A Study Of Understatement In Love Medicine Based On Adaptation Theory

As a pragmatic strategy, Understatement is widely used in daily communication and literary works, while Adaptation Theory raised by Verschueren in his book Understanding Pragmatics in1999, provides a new view to study pragmatic strategies. Though numerous researchers and scholars have achieved a lot in the research field of Understatement and Adaptation Theory, few have applied Adaptation Theory to the study of Understatement in Love Medicine.This paper is undertaken to analyze the Understatement in Love Medicine based on Adaptation Theory. The research questions addressed in this thesis are:1) What kinds of understatements are there in Love Medicine at three devices?2) What kinds of understatements are there in Love Medicine according to communication goals?3) How do the understatements in Love Medicine realize adaptation?4) What are the pragmatic effects of understatements in Love Medicine?This study mainly adopts qualitative method. After reading Love Medicine several times, the author extracts all the understatements in Love Medicine which is typed into a text. On the basis of Ju’s researches into Understatement, firstly the author classifies understatements in Love Medicine at three devices:Lexical devices, Grammatical devices and Contextual devices. Then, the author classifies them according to the relational goal and the instrumental goal.In the end, the findings are summarized as follows:Firstly, based on Ju’s classification, it is found that the64examples of understatements in Love Medicine can be classified at three devices:Lexical devices, Grammatical devices and Contextual devices. Among them,20examples belong to Lexical devices, which are formed by Pronoun, Down-toning verb, Down-toning adverb or adverb phrase and Superordinate.39examples belong to Grammatical devices which are formed by Past tense of modal verb, Negation, Double negation, Comparative, Subjunctive mood, Metaphor and Rhetorical question. And5examples belong to Contextual devices which are formed by Conflict of semantic in a sentence and Conflict of semantic between a sentence and the context. Then this study classifies64examples of understatements in Love Medicine into two kinds:understatements belonging to the relational goal and understatements belonging to the instrumental goal. In terms of the relational goal,17examples are self-oriented understatements and38examples are other-oriented understatements. In terms of the instrumental goal,9examples are persuasion-oriented understatements and non-free topic-oriented understatement does not appear in Love Medicine. Secondly, based on Adaptation Theory, understatements in Love Medicine mainly realize adaptation from four angles:Contextual correlates of adaptability, Structural objects of adaptability, Dynamics of adaptability and Salience of the adaption process. In terms of Contextual correlates of adaptability, understatements are used to adapt to the communicative context which includes the physical world, the social world, the mental world, the utterer and the interpreter. Apart from the communicative context, understatements are also employed to adapt to the linguistic context. In terms of Structural objects of adaptability, understatements in Love Medicine are adopted at every possible level of linguistic structure. In terms of Dynamics of adaptability, understatements are employed in certain circumstances or even create certain circumstances. In terms of Salience of the adaption process, the employment of understatements in Love Medicine is automatical, even highly motivated.Thirdly, understatements in Love Medicine can achieve various pragmatic effects, which consist of Minimizing face-threatening effects, Masking negative information, Maintaining a harmonious relationship and Highlighting information. With respect of Minimizing face-threatening effects, the utterers resort to understatements to protect their own face from being threatened and keep the hearers’ or the third persons’face in order to make the communication smooth. In terms of Masking negative information, understatements are adopted to mitigate the unhappiness or embarrassment brought about by those harsh expressions for the purpose of catering to the hearer’s preference. In respect of Maintaining a harmonious relationship, understatements are employed to improve the interpersonal relationships towards the positive direction. As far as Highlighting information is concerned, some information is stressed or emphasized by understatements so as to make a successful and smooth communication.The findings of this study make some pedagogical implications. First, this study sheds some new light on the investigation of other linguistic phenomena based on Adaptation Theory. Besides, this study can also cast new light on the study of Understatement on the basis of other pragmatic theories. In addition, the present study might be helpful for the appreciation of literary works from the perspective of pragmatics. Moreover, the present study helps people improve their communicative competence and interpersonal relationships.