A Study On The Commissive Speech Acts In The Drama Sunrise From The Perspective Of The Speech Act Metonymy Theory

The thesis attempts to make an exploration on the commissive speech acts in thedrama Sunrise from the perspective of the speech act metonymy theory, which includesPanther and Thornburg’s speech act metonymy theory and Hernandez and Mendoza’spragmatic parameters.The advent of cognitive linguistics expands the research field of the speech actsand provides a new perspective for the related study. Based on Austin and Searle’sspeech act theory, Panther and Thornburg for the first time studied the metonymysystem of the speech acts from the cognitive perspective. They put forward the speechact metonymy in1997. They believe that metonymy is instrumental in indirectlyaccomplishing the speech acts and demonstrate that a speaker can perform a speech actby mentioning an attribute of that speech act. In1999, they put forward thestate-of-affairs scenario theory, which made the speech act metonymy theory morecomplete. According to them, speech acts are special state-of-affairs scenario, and astate-of-affairs scenario consists of three parts: the BEFORE, the CORE/EFFECTS, andthe AFTER. In a metonymic operation, each part can stand for the whole state-of-affairs scenario, so the speaker can perform a speech act by mentioning a part of thewhole state-of-affairs scenario. However, Panther and Thornburg don’t consider theeffects of social factors, such as power relationship, social distance, and etc. Therefore,based on their theory, Hernandez and Mendoza put forward the illocutionary ICM in2002, which further completed the speech act metonymy theory. The illocutionary ICMshould not only include Panther and Thornburg’s state-of-affairs scenario, but alsoinclude Hernandez and Mendoza’s pragmatic parameters. They put forward tenpragmatic parameters. However, only six of them are included in the classification ofthe subtypes of the commissives, such as cost-benefit, power, degree of the speaker’swill, degree of the addressee’s will, degree of mitigation, and degree of social distance.After the exploration of the commissive speech acts in the drama Sunrise, thethesis has the following findings: Firstly, with respect to the features of the characters’ CSA metonymy structures,the structure CORE is the most frequently used in the drama and the structure BEFOREis the second frequently used structure. With respect to the combined structures, thestructure BEFORE+CORE is most frequently used in the drama.Secondly, with respect to the factors influencing these features, it’s found that thecharacter’s selection of the phases is influenced by the character’s personality traits, hisor her social status, the power relationship between the speaker and the hearer, theconversational goal of the interlocutors and the social context which the interlocutorsare in.Thirdly, the distributions and functions of the speech act metonymy structures varyin subtypes of the commissives. The structure CORE is the most widely used in all thesubtypes of the commissives, which is often used to present the content of thecommissives. The structure BEFORE is mostly used in refusals, which not onlyindicates the reasons for the refusals but also demonstrates that the speaker has noability to do A or A is not desirable for the hearer.This thesis explores and analyzes the features of the characters’ usage of the speechact structures, the distributions and the functions of the speech act structures used insubtypes of the commissives. It may expand the researches on the commissive speechacts from the cognitive angle and provide a new perspective for the related study. Thestudy may help better understand the drama Sunrise and may provide a new perspectivefor the related research.