A Study Of Understatement In Downton Abbey From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Understatement is a common linguistic phenomenon in our life, which uses therestrained or mild expression to avoid the more direct or threatening language. Scholarsboth at home and abroad have done some researches on understatement, but so far, thesestudies are not comprehensive. Most of the previous studies focus on the semanticinterpretation of understatement but neglect its generation. Based on the previousresearches, this thesis adopts Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory as the theoreticalframework and chooses the understatements in British TV series Downton Abbey as theresearch data. The present study aims at exploring the adaptation of understatements todifferent communicative contexts and identifying the different kinds of linguisticstructures characters in Downton Abbey employing as understatements for makingadaptation to those contexts as well as its pragmatic functions.According to the above research objectives, this thesis adopts a qualitative methodbased on data analysis. After analyzing those research data, this thesis finds language usersin Downton Abbey employ understatements to adapt to all kinds of contextual correlates,involving the mental world (emotion, personal trait and motivation), the social world(social relationship and social convention) and the physical world (time and space).Understatements as linguistic choices in Downton Abbey occur on two structural levels,the lexical level and the sentential level. Besides, this thesis finds the pragmatic effects ofusing understatements are as follows: decreasing the face-threatening effects, enhancingself-protection, skillfully withholding information and increasing the interpreter’sacceptability.The present thesis enriches the studies on understatement in some degree and provesthat the Adaptation Theory can be effectively used to explain the generation ofunderstatement. In practice, it helps people use understatements with flexibility andappreciate Downton Abbey better.