An Interpretation Of The Doll Image In A Doll’s House From The Perspective Of Literary Pragmatics

Literary Pragmatics, as an interdisciplinary subject established formally in the 1980 s, recently has become a hot spot in the current linguistic and literary fields. This new perspective enables literary works to be studied at the micro- and macro-levels. At the micro-level, pragmatic theories are employed to interpret literary works, dealing with the aspects including deixis, implicature, and speech acts, to name but a few, which facilitate the understanding of character relationships and plot development; the macro-level exploration enables definition of the dynamic relationship among the author’s life experience, social context and characterization, which further reveals the theme of a literary work.Conversational Implicature, proposed by the linguistic philosopher Paul Grice in 1975, is one of the important pragmatic theories. According to Grice, conversational implicature is generated by the strict observance or deliberate violation of Cooperative Principle. Meanwhile, deixis, one of the basic issues in pragmatics, helps deepen the understanding of the characters’ inner world, social status and social relationship.Therefore, this thesis attempts to interpret the doll image in A Doll’s House in the way of micro- and macro-level exploration from the perspective of Literary Pragmatics. In micro-level exploration, the doll image is explored through the analyses of conversational implicature of dialogues and the power relation between Helmer and Nora with the theory of Cooperative Principle and deixis. The analyses reveal Nora seems like a doll in family and society, who undergoes three dynamically changing phases: implicitly obedient doll, explicitly awakened doll and rebellious female against the doll image. The macro-level exploration of the doll image gives prominence to the analysis of the inextricable relationship among Ibsen’s life experience, social context and characterization, which further elucidates in the 19 th century Europe, women, seem like dolls victimized by capitalism and patriarchy.Above all, the doll image delicately presented in A Doll’s House by Ibsen not only truthfully mirrors the social reality in the 19 th century Europe, but also bears profound significance to modern society. Therefore, this study will prove Literary Pragmatics can facilitate the interpretation of the doll image in A Doll’s House. And it is expected to help people develop insight into the characters’ inner world, social status and social relationship in this work, making a contribution to the researches on A Doll’s House.