TITLE:
Analysis of Pragmatic Ambivalence from the Perspective of Relevance Theory
AUTHORS:
Ruihong Huang
KEYWORDS:
Pragmatic Ambivalence, Relevance Theory, Illocutionary Force
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.5,
May
6,
2021
ABSTRACT: Pragmatic
ambivalence refers to a linguistic phenomenon in which the communicator uses
vague or ambiguous words to convey the illocutionary force to the other party
in a specific context. It is an indispensable communicative strategy for
successful communication in daily communication activities. Relevance theory
can explain pragmatic ambivalence from three aspects: intentional relevance,
contextual relevance and relevance reasoning. Therefore, relevance theory has
strong explanatory power and applicability for pragmatic ambivalence as a
communicative strategy. Using relevance theory to study pragmatic ambivalence
is conducive to people’s further understanding of pragmatic ambivalence as a
linguistic phenomenon, and has a very positive significance for the research
and development of ambivalence in pragmatics.