A Study Of Literary Character's Utterances From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

The present study is undertaken to investigate the character utterances in literature works on the basis of Jef Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory. It aims to dig out the mechanism involved in production of character utterance in literature works, that is, whether character utterances are the outcome of linguistic choices interadaptable with language user's physical world, social world and mental world.Jef Verschueren, Secretary--General of International Pragmatics Association, puts forward a theory of adaptation which is used to understand and explain pragmatics from a new perspective in Understanding Pragmatics.(2000) Moreover, he proposes that pragmatics is actually a perspective on language. He argued that pragmatics should be a general, cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in forms of behaviour. Linguistic Adaptation Theory is the core of the"Pragmatic Perspective". From the perspective of Adaptation Theory language use can be defined as the continuous making of linguistic choices. What makes it possible for the language users to make choices is the three properties of language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Language adaptation could be examined from four inter-related angles for a better pragmatic description and explanation, including contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and the salience of the adaptation process. The generation of meaning is a dynamic process operating on context-structure interrelationships at various levels of salience.Literature is the art of language, its purpose is to communicate with readers, literature creation and appreciation is a process of interaction between the author and the reader. In order to achieve the goal of communication, the creation of literary language has to choose the forms of language, including pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, sentence structure, the text type, codes, language style, etc, the content of language and pragmatic strategies. Therefore, literary language is also a result of making choices. Previous research of literary language is mostly in the study of the nature, features, structure, styles, utterance-building strategies, and rhetorical method of literary language, in the past, the previous studies are mostly from the respect of linguistic phenomenon. Few studies are from the western linguistic perspective. This paper tries to study on the creative use of character utterances in literature works using the adaptation theory, a new perspective of modern pragmatics.In this thesis, the researcher aims to answer two questions. First, can adaptation theory explain the literary character's utterances? Second, how does the adaptation theory adapt to literary character's utterances? Through detailed analysis and induction, the study indicates that the choice of character utterances in literature works is a process of intentional choice making so as to obtain or reach their communicative needs. These choices can occur at any levels of linguistic structure (including appropriate terms of address, language style, word, sentence type and conversational topic).And these choices are the result of adaptation to the mental world (including the utterer's motivation personality, beliefs and intention), social world (power correlated, the social relationships between the speaker and hearer, and social settings or culture) and physical world(space and time).Since the adaptation theory has its theoretical and practical value in the creation of literature works, we can figure out some instructive and important principles and rules guiding the creation of literary language and literature works. It is also helpful and useful for our understanding and appreciation of the literary language and literature works in the future.