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A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach to Anticlimax

Author: YanYunYu
Tutor: XieXianZe；LuoRunTian；DuanCheng；LiWuQuan；YanLiMing
School: Chengdu University of Technology
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: anticlimax pragmatics cognition RT
CLC: H05
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 29
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Abstract

Anticlimax is quite distinctive among diversified figures of speech. Encyclopedia Britannica describes it as consisting of“usually sudden transition in discourse from a significant idea to a trivial or ludicrous one”. In this way, anticlimax often brings to an almost absurd conclusion, posing sharp contrast to addressees’prior interpretations. The specialty of anticlimax lies not only in its unique formational features but also in its capability of creating rich expressive effects, such as creating amusement, producing abrupt surprise, making sarcasm and provoking thought.Appealing as it is, anticlimax does not receive enough attention it deserves. Literature concerning anticlimax is rather limited and little both at home and abroad. Moreover, it is unsystematic and is scattered across history. And even among these fragmentary materials and researches, the study of anticlimax has majorly been carried out within the field of rhetoric, others from the semantic perspective. They are more interested in the physical formation and rhetoric effects of anticlimax than in its inferential mechanism and interpretative procedure. Therefore, the researches on anticlimax are far from being systematic and comprehensive.In light of that, a further study of anticlimax is of necessity and value. The thesis, starting from a comprehensive survey of its literature, tries to explore a large quantity of examples in order to probe into the characteristics peculiar to anticlimax based on Sperber (S) & Wilson (W)’s relevance theory (RT). The thesis mainly intends to discuss the following questions:1. What are the pragmatic features of anticlimax?2. What is the underlying inferential mechanism in interpreting anticlimax?3. Is there a more reasonable process in interpreting anticlimax? And what is it?With regard to the above questions, the thesis intents to analyze them with the following arrangement: at the beginning, the thesis first casts a reviewing glance at the existent literature of research of anticlimax and has it statistically analyzed and integrated, during which a revised definition is proposed and the physical formation and characteristics of anticlimax is deliberated on. Based on them, the research of the pragmatic features of anticlimax is practiced with no difficulty. Anticlimax’s formational conditions have also provided clues for the present three features which boil down to disharmony, absurdity and indirectness. For the second question, the thesis first gives a brief introduction to relevance theory—the theoretical basis of the present study and then devotes itself to the core discussion. Within the frame of context theory, the thesis employs some actual cases of anticlimax to explore the explanatory power of contextual effects in comprehension. The argument concerning the effects of contextual strengthening and contextual contradiction is capable of explaining the underlying inferential mechanism of anticlimax. In the course of inference, addressee should first process the items of information in the first half of anticlimax by contextual strengthening; then he resolves the conflict resulting from the disharmonious drop in expression by contextual contradiction. As for the third question, it touches upon the contradictory performance between maximal relevance and optimal relevance. The whole process can be realized as two stages:①the addressee forms normal and conventional assumption I by maximal relevance (observing Least Effort Principle);②directed by the ostensive information, the addressee alters assumption through contextual contradiction and arrives at the assumption of optimal relevance. At this time, three questions are all discussed and well resolved. The thesis still talks, at the end, the decisive role of the addresser—he generates the statement, guides the addressee’s train of thought and reins the whole communicating process. It also complements the content by additionally explaining the deep-seated law that governs the presentation of its pragmatic features.

A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach to Anticlimax

Abstract

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