A Study Of The Pragmatic Principles In Brief Encounter

Film, as one of the most remarkable new forms of art in the20th century, has widelytransmitted its information with sound and images, and the film dialogue is one the mostimportant means to get its information accepted by the audience. In fact, Pragmatics is just thesubfield of linguistics which explores the ways how to understand and use language in contextby studying the particular discourses in specific situation. Filmic text, with rich and particularcontext, is one of the intense focuses of all the pragmatics learners. Taking the uniqueness offilmic dialogues into serious consideration, it is attempted to explore the connotations of theclassic film Brief Encounter by adopting the related pragmatic theories in hope of making somecontribution to the depth of comprehension of the film.Brief Encounter is a British film adapted from an English one-act play in1945, telling astory of a housewife Laura who falls in love with a married doctor Alec. The film reveals theirpersonalities and ethical orientation of the western middle class by exquisitely presenting theirpsychological events reflected by craftily designed dialogues. As a widely recognized classicfilm whose name was in the list of top100classic films in Britain, its masterly written dialoguesendowed rich connotation have long impressed its audience all over the world.It is meaningful to take the film dialogues as the object to study and adopt the mode ofcomprehensive analysis consisted of related pragmatic theories including Cooperative Principle,Politeness Principle and Face-saving Theory. It is academically and practically significant toprobe the implied meanings of dramatic dialogues among the main characters while exploringthe subtle change of conversational features, the characters’ ethical orientation and their fate inthe particular social background.Based on both qualitative and quantitative methods, the analysis and interpretation of the film dialogues focus on the two categories: the dialogues between the hero and heroine and thedialogues between the hero/heroine and the other supporting characters. The mode provides thestudy with a new perspective in the analysis of filmic texts, thus helping the audients and readershave more appreciation of the film. By doing so, the present study tries to make somecontribution in the following two aspects:Firstly, the study is done from the perspective of pragmatic analysis of the typical dialoguesbetween the hero and the heroine. By the observations and violations of cooperative principlesand politeness principle as well as the proper use of Face-saving theory, the study will helpunderstand the interpretation of the characters’ traits and the implied meaning hidden in thedialogues, and explores the different speech styles reflected in the different conversationalcontexts.Secondly, the study is also engaged from the perspective of pragmatic analysis of thedialogues between the hero/heroine with the supporting characters. Incorporated with the studyof the historical and social background when the story happens, the topic leads the study to learnmore about the different speech styles of the characters and the characters’ distinctivepersonalities vividly reflected in their dialogues. Besides, the study also reveals the ethicalorientation and the fate of the housewife among the western middle class by the case ofdeliberate violations of conversational principles.This topic is chosen to offer help to the reader and the audience in understanding theuniqueness of the language in filmic texts and then prove their appreciation ability while seeingthis kind of films. Meanwhile, the study, with the actual application of pragmatic theories indifferent fields in actual human life, hopes make some new contributions to the integration ofthe theory with its practice.