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Chapter OneIntroduction

1.1 Research Motivation
Negation, a type of linguistic phenomenon prevailing universally in all thelanguages in the world, plays an important role in daily communication. As a specialform of negation in natural languages, Metalinguistic Negation (MN) has beenattracting a growing number of researchers’attention in the past decades. Otto Jespersen(1924) notices that negation operator “not” may have two opposite meanings: “lessthan” vs. “more than”. Jespersen, therefore, labels the meaning of “less than” asunmarked negation, while the meaning of “more than” as marked negation. By using thesecond negative meaning, the word after “not” should be stressed and the negated clausemust be followed by another clause which is used to rectify or correct the negatedcontent. For example:In 1975, Ducrot presents the concept of MN firstly that is used to explainpresupposition. Ducrot (1975) holds that Descriptive Negation (DN) is mainly used tocomment on facts, so it can reserve presuppositions. On the contrary, MN is employedto judge on utterances whereby it can cancel presuppositions. As is shown in thefollowing example:Following Ducrot, Horn (1985) presents a relatively comprehensive frame aboutMN. Horn believes that negative operator is pragmatically rather than semanticallyambiguous. In DN, the negative word “not” is a truth-functional operator which dealswith proposition. Conversely, in MN, it pertains to a non-truth functional one that isexplained as “I object to U”, and U refers to the previous content. Apparently, therectified clause of MN is paradox but it has the effect of double processing.
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1.2 Research Objectives and Research Questions
This study aims to take a cognitive pragmatic approach to analyze the mechanismof MN’s production and understanding by adopting the concept of deferred ostension inthe framework of Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1995). Deferred ostension is ameans of pragmatic inference which exists not only in DN but also in MN. It acts as an ostensive behavior stimulating receptors to realize the implicit communicative intentionof utterance. Therefore, ascertaining the triggers of deferred ostension in MN is the keyto the understanding the essence of MN. They serve as ostensive stimulus directinghearers to change their cognitive environment and infer speakers’ communicativeintentions.The thesis tries to answer the following two questions:Firstly, what are the triggers of deferred ostension in Metalinguistic Negation?Secondly, how are these triggers used to explain the mechanism of producing andunderstanding MN?In order to answer the two questions, the thesis adopts cognitive pragmaticperspective. It accounts for the ostensive-inferential process of communication wherebyMN is produced and comprehended in natural context on the basis of Relevance Theory.According to Relevance Theory, human cognition tends to pursue the maximized andoptimal relevance during the process of communications. The thesis proposes that thetriggers of deferred ostension are the maximized and optimal relevance to construe MN.Besides, they play important roles in the relevance of human cognition which helpsreceptors to achieve maximum contextual effect in communications with minimumefforts.
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Chapter TwoLiterature Review

2.1 Metalinguistic Negation
From the viewpoint of pragmatics, negation contains two types