A Pragmatic Approach To The Conversations In Fortress Besieged

Literature expresses itself through language, so literary language can also be approached through linguistic theories, which aim to reveal the language expression means. When we combine the linguistic theories and the study of literary works and attach more importance to the study of the literary language—the medium of literary works, we are bound to deepen the literary research, broaden the view of literary study, grasp better the essence of literary communication and make the contents in the literary works tridimensional; at the same time, our effort will broaden the view of linguistic research and provide more material for the linguistic research.This dissertation tries to study the conversations in Fortress Besieged with such pragmatic theories closely related to conversations as the Speech-act Theory (SAT), the Cooperative Principle (CP) and the Politeness Principle (PP), with the hope of further proving the values and functions of pragmatic theories in the appreciation and research of literary works and deepening the combination of pragmatic theories and the study of literary works so as to further reveal the conversational art of the literary works. The opening part is devoted to the theoretical framework and literature review, in which we make a brief review of the development and basic concepts of the three relevant pragmatic theories and a brief introduction to the novel and its author as well as the previous researches on the novel. The novel is found to be meaningful and thought-provoking, whose main characters are well-educated young people. Their conversations, which bear both the traditional Chinese characteristics and western cultural features, are very important in the illustration of the characters. What follows is mainly committed to the speech-act analyses of some typical conversations in the first three chapters of the novel. Through the individual and comparative studies of the conversations, it is found that, though there are some differences in subtle aspects in view of the gender difference in the conversations, still there are some similarities and general rules in illustrating the hero and the heroine. The next focus of attention is on analyzing the Implicatures of the illustrative conversations resulting from the observation of and the flouting, in particular, of the Co-operative Principle. In the meantime, we will analyze the main reason for the flouting of the CP, that is, the observation of the Politeness Principle. Last but not least, the last chapter, in light of Gu Yue-guo's PP, is to research the phenomena and application of the strategies of being polite employed in some typical conversations in Fortress Besiege.We hope that our effort will advance the study of such a popular novel, help the readers appreciate the conversational glamour and deepen the readers' understanding of the characters.