A Study On The Pragmatic Phenomenons Of Speech Acts In Strategies Of The Warring States

In daily life, it is common for everyone to use different speech acts for different social intentions. Strategies of the Warring States is a significant historical record of the Warring States period. To a certain extent Strategies of the Warring States keeps a trustworthy record of verbal communication before the Qin dynasty, which provides an important source for the research on speech acts. The Warring States period is a period of war which witnesses a boom in strategists and eristics. They rush about in states, proposing their diverse political opinions. Their words also presents the obvious characteristics of the times. In this dissertation, the Pragmatic Phenomenons of Speech Acts in Strategies of the Warring States are studied from the perspective of Pragmatics. Chapters 2 to 4 are the central section of this dissertation. Speech acts in Strategies of the Warring State are divided into three main types here: speech acts for persuading others, speech acts for requesting others and speech acts for denying others. Furthermore, the direct and indirect expressions of the three types are systematically analyzed. The structure of speech acts in Strategies of the Warring States could be classified into three types:(1) head acts + supportive moves;(2)supportive moves + head acts;(3) supportive moves +head acts+ supportive moves.In this dissertation, points out that the warring states counselor provide supportive moves or give a reason, or to the consequences in order to assist the implementation of the head acts, mainly through the three sequences of words to convey the communicative intention. Moreover, this dissertation classifies the pragmatic functions of supportive moves into five types:(1) To avoid impertinence;(2) To promote communication;(3) to avert conflict;(4) To supply missing words(5) To enhance argument. In Chapter 3, elicitation sentences in Strategies of the Warring States are compartmentalized into three types:(1)simple elicitation;(2)complex elicitation;(3) multi-turns elicitation sentences. In Chapter 4, the effect of power and political factors on speech acts in Strategies of the Warring States is analyzed.