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Argumentation by figurative language in verbal communication : a pragmatic perspective

This thesis has two goals. The first is to explain, within a pragmatic perspective, how figurative language (i.e. metaphor and irony) performs argumentation. Based on the argumentation theory (AT) of Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca (1958), argumentation is defined as the process of justifying something in an organized or logical way, which is composed of one or more claims and shows one or more grounds for maintaining them. The second goal is to examine the hearer's interpretation of figurative utterances in argumentation. The theoretical foundation of this discussion is based on experientialist epistemology (i.e. experientialism) and cognitive pragmatics in the form of Relevance Theory (RT). In pursuit of those goals, I present four main innovations: First, I argue the status of metaphor should be viewed as ‘what is implicated', rather than ‘what is said'. Second, I propose explanation of some exceptional cases of irony, which the standard RT approach does not treat, which relies on the notion of ‘incongruity'. Third, I propose integration of AT concepts within RT. Thus, this approach contributes to pursuing more economical explanation of communication as argumentation, by a single principle of relevance, but incorporating argumentative concepts such as doxa, topoi and polyphony. Finally, I apply this integrated approach to analysing real cases of commercial advertisement by metaphor or irony, or both. This includes explaining connection and overlapping, two ways in which metaphor and irony can work together.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:574984
Date January 2013
CreatorsDae-Young, Kim
PublisherUniversity of Sussex
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/45312/

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