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Guo Ma (Chinese-specific cursing terms) is a type of scolding expressions widely spread in colloquial Chinese, expressing such emotion as dislike, grudge, indignation. Searching the internet reveals that, while there are many comments and essays about this kind of words, a theoretically systematical discussion of their construction, pragmatic and textual function is rare. This paper, based on corpus observation and questionnaire analysis, aims at exploring the composition, types, functions and pragmatic forces of Chinese-specific cursing terms ta ma de and its variants. It is revealed that: (1) There are eight main types of Chinese-specific cursing words in ta ma de and its variants; (2) These cursing terms under observation convey not only negative attitude and emotion as traditionally recognized but also neutral or even positive attitude and emotion; (3) Chinese national curse ta ma de and its variants are phrases used not only to perform the pragmatic function of swearing but also play a grammatical cognitive function. The researchers do not intend to offer a deliberate justification for these terms but show that they are not diabolic expressions and deserve a full attention of linguists.

On the basis of reviewing the previous reading strategies research, we find that the previous three general models of reading strategies have their own limitations and that, although all the previous models take notice of the role relevance plays in reading, they invariably fail to specify how relevance functions in reading. Relevance is not only a notion of large category which includes relevant information, relevant knowledge of language, culture, background, context, etc. necessary for reading comprehension, but also a mechanism by which these aspects of information and knowledge are accessed and retrieved for reading process and comprehension process. Enlightened by the Relevance Theory, the authors in the present research aims at analyzing strategy for reading and reading instruction and proposing a relevance-based approach to reading and reading instruction. They have given in it a systematic analysis of the cognitive features and cognition laws involved in reading and comprehension and put forward the notion of Relevance Strategy in reading and reading instruction, arguing that reading or reading instruction is a cognitive-inferential process, with Relevance as the kernel, of searching relevant information and knowledge and arriving at maximal relevance (i.e. solution or interpretation of reading material). Either the bottom-up, or top-down, or interactive models of strategies cannot ignore the kernel function of relevance. In the application of sub-strategies, relevance is also playing a major role. The authors, therefore, also argue that the traditional decoding model of Reading Comprehension instruction should be replaced by a pragma-cognitive model. Reading (Comprehension) should not be regarded as merely decoding words, phrases or sentences, but as an integral cognition of the reading material. A teacher should help students form a unitary cognitive environment so as to cognize the reading material as a whole.