| With the development of pragmatics, many of its core theories, such as speech act theory (SAT for short), have found a successful application in literary critics, thus hastening the appearance of a new interdiscipline - Literary Pragmatics, in which SAT stands as a dominant theory, having witnessed a wide range of application.Irony bears a close relation with SAT. Their affinities are embodied in four respects: 1) Irony and Indirect Speech Acts; 2) Irony and Sincerity Principle; 3) Irony and Illocutionary Force; 4) Irony and Perlocutionary Effect.Jane Austen was a satirist. Irony stands as the most protruding characteristic, and sets the basic tone in Austen's novels. However, many a scholar focus on the ideological content of Austen novels, instead of her artistic language, let alone an extensive and systematic research from the perspective of SAT. Since Austen herself paid so much attention to her refined language, we have no reason to neglect it in studying. On the contrary, great importance should be attached to it and a careful analysis must be proceeded, too. In this way, not only can Austen's artistic language be enriched, but it is also possible for us to acquire a deeper and more thorough understanding of Austen, so as to walk nearer to her.In view of this, this dissertation draws on the methodology of Austin-Searle's SAT, a core theory in literary pragmatics, to proceed an analysis of P&P, aiming at that a variety of ironic speech acts in this book can find convincing illustrations with SAT as the background and vice versa, that is, to affirm that the application of SAT in literary criticism and appreciation has a solid theoretical foundation and is practically feasible.Finally, the writer suggests spreading this experience to all ironic novels, and calls for a more thorough and systematic research of this fiction as well as other irony-featured novels with the adoption of more pragmatic theories. |
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