Allusional Pretense Approach To Verbal Irony And Its Pragmatic Functions

As one of the greatest writers in the world, Jane Austen exploits the art of irony supremely well. As to Pride and Prejudice, Austen's most popular and perhaps the greatest novel, it is most typical in its profuse use of irony in the portrayal of characters. The present thesis makes a tentative application of Kumon-Nakamura's allusional pretense theory to analyze examples of verbal irony in Pride and Prejudice, attempting to testify the descriptive and explanatory power of this theory, and to gain a deeper understanding of the theory as well as a detailed insight into the phenomenon of irony.Allusional pretense theory is a significant extension and elaboration of the violation based model and echoic-mention theory of irony. It proposes that irony has two features: allusion to a violated expectation or norm, and pragmatic insincerity. Based on whether the utterance involves any truth-value and the type of illocutionary acts involved, the ironic cases are divided into two broad categories in the thesis: assertive irony, and forms of irony involving no truth conditions, which then include directive irony, commisive irony and expressive irony.The thesis sets out to analyze how allusion and pragmatic insincerity can possibly be applied to the interpretation of verbal irony, and what the pragmatic functions of each ironical utterance are, e.g., face-saving for both speaker and hearer, conveying negative emotion, strengthening in-group solidarity, showing humor. As the present study is more concerned with the understanding of irony in context, such social factors as the power, distance and affection among the participants present are all accounted for in the data analysis.It is concluded that allusional pretense theory is far superior to both violation-based model and echoic mention theory in the interpretation of irony. Firstly, it depends less on the truth conditions of ironical utterances, providing plausible explanations for truthful assertions, and forms of irony that can not be judged as true or false, but sincere or insincere. Secondly, it makes it easier to identify speaker's attitude, the pragmatic functions of irony, and the target of irony. Thirdly, it imparts contextual information with ever more importance in the interpretation of irony, and explains why some ironies are easier to interpret than others. Lastly, it has given up the traditional bi-division of irony and non-irony, and instead distinguishes irony of different degrees.However, allusional pretense theory still has some deficiencies. For example, the two features of irony, allusion and pragmatic insincerity, are insufficient features for the perception and interpretation of irony. Meanwhile, it fails to address the role of other ironic cues. Moreover, the exact relationship of the two features in the process of irony interpretation still remains unclear.The present thesis displays once again the possibility and significance of applying linguistic theory to literary criticism of Pride and Prejudice. In short, it is through Austen's intelligent creation of those ironic interactions that the personality of the characters is brought to life vividly, while the present analysis of those ironic interactions enables the readers to have a deeper understanding of the conversational implicature inside, the whims, humor, wittiness and ridiculousness of the people she portrayed.