An Analysis Of Personalities In Pride And Prejudice From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Literature is the art of language. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The study of literature can not be independent of linguistics which reveal the means of language manifestation; the study of linguistics can not be separated from the highly refined literature. If we combine modern linguistics with literary criticism, we can grasp the essence of literature. Nowadays, more and more researchers turn to linguistics in their study of literature works.Pride and prejudice written by Jane Austen is the one of the most popular novels in English literature. Although it portrays the quiet and comfortable rural life of the capitalists class at the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers.Many scholars have studied its plot, the view of marriage, narrating methods, etc. from the perspective of literature. By contrast, there are relatively few researches studying the personalities in the novel from the perspective of linguistics. In this thesis the author will analyze the conversations in this novel from the prospective of co-operative principle by the qualitative method, and then summarize the personalities of the seven main characters in it.In this thesis, firstly the reviews and criticisms on Pride and Prejudice are surveyed and the feasibility of studying the personalities in it from pragmatics is discussed. Then the theoretical foundation is introduced, which includes the Cooperation Principle, Conversational Implicature, and conversational context. Secondly, The selected conversations which violate the maxims of co-operative principle and their conversational implicatures are analyzed. The analyses show that the characters often violate the maxims of co-operative principle to accomplish their purposes, such as saving faces, or satirizing others, etc. In addition, the conversations of the seven characters who have more conversations than others are picked out and the frequency of their violation of the maxims in the co-operative principle are analyzed statistically. Lastly, according to the frequency and the context of utterance, the personalities of the seven characters can be revealed.In this thesis, a tentative study has been made to apply co-operation principle to analyzing the personalities in Pride and Prejudice. On one hand it proves the validity of applying linguistic theory into the study of literature works; on the other hand, it produces some practical significance by helping the audience better appreciate literature works and keep the harmonious relationship in real communications.