A Pragmatic Study On Jane Eyre

The research of the literature is closely connected with linguistics which is the way to reveal the functions of language. Criticisms and reviews on Jane Eyre, which is the classic of the well-known British woman writer Charlotte Bronte, have been numerous and have laid emphasis on the existent subject matters and approaches since 19th century. However there are few researches that discussed the novel from the perspective of the pragmatic approaches, so the author prefers to discuss the dialogues in the novel in detail from the perspective of pragmatic approaches.Literature researches and reviews about Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre have looked back upon since its publication in 19th century, and the author of this thesis discussed the necessity and feasibility of the pragmatic perspective to study Jane Eyre. The pragmatic theories in this thesis include the Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature maxim of Grice, the Politeness Theory of Brown and Levinson, and the Politeness Principle of Leech, which provide a theory frame and research tool for the analysis of the dialogues in Jane Eyre. The Cooperative Principle and its maxims explain the implied meaning, and explain how to generate and understand the conversational implicature, while the Politeness Principle explains why people prefer to express their ideas indirectly and implicitly.After many times of comparison, the author found that characters in Jane Eyre tend to violate the CP to employ indirect expressions to produce conversational implicature. And there are plenty of classic dialogues which use indirect expressions. The author believes that the thesis manifests Charlotte's realism and Jane Eyre's constant attractiveness on one hand, which can reaffirm and enrich the conventional criticism and art charming of Charlotte's novels, and on the other hand, it can clarify the validity of using pragmatic theory in analysis of literary dialogues. It can also provide some enlightment for the understanding and appreciation of the novel.