Application Of The Adaptation Theory To The Study Of The Main Characters In Mansfield Park

As we know, as the chief element in novel dialogue plays a significantrole in describing characters, developing plots and deepening theme.Dialogues in a novel are the use of language in specific context. And theyare similar to real conversation, although there are some differences betweendialogues in a novel and dialogues in real life. Both of them rely oncommunicative context, possess interaction, and follow pragmatics rules.Therefore, pragmatics which studies the use of language in real life cananalyze dialogues in a novel, too. The Belgian linguist Jef. Verschueren‘sAdaptation Theory proposes that pragmatics should be studied from ageneral cognitive, social and cultural perspective. Mansfield Park plays animportant role in Jane Austen‘s works. However, compared with her othernovels, there is less attention which has been paid. Thus, current thesis willuse Adaptation Theory to analyze the main character‘s dialogue in JaneAusten‘s novel Mansfield Park in the hoping of offering a new perspectiveof literary criticism and deepen readers‘understanding of the literary worksas well as the characters.According to Jef. Verschueren‘s book Understanding Pragmatics,pragmatics can be defined as the study of language use, which is a processof making linguistic choices which is mutually adaptable with contextualcorrelates. This is a dynamic adaptable process. There are two kinds ofcontexts, that is， linguistic context and communicative context. Andcommunicative context can be divided into three parts: mental worlds, socialworlds, and physical worlds. Based on this theory, current thesis detailedlyanalyzes main characters in Mansfield Park from emotion, motivation, belief,social relationship, time, space and so on.Following are four findings in the current thesis: a. In order to achieve their communicative goals, language producerskeep making choices between linguistic elements to adapt to the context.b. The utterances of the main characters in Mansfield Park are mutuallyadaptable to each other‘s mental world, and to the social and physicalenvironments.c. Characters‘linguistic adaptations to each other‘s mental world, andto the social and the physical worlds, reflect their own personalities andsocial situation of JaneAusten‘s day.d. The adaptation theory is an instrumental to the critical evaluation ofliterary works by offering a method for digging out the meaning betweenlines in conversations.