A Pragmatic Study On The Speech Act Of Chinese Persuading In A Dream Of Red Mansions

Chinese persuading is a common speech act in daily life. So the pragmatic study ofpersuading can provide guidance for daily communication. However, reviewing the formerresearch, there are few studies on Chinese persuading in pragmatic way. So in this thesis, weintend to study Chinese persuading, using Speech act theory and Pragmatic strategy andDynamic context theory and so on. The research object is344materials of Chinese persuadingfrom “A dream in Red Mansions”. The Point to be discussed can be brought under three mainaspects:1．Basing on the former studies and the language materials, we redefine the Chinesepersuading; We get “felicity conditions” of Chinese persuading on the basis of “felicityconditions” raised by Searle(1976). Besides, we compare persuading with other similar concepts.2．Basing on the discourse analysis theory of speech act researched by Blum-Kulka(1989),we analyze all language materials. Firstly, we divide Persuading into four discourse structure(Goal, Reason, Address forms, Supportive) and generalize the patterns of Persuading. Secondly,basing on the language materials and the four discourse structures, we generalize pragmaticstrategies of Persuading and classify the strategies according to pragmatic functions.3．Using the dynamic context theory, we study the pragmatic strategies of Chinesepersuading from the limitation of context and taking control of context. Firstly, power relations,social distance, profit and loss budget and personality of participants can restrict the pragmaticstrategies of persuading apparently. Secondly, that the Persuaders control the context and lie intwo aspects: creating context and selecting context. Lastly, we reveal the reason of pragmaticfailure on persuading.