A Study Of The Pragmatic Function Of The Subjunctive Mood From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory-a Case Study Of2Broke Girls

This thesis is a study of the pragmatic function of the subjunctive mood. The subjunctivemood has always been investigated from its linguistic form, which causes English learners failto truly master this grammar. With the vigorous development of pragmatics, people graduallycome to realize that the subjunctive mood has rich pragmatic functions. In recent years,scholars pay much more attentions to the pragmatic functions and the effects of thesubjunctive mood.Based on three research questions, the relevance theory, as the theoretical basis, and thecased study method are adopted in this thesis. The research questions of this paper are asfollows:(1) What are the pragmatic functions of the subjunctive mood from the perspective ofrelevance theory?(2) What are the characteristics of the pragmatic functions of thesubjunctive mood?(3) How are the pragmatic functions of the subjunctive mood realized?From the examples in2Broke Girls, an American situation comedy, all the three researchquestions are analyzed and discussed. It can be concluded that the subjunctive mood hasspecific pragmatic functions: improving the forcefulness of euphemism effect; avoidingconflicts with others; expressing human sympathy; creating sarcastic effect; creatinghyperbolic effect. The subjunctive mood is regarded as an implicative device. from the aspectof maximal relevance, optimal relevance, implicature and context, the ways to realize thepragmatic functions of the subjunctive mood are analyzed.The significant of the study are as follows: This study hopes not only to improvepeople’s understanding of foreign situation comedy, but also to improve English learners’understanding of the subjunctive mood and its application, so as to truly solve Englishlearners’ big difficulty in grasping the subjunctive mood. And based on the relevance theory,this study probes into the pragmatic function of the subjunctive mood, which once againproves the strong explanatory power of the relevance theory, as well as a powerful supplementto the case study.Finally, some limitations and suggestions for future studies are presented.