【正文】 d Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum…(William Shakespeare, Hamlet)Example eloquence would split rocks.In the examples above, though what hamlet describes as forty thousand brothers is beyond imagination, this exaggeration that is based on his true love of Ophelia is absolutely true, its presupposition is: He loves her. Because it is in accordance with the fact in essence, whatever he exaggerates, what he says can be counted to be true. In Example Two, Eloquence can split rock”, which is out of the question in reality, but it is undeniable that the man was very good eloquence. Its presupposition is: he is eloquent.Example 3: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. (Jane Austen, and Prejudice)Example 4: It39。s thinking depends largely on the process of prehension and application of rhetoric. To explain the pragmatic function of hyperbole from the perspective of cognition may help disclose the cognitive regularity and mode of language use governing pragmatic rhetoric to better prehend and apply various rhetorical devices to munication. The use of hyperbole may arouse people39。s identification of rhetorical thinking system and the prehension of themselves and the objective world. In people39。 D. Wilson who study rhetoric from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics argue that the adoption of hyperbole does not violate the maxim of quality, especially when the audience believes that the utterance meaning is similar to the viewpoints of the speaker, Namely, both have the similarity in logic and context. Sperber D.amp。s Cooperative Principle but also the Politeness Principle, Irony Principle, Interest Principle and Pollyanna Principle. The adoption of hyperbole floats the Cooperative Principle。 There is absolutely nothing on the telly this evening.Hyperbole is the deliberate use of overstatement, it is the name given to a gross exaggeration of the facts. When we say: Her face fell a mile (meaning she showed mild disappointment), we are employing hyperbole, though, in fact, it was impossible that her face fell a mile. When a person says: Come and look at the orchids. There are thousands of new shoots on them (In fact, there are only eighteen new shoots on the plants). It is, too, a case of hyperbole. Production of the rhetorical effect of hyperboleHyperbole is strikingly characterized by exaggeration. The rhetorical device presents a question why the language exaggerated so much can exist in language munication and be readily accepted by people. In addition, from the perspective of pragmatics, hyperbole evidently violates the maxim of quality which requires that the speaker should not say what he believes to be false or say that for which they lack adequate evidence. Leech explained the pragmatic function of hyperbole from the perspective of the interpersonal rhetoric. Leech viewed the pragmatic function of utterance as a bination of illocutionary force and rhetorical force. The rhetorical force refers to the utterance meaning produced by the varied extent that the speaker obeys the interpersonal rhetoric, namely the degree of truth, the degree of politeness and the degree of irony. Leech39。ve been working my fingers to the bone. Hyperbole is also found in the exaggerated use of universal quantifiers and references to the extremities of scales. For example, I39。 That39。s mind he is truly describing his intense feeling at the time. For example, when Hamlet tells Laertes of his love for Ophelia he thinks that he is telling the truth. I loved Ophelia: Forty thousand brothersCould not, with all their quantity of love,Make up my sum. (Shakespeare)Of course, the audience, rather than feel being deceived, will infer the true state of affairs with the hyperbole一He loves her extremely. Hyperbole is monly used as a sign of great emotion or passion as shown in the above examples. Among other examples are it made my hair stand on end, which describes the feeling at the moment一being very much frightened, and It made my blood boil, which shows that the speaker was really enraged. Both hyperboles imply an intensity of feeling. Idiomatic expressions of hyperbole are often found in ordinary conversations, as in Her eyes nearly popped out of her head。s description is stronger than is warranted by the state of affairs described. }4} In terms of pragmatics, hyperbole superficially violates Grice39。s thoughts rather than describing them faithfully The reconciliation strongly suggests that a future successful theory of meaning has to be founded on truth conditions after all. Pragmatic study of English figures of speech is therefore a promising and challenging field for those who are interested in the study of linguistics in future. The main content of the thesisChapter One is the introduction. First, it introduces the inseparable relationship between rhetoric and pragmatics. English rhetorical devices are divided into three categories in the thesis, five mon English figures of speech: hyperbole, irony, oxymoron, personification and metaphor are dealt with in it. Then the purpose, approach and significance of the study are described. The pragmatic inferential model based on Relevance Theory is raised in this part.Chapter Two to Six are the analysis of the five English figures of speech from the perspective of pragmatics respectively, which include the definitions, productions of the rhetorical effect and pragmatic functions of these rhetorical devices. Among them, irony is divided into two parts in Chapter Three: positive expression of the negative meaning and negative expression of the positive meaning, FaceSaving 39。s see the traditional views on metaphor: Searle (1979) discusses two views on metaphors: the traditional parison view and the interaction view. Comparison theories say that metaphorical utterances involve similarity, resemblance or a pariso