaphorical

expression can certainly help the reader to create a vivid picture in his mind, and make the description more effective. Now, compare the following two versions:

a. Her words were very bitter and made him uncomfortable.

b. Her words stabbed at his heart.

Apparently, the second version in which metaphor is used is more effective than the first one in literal expression.

In reality, metaphor is not only used in our language, but also used in our thinking. It is regarded as a thinking mode, a cognitive means for human being, for one's cognitive process is always developing from the concrete to the abstract, from a well-known cognitive domain to an unknown domain. In practice people usually secure a similar comparison by using a well-known cognitive domain in our thinking. So metaphor is considered to be a "rational bridge". In other words, people use one concept that they are familiar with to produce (or describe, or comprehend) another concept that they are not familiar with. For example, we comprehend "data bank" by "bank", we perceive "microwave" by "wave", and we understand "internet" by "net". Here we can say, undoubtedly, that metaphor is a very effective way whereby we recognize the new world.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

In strict scientific writing, metaphor is seldom employed; in less strict scientific writing, metaphors become auxiliary and optional. In most of what we read and hear一 public speeches, articles on international affairs, letters to friends, expressions of opinion, fiction, poetry, drama, conversation to persuade and convince, essays in which we invite other people to share our experiences and evaluations of life一in nearly everything that we write and speak, metaphor is a primary device of expression. On many occasions, metaphor is not only the most compact and vigorous way of saying a thing but also the only way in which the particular thing can be said at all. For example, in the sentence that follows, Helen Keller describes what tactile sensation means to a person who has been blind and deaf since early childhood: The immovable rock, with its juts and warped surface, bends beneath my fingers into all manner of grooves and hollows. The rock, of course, does not literally bend. But under her sensitive fingers, the rock seems to respond to her touch. Here, what is being described seems not to be the fumbling of a blind person but a live world. As readers, we are let into Helen Keller's world, a world of exciting qualities that most of us do not know at all. Since the writer's world does not exist in our experience and cannot be pointed to, metaphor, therefore, is the only means by which the writers' world may be made known to us.

Metaphor is a basic instrument of poetry. But, as we had already seen, it is by no

means confined to poetry. Metaphor is one of the most important resources for the prose writer. It is often used to intimate a mood, to imply the shading of an attitude, and most of all, to stimulate and involve the imagination of the audience.

Metaphor can fill in the vacancy of lexicon. Metaphor is the important way of

language evolution and development, in the process of creating new words and terms, people often deliberately seek for the similar words which emphasize the similarity between the new context and the old one, namely, to adopt a metaphor. By way of

metaphor people can talk about the fresh unnamed thing with given words, meanwhile through metaphor people can express the minute difference between things and reflect the nature and characteristics of things more vividly, the process of which provides the possibility of the production of polysemant. If the corresponding lexicon that can express a certain concept is vacant in people's daily life, people tend to borrow words for

temporary use from the given lexicon that can describe the identical shape or function.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

For example: crane and mouse in English that are used to represent the machine that can lift the heavy things and the instrument used by hand on computer.

Metaphor can strengthen the acuteness and vividness of expression. Sometimes the given words in language cannot express a certain concept and phenomenon specifically, people can simply adopt certain coinage of words to make up for the insufficiency, as a result of which, metaphor is produced. For example: He put his face in the water and half- gulped and half-ate it. Sometimes, people often borrow a more familiar or direct experienced feeling to convey a feeling belonging to another experienced field more specifically and vividly. For example: "My cry for help was the cry of the rat when a terrier shakes it."

Metaphor is the primary way of change of language. We can safely say, metaphor is the guidance of the evolution of language, and the cutting edge of language. It is always changing all the time and is closely followed by convention. As time goes by, some metaphors become dead metaphors and become a part of the meanings of words or homonyms and polysemant.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

Conclusion

Through the analysis of the five common English figures of speech from the perspective of pragmatics in the thesis, the production of their rhetorical effects is basically made clear. And we can briefly summarize the application of those rhetorical devices on the more appropriate occasion. First, Hyperbole is frequently used in colloquial speech and fictitious writings, but is almost never used in scientific texts where precision of expression is necessary. The exaggeration words of hyperbole must be based on a certain fact. It is fairly common and is used to heighten the effect of whatever-we wish to say, to convey intensity of feeling, to emphasize a point, to create humor, or to achieve some similar effect. When the Cooperative Principle is in conflict with the Politeness Principle, irony is the best way to settle the problem for it makes the speaker release his dissatisfaction or praise in a more courteous or modest way, which apparently goes against the Cooperative Principle but in fact accords with the Cooperative Principle by way of conversational implicature to achieve the intention of criticism or praise, which protects the face of the other side so as to avoid direct conflict. Oxymoron can disclose the ambivalence of the character and unite the content with the form together. Oxymoron exposes the discrepancy of the outer expression and inner nature, and produces an effect of satire. So if we want to select a way to convey the contradictory feeling of character, oxymoron is the best choice. Personification is a figure of speech that attributes human qualities to animals, or gives life or personality to inanimate objects or abstract ideas. When we want to impart the inanimate things with the quality of human being, personification may be a better means. And last, in strict scientific writing, metaphor is seldom employed; in less strict scientific writing, metaphors become auxiliary and optional. In most of what we read and hear一public speeches, articles on international affairs, letters to friends, expressions of opinion, fiction, poetry, drama, conversation to persuade and convince, essays in which we invite other people to share our experiences and evaluations of life一in nearly everything that we write and speak, metaphor is a primary device of expression. On many occasions, metaphor is not only the most compact and vigorous way of saying a thing but also the only way in which the particular thing can be said at all. If we want to convey a certain unfamiliar emotion with the feeling what we have ever experienced, metaphor is most probably employed.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

These rhetorical devices are not independent of each other, more often the effects of a particular figure are multiple, and a single one may operate in one more categories. For example ,when we say: He fled as a rocket. This sentence is both a simile and an hyperbole. Another example: The face of the door was a mirror reflecting the happy pain of the family during those days. The sentence combines personification and oxymoron together. Each rhetorical device therefore cannot be seen in isolation and the comprehension of them needs concrete context.

Rhetoric is not only a discipline that deals with the learning of the art of language appreciation, but the one that can be well put into use in people's daily life as well. The most significant thing of language is to put it into practice. So to study rhetorical devices from the pragmatic level is the best way to apply them into people's real life, which makes daily language more artistic and people's life more harmonious. Both at home and abroad, English figures of speech have not been studied independently and systematically from the perspective of pragmatics, and the study itself has many obstacles, it has yet a challenging and promising future.

The meanings of figures of speech are changeable and complex, and people have studied them for a long time, yet it is rare to study figures of speech from the perspective of pragmatics, because the development of pragmatics is not long, and rhetorical devices may not be explained explicitly only from pragmatics. However, not only the mechanism of figures of speech but also their comprehension in reality needs the level of pragmatics, in this sense, with pragmatics enriched and developing, and with new theories and study widened and deepened, we will comprehend and apply them at a new horizon.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

Bibliography

[1] Black. Models and Metaphors [M]. Cornell University Press. 1962:25

[2] Goong, Winfield Rhetoric in Practice [M]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Press Council 1973:25

[3] Leech, Geoffrey N., A linguistic Guide to English Poetry [M]. London: Longman

Group Limited. 1983:21

[4] Leech, Geoffrey N., Principles of Pragmatics [M]. London: Longman Group Limited. 1983:x, 25,131-148,142-145,143-144

[5] Verschueren, Jef. Understanding Pragmatics [M]. Edward Arnold Publishers Limited 2005:1,148一165

[6] K. M. Jaszczolt Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning in language and discourse

[M]. Pearson Education Limited. 2002

[7] Stephen C. Levinson Pragmatics [M]. Cambridge University Press 2005:I, 6

[8] Sperber D.&D.Wilson Relevance: Communication and Cognition.Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1986/1995:2

[9]何兆熊.新编语用学概要[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000: 9

[10]何自然.语用学与英语学习[M].上海外语教育出版社.1997

[11]李鑫华.英语修辞格详论[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000:5,17,8

[12]戚雨村语用学说略[J]，外国语1998 ( 4 ) :34

[13]束定芳.隐喻学研究[M].上海外语教育出版社.2000: 72

[14]束定芳.中国语用学研究论文精选[C].上海外语教育出版社，2001: 34

[15]覃先美.李阳英语修辞学概论[M]湖南师范大学出版社2006: 236

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[16]徐鹏二修辞和语用一汉英修辞手段语用对比研究[M].上海外语教育出版社.

2007

[17]熊学亮.认知语用学概[M].上海外语教育出版社，1999

[18]张秀国.英语修辞学[M].清华大学出版社北京交通大学出版社2006:185

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[20] /grid20/detail.aspx

Acknowledgements

I would like to avail this opportunity to acknowledge the following people who

have supported me throughout the two-year study in Hefei University of Technology.

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest indebtedness to my

supervisor-Associate Prof. Wang Hua who has provided me with a lot of help and inspiration.

I would like to express my appreciation to all my teachers in the university. Their enlightening courses have broadened my eyesight.

A lot of gratitude will be delivered to my parents who have been continuously encouraging me to deal with the difficulties. The family's blessing is the power for me to insist until the closure of the thesis.

Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

Appendix for Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science 附件一：中文译文：Chinese Translation:

杰克·史密斯著，张山译转引自.cn

随着经济的发展，越来越多的中国产品出口到海外。为了扩大中国产品在国外市场的影响，让国外的消费这把中国的商品当作一种诱饵来买他们，广告扮演着重要的角色在国内市场传递给接受者。然而，介绍这些广告在国外的市场有着不同的结果。众所周知，广告的翻译不仅是一种语言的水平，也受着宗教，文化，传统，思想的影响。有很多的广告是很难的被理解的，甚至有时候外国的一些接受这都不理解，或者是仅仅的解释没有任何的刺激。

事实上，在翻译中国广告成为英语时，中国和英国的语言和文化的不同是要引起重视的。人们通常只是注意语言除了文化，目标语言的接受者等。在传统的翻译策略中，直译和意译是两种重要的翻译策略。翻译者也用这两种传统的翻译策略来处理广告的翻译，然而一些事物的广告翻译是目标语言的写作者，由于不同的文化和风俗习惯；―信，达，雅‖不能解释所有广告的翻译。

出售翻译行为是人为行为的策略。莎士比娅认为翻译是一种目的很清楚的行为，在不同文化中的转化开始在原文本和读者目标文本的目的。广告的翻译是一种语言的转化，也是一种商业行为。莎士比娅解释广告翻译是很清楚的理解广告翻译的意图和目的并且是一种商业行为的运行，广告翻译有多种策略被认可是由于不同的历史，文化和价值。

这一章主要讨论翻译策略我们翻译中国的广告到英语。有三种主要的策略，直译和适译和仿译。

3.1直译

直译是保持目标语的形式并且不能让人不能理解的，原语的内容和形式等原语的暗喻，风格和自然形式都要保持的，一句话，直译意味着原语逐字的和非逐字的成分能够直接的翻译成目标文本除了调解和同化。直译是原语是保持原来的并且是来自原始的文本。

通常直译是提供产品的增强比如技术和办公设备。在那些文本里，广告语言是广

泛的。广告里面所有的成分，报告书统计都是真实的。在这种广告中都是有文化背景的，或文化意义，或文化的不同。翻译者仅仅需要注意真实的信息关。

Appendix for Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science 附件二：英文原文（English original）：

Cornell University Press

Cornell University is a research university located on the East Hill of Ithaca, New York. Its two medical campuses are located in New York City and in Education City, Qatar, near Doha.

The youngest member of the Ivy League, Cornell was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White as a coeducational, nonsectarian institution where admission was offered irrespective of religion or race. Conceived immediately after the Industrial Revolution and the American Civil War, its founders intended that the new university would teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics to the sciences and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals—a radical departure at the time—are captured in Cornell's motto, an 1865 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study".

Known for both its undergraduate and graduate programs, Cornell continues to have one of the broadest curricula of any university, offering more than 80 majors, housing over 150 departments and academic areas and offering well over 5000 courses. Cornell is also a leader in research: During the 2004–05 academic year, research expenditures topped $560 million. In recent years, Cornell has been aggressively expanding its international programs—from the establishment, in 2001, of the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the first American medical school outside of the United States, to the forging of partnerships and collaboration with major institutions in China, India and Singapore—it has gone as far as claiming to be "the first transnational university."

History

Conception of Cornell

When Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White met in the New York Senate in January 1864, each a newly elected member, their eventual partnership seemed unlikely. Although both valued egalitarianism, science, and education, they had come from two very different backgrounds.

Ezra Cornell, a self-made businessman and austere, pragmatic telegraph mogul, made his fortune on the Western Union Telegraph Company stock he received during the consolidation that led to its formation. Cornell, who had been poor for most of his life, suddenly found himself looking for ways that he could do the greatest good for with his money—he wrote, "My greatest care now is how to spend this large income to do the greatest good to those who are properly dependent on me, to the poor and to posterity". Cornell's self education and hard work would lead him to the conclusion that the greatest end for his philanthropy was in the need of colleges for the teaching of practical pursuits such as agriculture, the applied sciences, veterinary medicine and engineering and in finding opportunities for the poor to attain such an education. 45

Appendix for Undergraduate Thesis of Faculty of Foreign Studies Yangtze University College of Arts and Science

Andrew Dickson White entered college, at the age of sixteen, in 1849. White dreamed of going to one of the elite eastern colleges, but his father sent him to Geneva College (later known as Hobart), a small Episcopal college. In Geneva's library, White would read about the great colleges at Oxford University and at the University of Cambridge; this appears to be his first inspiration for "dreaming of a university worthy of the commonwealth [New York] and of the nation", a dream that would become a lifelong goal of White's. After a year at Geneva, White convinced his father to send him to Yale University. For White, Yale was a great improvement over Geneva, but he found that even at one of the country's great universities there was "too much reciting by rote and too little real intercourse".

The state senate was charged with the allotment of New York's allocation of the federal land grant, an endowment of public lands for education, granted by the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. Initially, Cornell wanted the grant to go to the New York State Agricultural College at Ovid. However, White "vigorously opposed this bill, on the ground that the educational resources of the state were already too much dispersed". He felt that the grant would be most effective if it were used to establish or strengthen a comprehensive university.

In the face of this disagreement, on September 25, 1864, in Rochester, New York, Ezra Cornell proposed establishing a new university on his farm in Ithaca, which he would endow with $300,000 (soon thereafter increased to $500,000) to be combined with the full proceeds of the land grant. Ezra Cornell had found a purpose for his fortune, and White had found an opportunity to fulfill his dream of building his vision of a great university for the state.

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