A Study Of Pragmatic Strategies In Zootopia From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Pragmatic strategies refer to various methods a language userapplies to reach communicative purposes.As long as a person uses language,he must consider what type of pragmatic strategy ought to be employed and how to employ it.Therefore,much more attention has been paid to the study of pragmatic strategies.Although the study of pragmatic strategies at home and abroad is relatively extensive,few people have studied them in a dynamic way,which limits the development of pragmatic strategies.While the Adaptation Theory of Jef Verschueren provides a new perspective for the study of pragmatic strategies,which is helpful to analyze them from a dynamic perspective.The object of this study is the communication among the main characters in the film Zootopia.Its richness in essence and variety in pragmatic strategies provide abundant linguistic data for this thesis.The intention of this thesis is to have a relatively dynamic and comprehensive analysis of the communication among the main characters in Zootopia from the perspective of Adaptation Theory aiming at the following questions:1)What pragmatic strategies are applied in the communication among the main characters in the film?2)What effects do these strategies manifest in different characters in the film?3)How are the adaptive features manifested in the communication among the main characters in the film?This thesis hopes to assist readers to achieve a proper understanding of pragmatic strategies and enable people to use adaptive strategies freely in communication,in order to arrive the objective of successful communication.The research methods this thesis employs are the observational method,the case study and the documentary method,and the research procedures include four steps: 1)Making literature researches on pragmatic strategies and Adaptation Theory;2)Collecting,classifying and conceptualizing the linguistic data in the communication among the main characters;3)Analyzing the cases in detail;4)Making conclusions and providing some suggestions for future studies.Six chapters are involved in this thesis.There are an introduction,literature review,theoretical framework,research design,adaptive analysis of pragmatic strategies,and conclusion.Throughthe analysis of this thesis,we can draw the following conclusions: 1)A mass of pragmatic strategies are applied in Zootopia.In the mental world,personalities,emotions,values and intentions are important adaptive factors.In the social world,adaptive strategies contain social settings,stereotypes,social distance and power relations among various characters.In the physical world,adaptive strategies include space,nonverbal communications and animal characteristics.In addition,strategies like adaptation to other films and preceding utterances are also adopted.2)The strategies make the characters in the film more vivid,complete and authentic,and they have effects on making the film interesting,creating dramatic conflicts,deepening themes and triggering audience's thinking.3)The adaptive features are manifested through the main characters' dialogues,addresses,body language,tone and other three attributes of characters in the film,namely,their animal characteristics,the jobs they engage,and the personalities they own as anthropomorphic animals.