The Analysis Of The Communication Between Literary Author And Reader Through The Adventure Of Tom Sawyer

Recently discourse analysis has aroused considerable interests in the field of applied linguistics. Literature, being an important type of discourse, has been the focus of study. Reading literature has been taken as a communication between literary author and reader, while fewer studies have focused on the effect of communication, especially on reader's response.This thesis studies the characteristics of the communication between literary author and reader through Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It analyzes some of the main stylistic features of the novel to see how literary author controls reader's response through different levels of stylistic choices, and then focuses on investigating responses to the novel from readers who are in different ages and educational background. Qualitative studies and questionnaires are applied in the research. Results show that readers from different groups have a similar response to the novel on the discourse level, while disparities exist in understanding of the novel on the rhetorical level, like irony. What could explain that should be the readers' language competence, educational background, the range of reading and experience of life. This study discusses some linguistic characters at the discourse level, lexical and grammatical level. Implications are given in the last chapter which might be of some reference value for the effect of communication in reading novels.