Relevance Theory and Lexical Pragmatics of Chinese tou‘head’

School of Foreign Languages,Minjiang University,Fuzhou,China Email:194464838@qq.com

[Abstract]From a relevance-theoretic perspective,this paper attempts to present evidence from Chinese in support of the claim that the ad hoc concept construction is essentially a creative process,based on a collection of Chinese examples which involves tou‘head’.On the relevance-theoretic approach outlined in this paper,the conceptual adjustment of encoded concept of Chinese tou‘head’may require some pragmatic adjustments of broadening or narrowing.This process of pragmatically fine-tuning encoded concept takes place as a natural product of the search for an optimally relevant interpretation and satisfying the expectation of relevance generated from a particular utterance is its motivating factor.As a result of this fine-tuning,the hearer may construct slightly different interpretations.Consequently,the utterance is understood literally,approximately,hyperbolically or metaphorically.

[Keywords]relevance theory;ad hoc concept construction;tou‘head’

Introduction

a crucial aspect of current lines of research in relevance theory is the view that people often constructad hocconcept during utterance interpretation by broadening or narrowing the encoded concept.In the relevance-theoretic framework,the great majority of the concepts we form in our minds are unlexicalised concepts,which are constructedad hocby selecting bits of information from memory and by adjusting concepts that do have a stable entry(Sperber and Wilson,1998).In other words,a lexically encoded concept triggers a pragmatic process whose result is a different concept,narrower or broader than the lexical concept(Carston,2002,p.322).In this paper,I will discuss an issue that arises in the relevance-driven mechanism:the process of the on-line pragmatically adjustment that finetunes the interpretation of virtually every word in context.Taking Chinesetou‘head’for example,what I aim to do is to offer some evidence from Chinese about how the relevance theoretic-line of thought results in a satisfactory account of the overall interpretation to meet the expectations of relevance raised by the word.

Pragmatic Background:Some Accounts of Relevance Theory

Relevance theory(Sperber &Wilson,1986/1995)is based on a definition of relevance and two general principles:the Cognitive Principle that human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance;and the Communicative Principle that every utterance creates expectations of relevance.Relevance theory claims that human cognition,is automatically tends to maximize relevance,and this is captured by one of the two general principles as mentioned above.According to relevance theory,relevance can be defined as a property of inputs to cognitive processes:utterance,thoughts,memories,actions,sounds,sights,smells,and so on.

It is crucial to point out that it follows from theCognitive Principle of Relevancethat human attention and processing resources are allocated to information that seems relevant.It follows from theCommunicative Principle of Relevancethat a speaker,by the very act of addressing someone,creates an expectation of optimal relevance; in other words,he communicates that his utterance is the most relevant one and at least relevant enough to be worth processing.Moreover,relevance theorists note that inferential comprehension,which starts with the recovery of a linguistically-encoded meaning,has to be contextually enriched in a variety of ways to yield a full-fledged speaker’s meaning.On this approach,understanding any utterance,be it literal,narrower or broader,boils down to seeing its intended relevance;explicit communication is no longer seen as purely a matter of decoding,but involves an element of inferential adjustment,since there is no presumption of literalness and that the linguistically encoded meaning gives only a clue to the speaker’s meaning.

Decoding and Inference in Concept Construction

It is widely agreed among pragmatics that utterances are automatically decoded by the language module into a certain semantic representation or logical form,which serves as automatic input to a process of pragmatic inference.Guided by the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure,the aim of the hearer is to develop this logical form at the explicit level and complement it at the implicit level so as to arrive at a hypothesis about the set of communicated assumptions that constitute speaker’s meaning.Consider:

(1)Ta shi ge tu-tou.

‘He is bald.’

as in(1),tutou‘bald’is semantically vague and the concept of which is more or less different from the speaker’s original thought.In daily conversation,we might wonder if BALD refers to no hair,how much hair that remains in the head is not regarded as BALD.The answer is open.Hence if the speaker wants to express the precise thought he has,he needs to use words corresponding more or less to the concept.For instance,the speaker has to add through the explicature information so as to derive the implicature,such asPeter is very/absolutely bald;Peter has no hair(at all);I can see the skin of his skull.

This example of a loosely used term illustrates that linguistically encoded word meaning is merely a starting point for inferential comprehension and the hearer is often satisfied by a loose interpretation which falls short of being strictly literal.According to relevance theory,the expectations of relevance raised by an utterance may make a certain hypotheses about the intended implications highly accessible to the hearer before a full explicature is derived.Below are some examples of tou‘head’involving inference:

(2)Gongtou:An ren-tou gei,mei-ren wu-shi yuan.

Foreman:“You will be paid 50 yuan per head.”

In Chinese,it seems to be utterly common to number person in terms of head.This metonymic phenomenon is based on the fact that one person has only one head.As in(2),the general point of this sentence is that utterance understanding depends mainly on the common knowledge we mentioned above.The comprehension process of(2)shows us that the activation of a certain concept(e.g.HEAD)immediately activates semantically related concepts(e.g.PERSON).

The concepts encoded by the words in an utterance provide access to a range of encyclopedic assumptions in memory about the entities the concept denotes which the hearer will consider,in their order of accessibility.The activation of the concept HEAD,for instance,activates encyclopedic assumptions such as‘the head is primarily seen as a control of the body’,‘the head is the main site to perform intellectual activity as thinking’,etc.Since MENTAL FUNCTION(thinking,knowing and understanding)IS PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE(seeing),the importance of eyes is highlighted and in Chinese,they are generally paralleled with head.This kind of comprehension process can be illustrated by the parallel expression oftou‘head’andmu‘eye’,as in(3):

(3)Ta shi women de tou-mu.

‘He is the head(leader)of our group.’

In Chinese,the head and the eyes can be paired together to derive such an extended meaning as“someone in charge of or leading an organization,group,etc”.The physical basis for the development of these senses is probably that the head is the topmost body part.In giving illustrations,for example,listing names vertically on a board according to the order of seniority,we generally start from the upper end and put the best or number one on the highest position(GOOD IS UP).Besides,a leader with power(POWER IS UP)typically stands on top in order to make those without power see him or her.Thus,it is appropriate to assume that a loose interpretation,based on a few highly accessible encyclopedic properties,will help the hearer flesh out the explicature to make the utterance relevant in the expected way.

In short,it’s important to bear in mind that the linguistically encoded material is not directly accepted as the speaker’s intended meaning,but merely taken as evidence from which to infer the meaning she intends to communicate.The hearer’s task is to recover the latter by means of the former via inference.This inferential processing is generally linked to the construction ofad hoccategories and new representations to denote those categories.

Pragmatic Adjustments of Conceptual Encoding

Relevance theorists view that the concept expressed by the use of a familiar word may be narrower or broader.The new concept constructed in thead hocfashion will be taken to be appropriately close to the one the speaker intended as a constituent of her thoughts and of the explicature of her utterance.This may require more or less pragmatic adjustments.

Narrowing

In relevance theory,the concept encoded by a word may be more general than the concept the speaker intends to convey.This is a case of lexical narrowing,in which pragmatic adjustment contributes to the explicitly communicated content of an utterance.Consider:

(4)Ta shige you tounao de ren.

‘He is a big brain.’(i.e.He is intelligent.)

It seems that(4)is a case in which the encoded concept is narrowed down in context to pick out only a subset oftou‘head’in mind.In this case,the hearer has to infer what particular kind of head this is.One encoded concepttounaois thus used as starting point to understand the utterance in(4),which is narrowed to a high-functioning head rather than a stereotypical interpretation to indicate that the person is intelligent.Therefore,by assuming that tounao‘head’was intended to convey not the very general encoded concept HEAD but the narrower concept HEAD*(i.e.head with great intellectual ability),the hearer can thus arrive at an overall interpretation which satisfies his expectation of relevance by deriving that the speaker wants to imply a high-functioning head.In relevance-driven processing,he is justified in making this assumption,because it is the least effort-demanding way of finding an overall interpretation that yields enough implications to make the utterance relevant in the expected way.

In the following sentence,expectation of relevance is quite constrained and specific since the decoded concept provides more encyclopedic information than is actually needed.Consider:

(5)Tamen dou shi you-tou-you-lian de shehui-mingliu.

‘They are all noted public persons with much prestige.’

as in(5),the celebrities are persons who“have head and face”,namely,persons who have much prestige and command much respect.In this example,the goal of narrowing is to account for the fact that the concept communicated by head and face is used to convey a more specific sense than the encoded one,resulting in a restriction of the denotation of person.Consequently,the conceptyoutouyoulian‘(persons)have head and face’would be understood as more specific than their lexically encoded counterparts in that it only denotes‘prestigious,famous,and respected persons’.Here,the hearer sets up anad hocconcept PERSON*on-line and starts considering the encyclopedic assumptions in their order of accessibility until his expectations of relevance are satisfied,at which point he stops.

Approximation

To illustrate the notion of approximation,consider what is most likely communicated by the highlighted lexical items of the following sentences.Consider：

(6)Ta de hua ling-ren tou-da.

‘What he said makes my head become big*.”(i.e.make me annoying)

It is apparent that in(6)the concept is used on a specific occasion to denote a broader set of entities and some of which fall outside that definition.Here the use of da‘big’is to provide us a more general sense and the answer to this question is subject to various interpretations.Pragmatically,the relatively strict sense of‘big’falls outside its linguistically specified denotation and as a result,anad hocconcept which goes beyond the boundaries of the lexically encoded concept is constructed.In the comprehension process of(6),the hearer needs to process the information obtained from the encoded concept but not its logical entry that entails geometric perfection.The concept resulting from processing(6)merely resembles the concept linguistically encoded and merely acts as a guide in inferring speaker meaning.In sum,in processing(6),speaker aims at finding newly created concepts.The extension of such pragmatically inferredad hocconcepts as BIG*,is more inclusive in certain respects than that of the lexical concept as big.

Hyperbole

Given the assumptions of relevance theory,the hyperbolic processes offer us less than a strictly literal interpretation of the thought in varying degrees.As we can see in(7-8):

(7)wan-tou zan-dong(million-heads pierce move)‘millions of people crowd’

Culture-specifically speaking,the expression wantou‘million heads’in Chinese does not have the literal denotation as the number indicates.Rather,it is a hyperbolic use suggesting the idea of a spectacular scene.Imagine that you want to tell others about the unprecedented rally of tens of thousands of people,you probably choose the expression in(7)to produce a vague concept of hyperbole that can be more or less than the actual amount,instead of telling it literally with an exact number.As we can see,in processing(7),all the implicatures derived by the hearer have to be inferentially warranted and thead hocconcept plays a crucial role in this.Consider another expression as in(8):

(8)qian-tou wan-xu(thousand-heads ten thousand clues)‘a myriad of thoughts’(i.e.extremely complicated and difficult to unravel)

In(8),the adjectivesqian‘thousand’andwan‘ten thousands’are presumably used to convey the idea of“confusion of one’s head”instead of its lexically encoded meaning.Noticeably,no literal concept is intended to be tested first and the encoded concept‘thousand heads and ten thousand clues’is merely used as a way to derive a range of true implications which she is taken to endorse.At this point,processing assumptions made accessible by the encoded concept also results in adjustment of the denotation of this concept so that new concept arisesad hoconline.This process of pragmatically fine-tuning of the encoded concept takes place as a natural by-product of the search for an optimally relevant interpretation,which can be attributed as a speaker’s meaning,as we can see in(7-8).

Metaphor

Different from cognitive linguistics,relevance theory sees metaphor interpretation as essentially an inferential process and the goal of pragmatic accounts of metaphor is to explain how hearers recognize the intended meaning of a metaphorical utterance in context.Consider:

(9)(Mother to son):Ni shi yige zhutou a,zhe-me jiandan ye buhui.

‘You are such an idiot that you can’t do such an easy thing.’

In processing(9),following a path of least effort,the hearer starts considering a few highly activated assumptions from the encyclopedic entries of the encoded concepts.For instance,decoding the concept encoded by the wordzhutou‘pig head’in(9),gives the hearer access to some of accompanying assumptions about the pigs(e.g.the assumption that they are very slow in response,that they are insensitive,that they lack of a flexible mind,etc)as additional contextual assumptions.These assumptions are added to the context in their order of accessibility in order to derive hypotheses about what the speaker might have intended to convey(e.g.the son is very stupid,he needs to improve himself,his mother is unhappy with this situation,etc).In this case,the assumptions considered in processing the encoded concept PIG HEAD,which is broadened to PIG HEAD*,contributes to the derivation of the intended effects.Meanwhile,we can infer that the pragmatic equivalent meaning that the speaker intends to communicate is as(10):

(10)You are an idiot.

as we can see in(9),decoding the encoded concept PIG HEAD gives access to a range of logical implications and encyclopedic assumptions.A more general idea underlying this hypothesis is that,the stock of concepts that we can construct,and are therefore capable of communicating,is much greater than the stock of words available in a given language to encode those concepts.Consider also the following case:

(11)Ta zhen shi ge hua-tou.

‘He is really very slippery.’

In(11),starting considering just the first(few)most accessible assumption(s)from the encyclopedic entry of the encoded concept“slippery”,the hearer starts processing them in the wider context of the utterance together with other hypotheses about explicatures and implicatures,such as the assumptions that the slippery person is selfish;that he is both principled and flexible;that he is highly undisciplined with dive for innovation,and so on.It follows from the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure that the hearer should consider the most accessible assumptions first,and proceed through the accessibility hierarchy until he reaches an interpretation that satisfies his expectations of relevance.As a result of this process,the hearer would have constructed a newad hocconcept SLIPPERY HEAD*.

according to relevance theory,encyclopedic assumptions activated by the encoded concept are considered in their order of accessibility until those particular expectations are satisfied.A simple word,namely,huatou‘slippery head’,may thus use to convey a wide array of different unlexicalised concepts(e.g.SLIPPERY HEAD*,SLIPPERY HEAD**).The different fine-tuning of concepts encoded by this word in memory is a function of different accessibility orderings and different expectations of relevance,both sensible to contextual specifics.In the following sentences,the hearer’s expectations of relevance add an extra degree of activation to some encyclopedic assumptions,making certain hypotheses about implicatures highly accessible,which in turn leads,by backwards inference,to enrichments of the explicit content in an optimally relevant direction.Hence,if the hearer has contextual details abouthuatou‘slippery head’,he may derive the corresponding interpretations.Consider:

(12)Zhen-xing-a,ta zhen shi ge hua-tou.

‘Great,he is really very slippery.”

(13)Bu-guan-zen-yang,ta zhen shi ge hua-tou.

‘After all,he is really very slippery.”

No metaphor is processed in the absence of a context.Let’s consider the possibility that the metaphor above was uttered in a situation where people have been discussing the difficulty of dealing with an especially sticky subject.In processing the expression in(12)with zhenxinga‘great’,for instance,considering the assumption that the speaker appreciates the referent ta‘he’directs the hearer towards a particular assumption associated to the encoded concept SLIPPERY HEAD(e.g.the assumption that‘he’is a creative and flexible fellow),which denotes a kind of positive SLIPPERY HEAD that involves energy and dive for innovation.However,processing the same word in a different situation,say,where the speaker has a derogatory sense,as in(13),the hearer may get the inference that‘he’is an opportunist.Although the same word huatou‘slippery head’is used,selective processing of encyclopedic assumptions yields a range of different implications in each case.It is the derivation of these implications which allow the utterance to achieve relevance in the expected way and lead the hearer to perceive the intended meaning as relatively transparent.In short,in different contexts,the consideration of a different subset of the encyclopedic assumptions associated with the wordhuatou‘slippery head’results in different implications being derived,and so in different interpretations being constructed to satisfy the hearer’s expectations of relevance.

To conclude,metaphor is also a type of loose use of language that is approached with more or less precise expectations of optimal relevance and processed following the same comprehension procedure until those expectations are satisfied,as well as cases of approximation,hyperbole.

Concluding Remarks

Unlike many existing pragmatic approaches,relevance theory not only acknowledges the gap between the concept encoded by a word and the concept expressed by a speaker in using that word on a particular occasion,but also aims to provide an explanation of how the hearer bridges the gap between the concept encoded and the concept expressed.This gap may arise in at least two ways.In the first place,the concept encoded by a word may be more general than the concept that the speaker intends to convey by using the word on that particular occasion,such as the case of narrowing.In the second place,the encoded concept may be more specific than the concept the speaker intends to convey on that occasion.In this case,examples include approximation,hyperbole and metaphor.A crucial point about these examples is that the same process of conceptual adjustment is at work and a new,ad hoc(invented)meaning is derived.Meanwhile,it is this pragmatically inferred concept that is taken to be appropriately close to the one that the speaker intended as a constituent of her thoughts,while the linguistically encoded is taken as merely a guide in inferring speaker meaning.This process of pragmatically fine-tuning the encoded concepts takes place as a natural by-product of the search for an optimally relevant interpretation and so has a bearing on whether the utterance is understood literally,approximately,hyperbolically or metaphorically.

In this paper,based on the examples collected in Chinese,what I have demonstrated confirms the claim for the creative nature ofad hocconcept construction.In sum,to satisfy the expectations of relevance generated by the particular utterance,we can construct concepts in anad hocfashion so as to fulfill particular communicative/interpretive goals,and our pragmatic inferential abilities are powerful enough to fine-tune linguistically encode conceptual materials.As a result of this fine-tuning,the hearer may construct slightly different interpretations.Hence,it is appropriate to argue that the construction of new conceptual representations is essentially a creative process,with the same pragmatic inferential process at work whether the interpretation involves narrowing or broadening.