An Analysis Of Conversational Art In Pride And Prejudice

Jane Austen is very subtle in her portrayal of character. Her intelligent sense of humour especially enables her to see the follises and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies of the people she portrayed. This article takes "Pride and Prejudice" as an example to analyses the conversational art from the aspect of linguistics. It is divided into the following parts:Introduction: It gives a general survey of various criticisms of Jane Austen's art, provides the viewpoint of the article.Chapter One: Speech-act theory and its possible application to Pride and Prejudice. Speech-act theory analyses language from the aspect of dynamic state, the center of it is to understand the illocutionary meaningthrough the language superficial structure and the pragmatic background. In the novel, from the ironic evaluation and the intricate dialogue, we can clearly feel that the implied meaning and the literal meaning are so different. This chapter analyses the character's conversational art of the novel by way of speech act theory to show how she depicts the character, expresses the feelings and catches the theme.Chapter Two: The cooperative principle and conversational implicature in the novel. Paul Grice proposes that all speakers, regardless of their cultural background, adhere to a basic principle governing conversation which she termed the cooperative principle. However, Jane Austen deliberately violates the cooperative principle, and producesconversational implicature, laying the humorous and ironic tone for the whole novel.Chapter Three: An analysis of direct speech and free indirect speech in Pride and Prejudice .In the direct speech, the author can faithfully produce the original speaker's syntactic and lexical structure, and even more faithful reproduction could be made by representing as closely as possible the pronunciation of the original sentence as well. What's more, free indirect speech is an extremely useful vehicle for casting an ironic light on what the character says. In this chapter, through the analysis of direct speech and free indirect speech, we can see how Jane Austen skillfully satiries people's hypocrisy, vanity and stupidity; how she uses natural dialogues telling us about the character through their own mouths.Conclusion: It is no exaggeration to say that within the limited sphere, Jane Austen is unequaled. If we can combine the modern linguistics and literary critic's view, we can further understand the essence of Pride and Prejudice.