An Analysis Of Chinese Americans’positive Images In The Novel The Flower Drum Song From The Perspective Of Literary Pragmatics

In the1980s, as a new interdisciplinary subject, Literary Pragmatics emergedintegrating pragmatic theories with literary theories. It studies literary works from theperspective of pragmatic theories, which has aroused great interest both in literatureand linguistics. Literary Pragmatics not only provides a new perspective for literarystudy, but also has a strong interpretation of literary texts.Conversational Implicature proposed by the linguistic philosopher Paul Grice in1975is one of fundamental theories in pragmatics, and along with speech act theory,it marks the milestone in the development of Pragmatics as well. Conversationalimplicatures are engendered by either directly observing or ostentatiously flouting themaxims of Cooperative Principle according to Grice. Cooperative Principle revealsspeakers’ implied meanings so that it reflects the characteristics of the speakers andthen shapes images of the speakers. In terms of Cooperative Principle, this thesis triesto interpret The Flower Drum Song, which was written by the Chinese Americanwriter, C. Y.(Chin Yang) Lee, one of “The Lee’s Eight Elites”, to further prove thesignificance and effectiveness of Literary Pragmatics on studying literary texts. And italso manifests the great effects that the positive images of Lee’s novel exerted inchanging the stereotypes of Chinese Americans before.“Whether the images are life-like or not is determined by the verbalization ofliterary characters.” Hence, according to Cooperative Principle in the theory ofConversational Implicature, the thesis respectively analyzes the great amount oftypical conversations of the male and the female Chinese Americans in the novel. Themain male Chinese Americans are Old Master Wang, Wang Ta, Chang Ling-yu andOld Man Li, and the main female Chinese Americans include May Li, Madam Tangand Helen Chao. Based on their observing or flouting the four maxims of Quantity,Quality, Relation and Manner in Cooperative Principle, this thesis explores the characteristics of the Chinese Americans in order to show that Lee’s characters in TheFlower Drum Song are his creation for the brand-new positive images of ChineseAmericans.Above all, by analyzing the Chinese Americans’ conversations with the fourmaxims of Cooperative Principle, the thesis aims to prove that Lee’s creation for thesepositive images in the novel implicitly refutes the depictions of the stereotypes ofChinese Americans before. Forming these positive images is also a kind of special butpowerful writing against the hegemony discourse in the mainstream culture ofAmerica. It is no wonder that The Flower Drum Song is called as the “forgotten novelwith the world-famous title”.