On the Explanatory Power of the Relevance Theory to the Indierct Speech Act of Scolding
Zhou Yong-ping · Educational Research on Foreign Languages and Arts · 2008
Human language is indirect,esp.language of scolding or blaming someone.Indirect speech of scolding is a kind of indirect speech act.ISA(Indirect Speech Act) proposed by Searle doesn't explain the cognitive environment of S and H respectively,thus it cannot explain why S takes round-about way to scold H and how H infers,and so forth.This paper aims to demonstrate the overwhelming explanatory power of RT over ISA,by analyzing indirect speech act of scolding within the framework of RT(Relevance Theory).