A Pragmatic Study On Personal Referential Strategies In The Drama The Thunderstorm

This thesis paper focuses on exploring the personal referential strategies used by theeight main characters in their conversations in The Thunderstorm written by thefamous playwright Cao Yu. Firstly, we analyze all the personal referential expressionsused to name or mention the speaker himself/herself, the hearer or another person.Then we focus on the personal referential speech act and the various referentialstrategies. This paper is a case study on the Chinese personal referential strategies.The result reveals that there are eight different types of referential strategies used bythe eight main characters in their conversations. They are namely: 1) the generalreferral, 2) identifying features or status, 3) emphasizing features or status, 4)satirizing the hearer or another person, 5) downplaying the referential target, 6)commending the referential target, 7) censuring the referential target and the last 8)covering identity. Among those eight types of strategies, the first four are commonlyused by the speaker to name or mention himself/herself, the hearer or another person.The strategies of 5, 6 and 7 are performed by the speaker to name or mention thehearer and another person. And the last is solely employed by the speaker referring tohimself/herself. Generally speaking, the speaker in The Thunderstorm tends to usesimilar personal referential strategies in referring to different targets. Still, there aresome strategies that are unique and are used to name or mention a certain person. Wetry to explain this phenomenon at the end of Chapter 4.