Analysis of Pragmatic Ambivalence from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Pragmatic ambivalence refers to a linguistic phenomenon in which the communicator uses vague or ambiguous words to convey the illocutionary force to the other party in a specific context. It is an indispensable communicative strategy for successful communication in daily communication activities. Relevance theory can explain pragmatic ambivalence from three aspects: intentional relevance, contextual relevance and relevance reasoning. Therefore, relevance theory has strong explanatory power and applicability for pragmatic ambivalence as a communicative strategy. Using relevance theory to study pragmatic ambivalence is conducive to people’s further understanding of pragmatic ambivalence as a linguistic phenomenon, and has a very positive significance for the research and development of ambivalence in pragmatics.