A Pragmatic Analysis Of Female Language In Sitcom Conversations

The female language study mainly involves phonology, lexicology, and syntax in previous researches. The research from the pragmatic angle is rare, especially the contrastive case analysis between English and Chinese. Therefore, the female heroines'speech from Chinese sitcom and American sitcom (I Love My Family and Growing Pains) are taken as the research objects and is analyzed from a pragmatic perspective.The analysis is carried out from the points of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Speech Act Theory. And the following issues will be mainly concerned: 1) What female speech differences exist in flouting the CP, observing the PP and adopting speech acts patterns under distinctive cultural ideologies? 2) What kind of cultural elements may bring this out? 3) Are both Chinese and American women the second–citizenship and subordinate to men? Through the comparative analysis, the findings are obtained as follows: 1) In the four maxims of the Cooperative Principle, the Chinese female runs counter to the Quality Maxim in the dialogue with her daughter and husband but the American female mainly infracts the Quantity Maxim. The Manner Maxim is seldom breached in both American and Chinese female speeches. 2) In terms of Politeness Principle, the Tact and Generosity Maxims are overwhelmingly employed in the American and Chinese female speeches. The Chinese female supplies more Agreement and Sympathy Maxims to others'speech. However, the American female adopts more appraisal strategies. 3) Except for the expressives in Searl's speech act classification,other items such as representatives, directives, commissives are applied more or less to the same degree for both the American and Chinese female speeches. However, the representative speech act is employed most frequently. The above results may be actually affected by certain cultural factors. English and Chinese are a part of the low-context culture and high-context culture respectively; The American possesses the concept of individualism, but the Chinese people advocate collectivism; The Chinese traditional culture such as"the doctrine of the mean Confucian"and the concept of"equality"in America influence their females greatly in many aspects, especially the speech. Finally, it is proved by these data that both American and Chinese females have their independent status and subordinate to nobody.This thesis is expected to be a complement to the female language study so as to make the foreign language teaching more effective and promote the intercultural communication.