A Relevance-theoretic Account of Oxymoron

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• 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
• Keywords: オクシモロン / 関連性理論 / アドホック概念構築

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.

Free Research Field

人文学

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。