The Contextual Analysis Of A Rose For Emily

It is Malinowski who coined the term"context of situation"firstly. Ever since the notion"context"comes into being, more and more linguists begin to research context from different aspects. As the core concept of pragmatics, context gradually draws the special attention from those experts of pragmatics. As pragmatics develops into cognitive pragmatics, context gains a new research angle and it develops into cognitive context. Among those various theories, Sperber and Wilson's version of cognitive context is the most typical one. The application of the theories of context into the analysis of the literal works is not rare. While analyzing the literal works in perspective of cognitive context proves to be a challenging task. This thesis aims at applying the theories of context and cognitive context to analyze the literal work, i.e. William Faulkner's short story A Rose for Emily. Hence the functions and importance of context in analyzing the literal works are exemplified.The first chapter of this thesis is about the brief review of the theories of pragmatics and context. Since context covers such a broad range and different linguists research it from different angles, the theories of context are numerous and complicated. The theoretical basis of context to be discussed in this thesis is in perspective of pragmatics. The first part of this chapter is a literary review of the development of pragmatics. The second part is the most important part of this chapter. It is about the theories of context, which include the development of context, its definition, categories, dynamic nature and its functions. The theories of context are so complicated the author just tries to draw a comparatively clear outline.The second chapter of this thesis is about the review of the theories of cognitive pragmatics and cognitive context. The first part of this chapter deals with cognitive pragmatics, which contains the definition, the philosophical origin of cognitive pragmatics, the relevance theory and ostensive-inferential theory of Sperber and Wilson. The second part is concerning the choice of the contextual factors. The third part is about the basic theories of cognitive context, which contains the definition, characteristics, the content and the operation mechanism of cognitive context. The fourth part studies the properties of cognitive context. The fifth part illustrates the importance of the study of cognitive context. The sixth part involves the relationship between cognitive context and discourse understanding. The seventh part is the theory of physical context.The third chapter is the general introduction of A Rose for Emily. The first part is the plot review. The second part is the character analysis of this short story.The fourth chapter is the most important and difficult part of this thesis. First the author uses the theories of traditional context to analyze the short story especially those four dialogues in the novel, which provide us with a clue for analyzing the story. Furthermore the author uses the relevance theory and ostensive-inferential theory of Sperber and Wilson to analyze the text and the dialogues. The contextual analysis of this short story further identifies the important functions of context in the appreciation of literal works. We can only fully understand the meaning of the literal works by reading the works in context.The last part of this thesis is the conclusion. The author summarizes the whole thesis and emphasizes the importance of context in communication and the appreciation of literal works again.