Contextual Adaptation Study Of Utterance

The thesis analyzes the conversations between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu of the famous novel--- A Dream of Red Mansions in China with Jef Verschueren's contextual adaptation theory. The author also tries to find out the positive and negative pragmatic effects when their conversations adapt or not adapt to the contexts. In this way, she intends to make a study on the nature and phenomenon of utterance in so as to explain and improve the contextual adaptation theory better and explore its function as a guide to language communication.A Dream of Red Mansions is one of the four most famous classical novels in China. It includes many characters and each of them is unique and distinct in personality. Their utterance is also distinct, rich and close to life. In the modern China, many scholars have made a lot of meticulous analysis on its characters and their utterances, such as Yu Pingbo, Hu Shi, Zhou Ruchang, Hu Wenbin, Lu Xun and so on. All of them have got great achievement. In the thesis, the author will start with the angle of context, to analyze the making, the usages and pragmatic effects of the conversations between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu.According to the contextual theory of Jef Verschueren's pragmatics overview, he thinks that language using is a language choosing progress making to adapt to the uses of communications under different kinds of consiousness. He also thinks that language is variability, negotiability and adaptability. To explain the phenomenon of language on pragmatics, we should take the following four points into considerations:the adaptation on contextual relation, linguistic structure, and dynasty and consciousness degree. All the four points together will provide a comprehensive and scientific angle of vision to pragmatics. The thesis will take the contextual relation as the main theory. The contextual relation includes four aspects:adaption on physical world, mental world, social world and linguistic world. The four aspects integrate with each other, interact and influent each other.To make the argument more persuasive, the author will cite a bound of conversations between Baoyu and Daiyu from the novel and make a detailed analysis and compare on them to find out their different adaptation strategies and intents. Then take their conversations as examples, the author will list some main factors that will affect their intents of adaptation and make a detailed analysis. At last, the author thinks that utterance communication is in fact a continuous 'making choice' and context adapting process pointing to inner linguistic and outside context under some degree of consciousness. With choice and adaptation as the main line, Jef Verschueren's pragmatic adaptation theory will provide a useful angle of vision for the study of utterance and context and will help to build a systematic and consecutive theory frame.Finally, the author points out that as the context factors that influence language communication are varied, people meet different kinds of problems while communicating and it is tough to take all into consideration. Therefore, the author thinks that both the utterer and interpreter should arm himself or herself with related knowledge of context adaptation theory and learn to observe carefully. Consider all kinds of communicative context of both and achieve the gold of harmony communication.