Author(s)

Zhixia Yang

Corresponding Author

Zhixia Yang

Abstract

Relevance Theory, as an inferential theory, raised and developed by Sperber and Wilson (1986; 1995), is mainly contributed to the study of ordinary verbal communication. How far it can help in analysing the interpretation of literary texts still remains to be discussed. This paper aims to use this theoretical machinery to interpret the fiction Everybody’s fool written by Richard Russo to argue that the same mechanism used in ordinary utterances also works in the interpretation of metaphor, the stylistic effects of a literary work at discoursal level and explains how a lengthy fiction achieves its relevance.

Keywords

Relevance Theory, Weak Implicatures, Authorial Intention, Metaphor, Optimal Relevance, Discoursal Level