On the afternoon of June 28, 2021, Professor Chen Xinren , Ph.D. supervisor of the School of Foreign Studies in Nanjing University, vice director of Department of Applied Foreign Language Studies, vice director of the China Center for Linguistic and Strategic Studies, director of Institute of Foreign Linguistics of Nanjing University, delivered a lecture entitled “Metapragmatic Interpretation of ‘Don’t Get me Wrong’ in Verbal Interaction”. The lecture was also attended by Professor Zhang Keding from Henan University and Professor Yuan Zhoumin from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. The lecture was held in the Zifeng Practical Training Room on the first floor of the College and was hosted by our Dean Ye Huijun, with more than 100 teachers and students attending the lecture.

Professor Chen Xinren stated that usually it is the norm for speakers to send out words and listeners to interpret them. Sometimes the speakers use some ways to help the listeners better interpret their words, such as rephrasing with “I mean”. Professor Chen attempted to explore another linguistic phenomenon from the metapragmatic perspective in which speakers sometimes deliberately use the meta-discourse “don’t get me wrong” to prompt listeners to interpret their words only literally, but provoke them to interpret them figuratively. During the lecture, Professor Chen explored the pragmatic context, pragmatic motives and pragmatic effects of discourse phenomena in the context of the authentic linguistic data.

In the end, Professor Chen kindly interacted with teachers and students and the atmosphere of on-site discussion was animated. Dean Ye Huijun made a concluding speech and expressed heartfelt thanks to Professor Chen, Professor Zhang, and Professor Yuan for their presence. In the meantime, she pointed out that solid linguistic knowledge is the foundation of scientific research and expressed her hope for the teachers and students in terms of rigorous academic spirit and the cutting-edge issues related to pragmatics. The lecture was informative and insightful for teachers and students to broaden the academic research horizons.