A Study Of Pragmatic Empathy In The Origin Of Waves

This thesis applies the Linguistic Adaptation Theory, the Theory of Pragmatic Empathy, the Face-saving Theory and methods of Critical Discourse Analysis in the analysis of pragmatic empathy in the Canadian novel The Origin of Waves. It aims to study the representations and functions of pragmatic empathy.This thesis selects 18 dialogues from this novel and analyzes the production and perception of pragmatic empathy from the following three levels: eliciting empathy, giving empathy and receiving empathy, and summarizes its representations. Besides, its pragmatic functions are summarized, that is, establishing a harmonious relationship, improving appropriateness of one's utterances and improving communicative competence.This thesis has some practical significance. First, teachers could help their students learn to use pragmatic empathy properly so as to improve their linguistic performance to some extent. Second, if people could use pragmatic empathy skillfully, their communication would be more effective. Third, this thesis is a tentative interdisciplinary research between linguistics and literature.