A Study Of The Interpersonal Relationships In The Catcher In The Rye

As we know, language is a very important tool for people to communicate, and one of the main purposes of communication is to interact with other people: to establish and maintain appropriate social links with them. In current linguistic and literary studies we can easily observe a tendency to place greater stress on the interpersonal, variational and negotiable aspects of language in contrast to conventional concerns with the more ideational, context-based and rigid relations between forms and meanings.We can use the interpersonal meaning to analyze the social status, the relationship and the attitudes of speakers or characters. In literary works, the study of interpersonal meaning provides us a new perspective to the study of the interpersonal relationship between author and readers; the interpersonal relationship between the narrator and readers; and the interpersonal relationship between the narrator and other characters.There are different ways of realizing the interpersonal meaning in literary works, and different approaches can be employed together to achieve this goal of interaction. This thesis will mainly use appraisal theory, belonging to systematic functional linguistics and Cooperative Principle (CP) and Politeness Principle (PP), belonging to pragmatics, to explore the narrator-reader relationship and narrator-character relationship in the novel The Catcher in the Rye.Through our analysis, we find that:First, it is an important approach to study literary works from the perspective of interpersonal meanings, because every literary work has the dialogistic nature and has the intention of communication among the author, the text and readers. The study of the interpersonal relationship is a good way to understand the theme of a literary work.Secondly, there are various ways of realizing the interpersonal meanings in literary works. In this study, the narrator's efforts of bringing in different voices and making dialogues with readers are effectively realized by the employment of the engagement terms, such as modality, comment adjuncts, concessive and the interpersonal "you". In the analysis of cooperation and politeness, the following of CP and PP reflects the narrator's efforts of behaving in an "adult" way; while the violation of CP and PP reflects the speakers' differences in their way of thinking, their social status and their relationships.Thirdly, the present study focuses on narrator-reader relationship and narrator-character relationship in The Catcher in the Rye. Through the analysis, we find that the narrator employs various strategies to interact with readers and respects readers' right to have different voices. As to the narrator-character relationship, we find that the narrator has quite contrary relationships with the innocent world and the "phony" adult world.Fourthly, as for the educational function, the study of The Catcher in the Rye reminds us of the importance of paying more attention to adolescents. In the process of growing up, understanding and communication are more important for them than just material supply.