A Pragmastylistic Study Of The Self-Writing Of American Women Playwrights In The Twentieth Century

The present study is intended to construct a feasible pragmastylistic analytical framework which is then undertaken to investigate dramatic texts written by American women playwrights in the twentieth century, with the aim at finding out their self-writing by means of certain linguistic choices.In preparation to develop the analytical framework, a review of the previous studies on pragmastylistics on literary texts and dramatic texts is presented. The other part of the literature review is concerned with women playwrights'self-writing, another research objective of the present study. Then, a tentative pragmastylistic framework for the analysis of dramatic texts is proposed, in view of the conventional stylistic study. The integrated analytical framework is organized at three levels, namely, lexical, syntactical and discoursal. At each level, four pragmatic techniques stemming from research achievements in pragmatics are chosen. The criteria for their choice are their power in finding out linguistic choices of women playwrights'self-writing, the objective of this dissertation. At lexical level, we have chosen person deixis, hedges, discourse markers and iteratives. The syntactical study includes illocutionary acts, tag questions, counterfactual conditionals and cleft sentences. We compose the discoursal study with turn-taking, pragmatic ambivalence, discourse role and scenic context.To test the validity and applicability of the framework, five plays,'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman, Trifles by Susan Glaspell, A Raisin in the Sun by Loraine Hansberry, The Sisters Rosensweig and An American Daughter by Wendy Wasserstein, are interpreted respectively at three levels. The demonstration analysis of the dramatic texts is both qualitative and quantitative. From the analytical results, we find that these women playwrights succeed in writing women of their time with deliberate linguistic choices at three levels. They write women's love, such as mother's love for children, wife's love for husband, daughter's love for mother; they write women's plight like suppression from men and from society, their hard struggle in life; they write women's mutual understanding and their mutual support; they write women's characteristics, presenting various women images in front of us.The significance of this study is as follows: 1) a feasible pragmastylistic analytical framework concerning three levels, lexical, syntactical and discoursal levels, which is integrated with pragmatic concepts and achievements following the conventional stylistic study, broadens the application studies of pragmatics. 2) The qualitative and quantitative demonstration analysis of dramatic texts not only proves that the pragmastylistic framework proposed is operative but also reveals that women playwrights have made unique linguistic choices in their dramatic writing, which enriches the study of stylistics, particularly its important branch, pragmastylistic study. 3) Linguistic data is limited to dramatic texts, and further narrowed down to the works of American women playwrights in the twentieth century. The new pragmastylistic perspective bestows much light on the presentation of their special linguistic choices at lexical, syntactical and discoursal levels in their dramatic texts. The three-level linguistic choices turn out to be the forceful means in helping them accomplish the women's self-writing, anchored in women's love for family, women's plight, women's mutual understanding and various women's characteristics, which imports something fresh into the feminist literature review.