A Study On Pragma-literary Functions And Literary Connotations Of Allegory

As a rhetorical device,allegory refers to a figure of speech by which the speaker borrows an existent story or temporarily makes up a story to explain something inconvenient to say or something difficult to express.In this way,people can realize their communicative purposes,such as satirizing and persuading,and complete the communicative task.Allegory is usually applied in various literary works,such as poems and novels,and also it appears in daily communication.Although researches of allegory have come into linguistic field in recent years,most of them are confined to the cognitive explanation and connotative perception.However,some of the researches are separated from literary works to simply focus on exploring its connotations,which neglect its functions and effects in literary texts.Therefore,the thesis pays much attention to discussing the following four questions:(1)What kind of functions of allegory can be performed in specific contexts of literary works?(2)What is the influence of allegory on the four literary elements(character,dialogue,plot and theme)of literary works?(3)In literary works,what is the relationship between the functions of allegory and the literary connotations?(4)What are the real literary connotations of allegory conveyed in different literary works?Based on the aforementioned questions,this thesis tries to take an oral literary work,Two Broke Girls,as a typical case and collects all the allegories(253 examples in total)appearing in the former four seasons as the data.Firstly,the research takes Searle’s Indirect Speech Act theory as the theoretical framework.Also,combining the relevant critiques of Habermas(1970)and Mey(2006)to analyze the allegories in specific contexts of the sitcom,the thesis analyzes its local pragma-literary functions.Secondly,in terms of the four literary elements,the study tries to carry out the global pragma-literary functions of allegory in the whole sitcom.Thirdly,according to the background of the sitcom,the relationship between pragma-literary functions of allegory and the literary connotations are involved in this thesis,and its literaryconnotations conveyed in the sitcom are explained as well.The research provides some major findings as follows:(1)In specific contexts of literary works,the local pragma-literary functions of allegory can be performed as satirical function,persuasive function,admonitory function,critical function,educational function and recreational function;(2)In the whole sitcom,the global pragma-literary functions of allegory can be performed in shaping different characters,enriching the contents of dialogues,promoting the development of plots and disclosing the theme;(3)The local pragma-literary functions of allegory are the basis for the realization of global pragma-literary functions,while the global functions are the macro reflection of local functions;(4)The pragma-literary functions of allegory contribute to deeply expressing its literary connotation.In terms of the background of Two Broke Girls,allegory expresses two types of connotations: revealing the racism and criticizing the class system.In this thesis,it is quite meaningful to make an exploration on the pragma-literary functions of allegory and the literary connotations.Theoretically speaking,combining the ISA(short for Indirect Speech Act)theory with social factors,the thesis provides a strong explanation for the analysis of pragma-literary functions.In literary sense,on one hand,the thesis generally discusses the pragma-literary functions of allegory from two levels in the sitcom;on the other hand,by combining the background of the sitcom,the thesis analyzes its literary connotations from the perspective of pragma-literary function,which tries to broaden people’s horizon about allegory and help them to better understand allegory.