A Relevance-theoretic Account of Oxymoron

Research Project

Project/Area Number	18K00638
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 02080:English linguistics-related
Research Institution	Gunma University
Principal Investigator	IDO Ryo 群馬大学, 情報学部, 教授 (90334086)
Project Period (FY)	2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2021)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000) Fiscal Year 2020: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000) Fiscal Year 2019: ¥260,000 (Direct Cost: ¥200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥60,000) Fiscal Year 2018: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000)
Keywords	オクシモロン / 関連性理論 / アドホック概念構築 / アドホック概念 / 語彙語用論
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Oxymoron is a figure of speech which combines two contradictory or incongruous words in encoded meaning, such as "a true lie," "More haste, less speed," and "Little big man". Such expressions are semantically incompatible, but the hearer can interpret what the speaker intends to communicate. Within the framework of Relevance Theory, it is claimed that the concept linguistically encoded by word may be pragmatically adjusted as a part of the pragmatic process of interpreting the speaker’s intended meaning. This inferential process is called ad hoc concept construction and contributes to the recovery of the explicit content of utterance, i.e. the explicature. In this research, we are concerned with oxymoron based on the Relevance Theory and explain how the inferential processes of recovering the explicature, such as ad hoc concept construction and saturation contribute to the interpretation of this figure of speech.
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	本研究は、これまで様々な言語表現・現象に対して行われてきた分析と同様に、関連性の原理に沿った発話解釈分析の可能性を広げるものになる。さらにアドホック概念構築という語彙解釈に関する推論作業が、オクシモロンという修辞的表現の解釈プロセスに対しても重要な役割を担っているということを明らかにしたことで、関連性理論・語彙語用論の理論的な可能性の拡大のみならず、レトリック研究に対する貢献も期待できる。