【作者】 万成兵；

【导师】 张维鼎；

【作者基本信息】 四川大学 ， 外国语言学及应用语言学， 2005， 硕士

【摘要】 申农(Shannon)的信息理论告诉我们,信息在传递过程中不可避免地要受到噪音的干扰。为了信息传递的准确性,必须在原信息中加入比实际需要多一些的信息,这些多出的信息便是冗余。然而人具有主观能动性,语境也处于不断变化之中,信息论的信息传递模式不能直接应用于人类的言语研究,为此作者给出了新的信息传递模式。 众所周知,人类有讲究简洁精练的天性,也就是要遵循经济原则。与之相对应,人们通常对冗余现象存在偏见,把“冗余”简单等同于“累赘”、“冗长”,“违背经济原则”。事实上,冗余现象存在于语言的一切层面上。冗余具有防止信息在传递过程中发生错误或亏损的作用,除此以外还具有寒暄应酬、弥补认知能力、消除歧义等一系列功能。作者把冗余分为语言内冗余和语言外冗余两大块进行研究,对冗余的存在形式划分为形态冗余、语法冗余、语义冗余、语用冗余、副语言冗余等各种类型,并提出“积极冗余”(positive redundancy)和“消极冗余”(negative redundancy)一说。冗余现象是一个十分宽泛的领域,不同的学者有不同的看法,至今也没有一个公认的定义,但这并不能否认人们对冗余现象研究的存在。本文也力图从人际交流的角度对冗余重新进行定义,使之更具有解释力。 “语用学”曾一度被认为是语言学家和哲学家的“废纸篓”(wastebasket),在中国也曾被视为“与语言学争抢课题”。然而美国学者格莱斯(Grice)的“合作原则”(Cooperative Principle)及其“会话含义”(Conversational Implicature)的发表以及奥斯丁(Austin)和塞尔勒(Searle)的言语行为理论(Speech Act Theory)最终使语用学从一个概念发展成一个朝气蓬勃的学科。钱冠连(2002)在《汉语文化语用学》一书中认为“冗余掌握适当与否是地道的语用性质。”既然如此,当今的语用学理论能对冗余进行怎样的解释?为此,作者选取了英美派最具代表性的更多还原

【Abstract】 The redundancy idea comes form Mathematician Claude E. Shannon (1949). According to information theory, all forms of communication are not free from noise. In technical terms, redundancy is an effective means by which signal to noise ratios can be reduced without a technical examination. As a result, the chances of successful transmission can be greatly enhanced. However, human communication is not a simple encoding and decoding process. There is a gap between the semantic representation of sentences and the thoughts actually communicated by utterances. In fact, human communication possesses a unique inferential model, which distinguishes it from other forms of communications. So there is in need of a workable human communication model.It’s well known that "to be economical" is human’s instinct. In contrast, the term "redundancy" often invokes negative association, such as uselessness, wordiness, verbiage, prolixity. Some even regard redundancy as a roadblock to effective communication. Students are criticized for using more words when one word can do. So it seems quite necessary to draw a line of demarcation between positive redundancy and negative redundancy. If the redundancy is morphologically, grammatically, semantically correct or being deliberately used to achieve a pragmatic effect in the immediate context (cultural background), it is positive; otherwise it is negative. Positive redundancy depends on culture. The same redundancy regarded as positive in one culture may become negative in another. Positive redundancy deserves a justification. The term of "redundancy" also calls for a neutral definition.The English name of pragmatics was invented by Charles Morris in 1937. Though pragmatics was once described by Barhillel as the "wastebasket" of linguists and philosophers of language, the past decades have witnessed a booming period of this discipline. Attempts to interpret human communication from different aspects have mushroomed. Redundancy is not only a grammatical or semantical phenomenon but also a phenomenon of pragmatics. Qian (2002: 190) argues, "Acceptance of redundancy...is a matter of pragmatics". Unfortunately he has not gone any further. Redundancy has been neglected by semantics for a long time, then how do pragmatics explain this phenomenon? Thus we fall back on quite a few influential theories of pragmatics. They are Cooperative Principle, the Relevance Theory, the Politeness Principle, Face-saving Theory, etc. In order to interpret pragmatic redundancy more workably, we need to fine-tune the established models. We also think that knowing how to use positive redundancy tallies with Dell Hymes’ opinion of communicative competence.Culture and language are interrelated. Any kind of language research cannot ignore cultural factors. The study of redundancy is no exception. Negative pragmatic transfer of redundancy is studied in the field of interlanguage pragmatics. Two kinds of negative pragmatic transfer are then recognized: pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic. The author argues that apart from poor linguistic proficiency and insufficient exposure to authentic English environment, there are three basic reasons. Chinese and English are different semiotic systems. Compared with Chinese, English is associated with evident grammatical redundancy. The synthetic thinking mode together with the fuzzy logic has left a trace in the Chinese language, while hypotaxis is the natural outcome of formal logic pattern of western people’s mode of thinking. What’s more, different conventions also contribute to different acceptance. It’s hoped that the study of redundancy will help to bring about deeper language research and better foreign language teaching. At present, foreign language materials for class use cry for authenticity.To sum up, this paper attempts to investigate redundancy in terms ofhuman communication and pragmatics, and at the same time study how this work could benefit language research and English language teaching in China, and contribute to cross-cultural understanding. The study of redundancy, we believe, is bound to attract a great amount of intellectual attention更多还原