A Study Of The "Swearing" Speech Act In Dream Of The Red Chamber

This is an explicit study of the speech act of "li ma"or "swearing". It narrowly defines swearing as direct speeches behind the word "ma"and behind the words that contain the "ma"morpheme. Based on the database of Peking University, this project sorted out over 90 sentences from Dream of the Red Chamber, that fall under the Chinese "ma"definition for analysis, and probed into those apparently "ma"meaning-bearing discourses or sentences one by one. The ultimate purposes of this study were to detect and determine the structural models of a swearing discourse, the pragmatic functions of swearing, the pragmatic parameters of swearing, and the responding strategies of swearingand their effects. It was found that structural models of a swearing discourse possess 3 parts: the swearing appellation, the contumelious special swearing expression, and the auxiliary statement of swearing cause. Then 30 odd pragmatic functions were reported in the study that strongly display their competences in helping people, as those in Dream of the Red Chamber, to express their subtle feelings to the full in intricate situations and under complex mentality. Meanwhile, 4 pragmatic parameters were discovered in this analysis of data: the sex character of swearing explaining how sex as a pragmatic factor influences the speech act of swearing; the socio-cultural character of swearing which demonstrates how 8 aspects of socio-cultural elements affect the realization of swearing in English and Chinese; the courtesy character of swearing, and the psycho-cognitive character of swearing. Finally in terms of the responding strategies of swearing and their effects, the study evidenced that many strategies were used and that 3 possible types of effects were produced when confronting swearing: no response, expectant moderate response, and excessive response. This investigation confined its in-depth study of swearing by basing on the data in the masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber. Different from previous studies, it revealed the rudimental laws of swearing, and it is an example of exemplifying the utility and explanatory adequacy of pragmatics through concrete data as well. In addition, the study of swearing in Dream of the Red Chamber might indirectly add understanding to our further appreciation of this great work, though our original intent was the "swearing" speech act.