A Study On Speech Acts In The Use Of English Proverbs

Proverbs are characterized by their long history, wide range of sources, sweet melodies, rich images, expressiveness and thought-provoking ideas. Their language is succinct. They are rich in morals and philosophy, and they state general truth or give advice. This dissertation illustrates domestic studies of the proverbs and their relevant studies abroad as well. These studies mainly center on the researches into the syntactic and semantic features of proverbs, the relations between proverbs and culture, proverb translations and their classroom teaching. But nobody so far has studied proverbs in accordance with Speech Act Theory and explored how proverbs can be used to perform various kinds of speech acts.Speech Act Theory is a popular topic of discussion in modern linguistics. Some famous linguists, such as J. L. Austin, John R. Searle, Noam Chomsky, Peter Newmark, and Eugene. A. Nida, have made penetrating expositions about Speech Act Theory. Some expositions from their works are quoted to support the author's points of view. Besides the famous theorists mentioned in the preceding lines, some scholars at home country also give thorough interpretations about Speech Act Theory. The previous studies of the proverbs are confined to structure, figure of speech and lexicology in most cases. The previous study limitations of proverbs cannot offer profound knowledge of the proverbs. So the author investigates the proverbs in accordance with Speech Act Theory to enrich our understanding of English proverbs.Austin advanced five categories of illocutionary acts, to wit, verdictives, exercitives, commissives, expositives, behabitives. Searle specified five types of illocutionary acts, namely, representative, directive, commissive, expressive, declaration. The author's own classification of illocutionary force consists of three parts: frontal illocutionary force, public illocutionary force, and lateral illocutionary force. The three tentative propositions about the illocutionary force produced in proverbs are enlightened by Austin's distinction of meaning and illocutionary force, and also by Searle's taxonomy of illocutionary acts. Among the three dimensions,...