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mla英文论文范文篇一

Discuss the Gricean account of the semantics and pragmatics of

conjunctive utterances

Introduction

Semantics studies the meaning and it is concerned with the literal meaning of words and sentences. Semantics focuses on the relationship between signifiers, such as words, phrases, symbols and signs, and what they stand for. While the transmission of meaning doesn’t only depend on the linguistic knowledge (e.g. lexicon, grammar etc.) of the listener and speaker but also depend on the context of the utterance, the inferred intent of the speaker, knowledge about the status of those involved, and so on. (Shaozhong, Liu, 2009) Pragmatics is the study of the contributions of context to meaning, and it encompasses conversational implicature, speech act theory, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in sociology, philosophy, and linguistics. (Mey, Jacob L, 1993)

The semantics and pragmatics of conjunctive utterances

Generally many semantic theories (Russell 1905, Frege 1892, Davidson 1967, Kaplan 1977/89, Segal and Larson 1995) concern truth conditions (Carston, 1999). Grice’s (1967) influential concepts showed in addition to what a speaker says, that is both largely conventional and the content on the basis of which her utterance will be judged true or false, and a speaker may also convey implicatures which don’t affect the truth-value of what she says; so these conversational implicatures are calculated by assuming speakers are being cooperative and adhering to the certain expected standards of informativeness, truthfulness, relevance, and manner of expression (Grice, 1975). That suggests a natural way of drawing the semantics-pragmatics distinction that is semantics will correspond to the truth-conditional content of the

utterance, and the pragmatics to the conveyed meaning which falls outside the truth-conditional content.

So semantic content could be equated with Grice’s what is said, and it has two features. Firstly it is the truth-conditional content of the utterance, and secondly it is determined almost entirely by the encoded, conventional meaning of the linguistic expressions used. And as Grice acknowledged, the truth-conditional content isn’t completely free of contextual input, and in some brief comments on the utterance of “He is in the grip of a vice”, one says, “for a full identification of what the speaker has said, one will need to know (a) the time of utterance, (b) the identity of x, and (c) the meaning, on the particular occasion of utterance, of the phrase in the grip of a vice” (1975/89: 25). But he seemed not to see these processes of reference assignment and disambiguation as requiring appeal to the conversational maxims; instead, the concept seems to be that they are resolved more automatically, and the requisite values being something like objective features of the utterance’s context (Carston, 2002).

A particular division of labor between semantics and pragmatics of Grice (1967) has prevailed in the account of what is communicated by utterances of and-conjunctions. For instance:

a. It’s autumn in New Zealand it is spring in England and.

b. He handed her the scalpel and she made the incision.

c. We spent the day in town and I went to Harrods.

d. She fed him poisoned stew and he died.

e. I left the door open and the cat got in.

“And” is taken to be pretty well semantically empty and it’s taken to be the natural language equivalent of the truth-functional logical conjunction operator. The pragmatics focuses on variety of cause-consequence, temporal and other sorts of relationships understood to hold between the states of affairs which are described, some of that come through in the asymmetrical examples in (1b)-(1e). For example, we all understand the making of the scalpel and the interval of a few seconds to have intervened; and a quite different temporal relation is understood to hold between the states of affairs which are described in (1c), and the event of going to Harrods interpreted as contained within the period of time that is spent in town. The different sorts of consequence relationships are understood in (1d) and (1e): and the feeding of poisoned stew is the sufficient cause for death the leaving open of the door is just one of the range of factors contributing to the cat’s getting in.

These relationships are taken to be derived inferentially via the interaction of the decoded-semantic content with the general knowledge assumptions about the way things connect up and relate in the world, the interaction constrained by some general criterion and criteria of rational communicative behavior.

An interpretation has the two properties as following:

An utterance, on a given interpretation, is optimally relevant:

(a) it achieves enough effects to be worth the hearer’s attention;

(b) it puts the hearer to no gratuitous effort in achieving those effects.

(Wilson and Sperber, forthcoming) Once the listener has accessed an interpretation consistent with the expectation he looks no further but takes this to be the interpretation the speaker intended. The utterance, on a given interpretation is consistent with the presumption of optimal relevance if the speaker can rationally have expected it to be optimally relevant to the listener on that interpretation. The implications of the definition are fully discussed elsewhere.

As with any utterance there is a range of possible interpretations of (1d) that are compatible with the linguistically encoded, semantic and content. Two of the logical possibilities for (1d) are as following:

a. She fed him poisoned stew and as a result he died shortly after.

b. She fed him poisoned stew and he died years later in a car crash.

Though these are both possible and consistent, the first sentence is absolutely more likely to be recovered by the listener, and to have been intended by the speaker, than the second sentence. That’s because everyone knows that poison can cause the death and that one who knowingly feeds someone poison is most likely doing that with the intention of killing the person. And the relevance-theoretic pragmatic account captures the intuitions without seting up any special principles telling listeners to interpret in accordance with their standard stereotypic assumptions.

Conclusion

The current state of the debate relating the interface between semantics and pragmatics is the upshot of the revolutionary period in the research of meaning known as radical pragmatics and aided by the views of ordinary language philosophers. The two relatively separate disciplines, the formal research of sentence meaning and the relatively informal research of the properties of speech acts became more and more intertwined as a result of the adoption of the semantic underdetermination and the admittance of the pragmatic inference about the speaker’s intentions, as well as other contextbound informations, into the semantic content. That facilitated the shift of the centre of attention from the sentence to the utterance. But the direction of change hasn’t been steady throughout the past three decades. Attempts keep semantics and pragmatics apart either through denying that semantics has to provide the propositions and hence truth-conditional content, or through keeping the objectives of the semantics and pragmatics apart and stressing the theoretical utility of the sentence’s truth conditions, just like minimalists of the syncretic flavour do. And the dominant orientations are however various forms of contextualism. The state of affairs is undoubtedly aided by the overall desideratum to stay faithful to the speakers’ intuitions about meaning and to the view that the aim of the semantic theory is to cater for these intuitions. Whether contextualism will retain its power, succumb to the minimalism, or evolve into the radical form of occasion-meaning of the meaning eliminativism remains to be seen.

References

Carston, R. 1999. The semantic-pragmatics distinction: A view from relevance theory. In The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View (CRiSPI 1), ed. K. Turner, 85-125. Oxford: Elsevier.

Davidson, D. 1967. Truth and meaning. Synthese 17: 304-323. von Fintel, K. and Gillies, A. 2011. Might made right. In Epistemic Modality, eds. A. Egan and B. Weatherson, 108-130. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frege, G. 1892. Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 100: 25-50.

Grice, H. P. 1975/1989. Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, eds. P. Cole and J. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press; reprinted in Grice, H. P. 1989, 22-40.

Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kaplan, D. 1977/89. Demonstratives. In Themes from Kaplan, eds. J. Almog, J. Perry and H. Wettstein, 481-563. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Larson, R. and Segal, G. 1995. Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

mla英文论文范文篇二

The theories which proposed by Eugene and foreign translators for a long time, especially the theory of functional equivalence. Functional equivalence refers to the equivalence on the functions but not on the forms and structures.

In our daily life, we live with different advertisements, some of which are translated works. These advertisements are aimed at giving the potential customers a lasting impression and persuading them to buy their product. Therefore, in order to express the ideas of the original works and realize the goal for sale, the translators should take account of the cultural elements and social elements in order to achieve functional equivalence.

This paper consists of three parts. The first part deals with the concept of functional equivalence and its aims and principles. The main aim of functional equivalence is to represent the information of the original work in the target language and achieve the equivalence of functions of languages. In order to make this concept clear, the author gives a brief introduction of different functions. Although different languages have different characteristics, their functions are nearly the same. That is to name the reality and to communicate with the people. The second part deals with the target, principles, requirements and cultural elements of advertisement translation. The third part, the most important part, points out the three main aspects of functional equivalence, semantic equivalence, social-cultural equivalence and stylistic equivalence. At the meantime, the equivalence on different levels and how to achieve functional equivalence in advertisement translation are also systematically illustrated.

First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Professor X, both for his intellectual guidance and for his warm and constant encouragement during the process of writing this thesis. With patience and prudence, he labored through drafts of this thesis and pointed out defects in my theorizing. Therefore, I owe all the merits in this thesis, if any, to him, though I am fully aware that the thesis might still contain some mistakes, for which I bear the whole responsibility.

My cordial and sincere thanks go to all the teachers in Applied Foreign Language Department, whose interesting and informative courses have benefited me a lot during my college years. The profit that I gained from their profound knowledge, remarkable expertise and intellectual ingenuity will be of everlasting significance to my future life and career.

I am also very grateful to my classmates, who have given me a lot of help and courage during my stay in the University and throughout the process of writing this thesis.

Last but not the least; big thanks go to my family who have shared with me my worries, frustrations, and hopefully my ultimate happiness in eventually finishing this thesis.

has become more and more important for it is always used as the way to promote the sales of goods. The excellent advertisement is not only understandable for everyone, but also has an elegant style. It can easily encourage people to buy the goods. Therefore, a good translation of an advertisement is also important to promote the sales of the goods in the country of the target language.

Most which is systematically 1 That is to say, the adequacy of translations is judged on the basis of the correspondence in lexicon and grammar between the source and target languages.

Functional equivalence is a powerful weapon for information exchange. The translation work which follows the principles of functional equivalence is much easier to understand.

However, functional equivalence is very abstract to most people. In order to make it clear, this paper chooses advertisement translation to analyze its every aspect. Due to the differences between English and Chinese, the advertisement translation from English to Chinese should be undertaken in different translation techniques with the guidance of functional equivalence.

The similarity of the thoughts of human are

more than the differences between English and Chinese. The equivalence of languages makes it possible to convert the source language into the target language. However, the convert is not just a process to translate the words from one language to another language. Translation should be a task to recur the information of the original work in a most natural way. That is to say, translation should rebuild the surficial forms of the original information, convert the views of expression and replace the meaning of the original work with the meaning of the translated work. Therefore, equivalence is the most important basis for translation. The translated work can be of higher quality if it achieves more equivalence with the original work.

Functional equivalence is originally termed as dynamic equivalence, which is to be defined by the degree where the receptor of the source language message should respond in substantially the same way as the target language receptor to the translated version. It is very important to all kinds of translation. The reason is that English and Chinese have many differences in their forms, grammars, sentence structures and so on. Therefore, in the process of translation, to convey the information of the original work is the focus and the most difficult part. After all, the receptors of the translated work expect to know the content of the original work.

Functional equivalence also emphasizes the cultural elements. If a translated work does not reflect the cultural elements of the original work, it must be a failure. Therefore, the translator should be bilingual and bicultural.

Nida always holds a view that syntax and lexeme are the biggest barriers for the translators.2 The translators devoted to English-Chinese translation may agree with him. Most of them have learned English through the is often the concept of kernel sentence and the concept of sentence to a translator. Third, isomorphism can 6 In the 1950s, for example, while Ellington was still alive, Raymond Horricks compared enquiring mind of Ellington…has sought to extend steadily the since the Ellington’s earliest attempt to move beyond the three-minute limit received …

Figures in literature are either flat characters (one dimensional figures, figures with ----with office.

after myfather, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.

However, F. Scott Fitzgerald succeeds in changing these flat figures into round ones through his master-hand writing skills and in-depth characterization.

B. Different Functions

The theory of functional equivalence involves nine functions: expressive, cognitive, interpersonal, informative…

…

With the rapid development of the international trade, advertisement has become an indispensable part in our life. To some extent, it has become our guide in the aspect of consuming. No doubt, we are now living in the age of advertisement. Therefore, to translate a good and effective advertisement is increasingly important for attracting the potential customers and promoting the sale of the products in the international market.

Since Chinese and English are two quite different languages, the translation from English to Chinese is not an easy task. The translator should learn well the cultural and social background of the original work, the differences of their sentence structures and also their habits of expression. Although there are so many differences between the two languages, the functions of all the languages are the same. That is to name the reality and to communicative with the people. It is just the basis for the translation from English to Chinese.

…, …

Through a relative thorough analysis of functional equivalence and advertisement translation, the readers of the essay may have a clear understanding of the details and aspects of advertisement translation. The readers may appreciate the advantages of functional equivalence in the process of advertisement translation. Functional equivalence helps the translators overcome the barrier of translation. That is the forms and structures of the language of the original work. Advertisement translation has its special aims. It is not only for information exchange, but also for encouraging the customers to buy the products. This is the ultimate aim of advertisement translation. Therefore, the translators should not only express the accurate meaning of the original work, but also pay attention to the diction of words and the cultural elements. The translation work will fail to realize its aims if it neglects the cultural elements such as the tradition, customs and habits of the target country. The analysis of these aspects in this essay may give the readers a little enlightenment.