An Adaptation Approach To The Generation Of Andersen’s Fairy Tales

During nearly forty years’ composition of fairy tales, Andersen created about170stories. Nowadays, his fairy tales have been translated into more than eighty languages and received great favors among children and adults in more than100countries. For the past200years, after being published and re-printed for many times, they are still being issued all over the world. Most of Andersen’s fairy tales focus on romance, death, religion, belief, eternity and other themes. Some are merely fanciful and bizarre stories. Although many scholars have explored into the translation, aesthetical perception, comparative literature and other aspects of his fairy tales, there have been very few pragmatic studies of the generation of Andersen’s fairy tales.Based on Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, the thesis analyzes how the writer makes linguistic choices adapting to structural objects and communicative context in the generation process of Andersen’s fairy tales.Andersen’s fairy tales are simple, explicit, lively, vivid, accurate and figurative in language, which is consistent with children’s characteristics. Children can accept such languages easily and willingly. In terms of pronunciation, the rhythm and rhyme of languages in some fairy tales enhances the sound effect of the stories and adapts to children’s musical perceptions. In terms of vocabulary, Anderson prefers to adopt simple and specific oral words, a large number of color-related words, and onomatopoeic words frequently. Such words are rich in expression and completely accordant with children’s temperament and interest. In terms of syntax, there are many loose sentences, compound sentences and short sentences, which are accepted by children more easily. In the writer’s narrative languages, many exclamatory sentences and interrogative sentences are inserted, which can stimulate the resonance between children readers and the writer.Anderson was keen on fairy tales all his life. He wrote stories for children, listened to their voice and chose corresponding languages to adapt to the communicative context. The adaptation to the language user mainly refers to the adaptation to the author, Anderson whose growing-up environment, values and personal qualities will definitely exert influences on the writers’selection of languages. The adaptation to the mental world mainly indicates the adaptation to the children readers’inner world. The pure and crystal-like heart, Children’s interest, children’s poetic and free imagination are all indispensable elements in fairy tales. The communicators live in the social and culture environment, so it is inevitable that their linguistic choice-making is constrained by cultural elements around them. Andersen’s fairy tales are the outcome of the adaptation to the social world, including religious culture, folk culture and foreign culture.The composition of fairy tales,in fact, is a process of making continuous choices. Adapting to children readers,the writer make choices in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax and social culture in the generation process.The thesis is of certain theoretical significance and practical values. Adaptation Theory which functions as the theoretical foundation of present study can provide a new general functional approach to study other linguistic phenomena from the pragmatics perspective. Thus it will enrich the research scope of Adaptation Theory. Besides, the study may help explain the relationship between language and psychology, society and culture. In addition, the research results can also provide theoretical basis for the composition of children’s literature so as to better realize the education, entertainment orientation and socialization effect of children’s literature.