A Pragmastylistic Analysis Of Eugene O’neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Since the 1970 s and 1980s,a new trend in the field of pragmatics has emerged both at home and abroad,which was the integration and combination with other disciplines.Among them,the combination of pragmatics and stylistics has stirred attention and interests among scholars.Poetry and fiction as two main genres of literature are the focuses of stylistics.By contrast,drama,as another important literary genre,has not received sufficient attention and the related researches are relatively few.Pragmastylistics provides a new perspective for the analysis of drama.From the perspective of pragmastylistics,this thesis analyzes Eugene O‘Neill‘s Long Day’s Journey into Night.In the previous studies of this drama,there has not been a study from pragmastylistic perspective.The study analyzes the four main characters: father Tyrone,mother Mary,the older son Jamie and the younger son Edmund and classifies them on the basis of father-son relationship,mother-son relationship,conjugal relationship,brotherly relationship and among all family members.The author selects the representative dialogues that promote the plot development as analytical corpus.By adopting the combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis methods,this thesis applies Grice‘s Cooperative Principle(1975)to the interpretation of conversational implicature of characters‘ dialogues,and fully demonstrates the characters‘ personalities and interpersonal relationships.Through the pragmastylistic analysis of Long Day’s Journey into Night the authors finds there exists two major findings are reviewed.Firstly,the language phenomenon of flouting the Cooperation Principle is very common,with a total of 284.The most frequent occurrence is the flouting of the quantity maxim,accounting for 43.31% of the total.The flouting of the quality maxim,the relation maxim and the manner maxim accounts for 33.80%,18.66% and 4.23% respectively.The frequent flouting of the Cooperative Principle reflects the characters‘ dialogues are full of deception,concealment and avoidance,which further reveals the theme of the drama: most of the misfortunes are human factor,and human frailties cause everyone to be both a victim and a tragedy maker at the same time.Secondly,the study reveals the multip le personalities of characters and the complex interpersonal relationships: 1)Mary‘s outstanding characteristic is that the number of flouting the Cooperative Principle is the most.By flouting the quantity maxim,Mary employs the strategy of blaming others to avoid other family members‘ suspicion of her drug abuse.By flouting the quality and relevance maxims,it reflects Mary‘s conventional strategies are denial of facts and changing the topic to respond to family‘s reprimands,thus revealing the Mary‘s sensitivity,cruelty and irresponsibility.2)Tyrone‘s main characteristic is revealed by flouting quality and quantity maxims.Due to his stinginess,Mary is addicted to morphine.Tyrone‘s tolerance for Mary is out of guilt and they have a love-hate relationship;his sternness towards Jamie is in sharp contrast to his gentleness for Edmund,which revel Tyrone‘s stinginess,ambivalence and the hypocrisy and selfishness at the expense of his family‘s health.3)By flouting the quantity maxim,Jamie provides too few information than needed.It reflects Jamie‘s indifference,meanness and sarcasm in response to his parents‘ rebuke and indifference,which is actually for self-protection.He deliberately influences Edmund negatively due to his jealousy,but at the same time he has a deep affection for Edmund and regards him as the only emotional connection to the family.It reflects the tension and alienation of Jamie‘s relationship with his parents and the complex emotions for Edmund,which reveals Jamie‘s malevolence,depravity and self-loathing personalities for his desire for love is unsatisfied.4)Edmund flouts the quantity and relation maxims,by flouting relation maxim reflects that he tends to avoid confrontations when confronted with the negative emotions of other family members;in the process of flouting quantity maxim by providing too much information,Edmund‘s gentleness,sensitivity and pity for others are revealed through outbursts and inner monologue fragments,which represents his bitterness and escapism.Through the analysis and discussion,the author finds that pragmaticstylistics plays a positive role in understanding the characters‘ personality and interpersonal relationships,and it provides an effective support for the interpretation and appreciation of dramatic text.The effectiveness of the analysis of dramatic text from the perspective of pragmastylistics has been proved,and the feasibility and rationality of pragmastylistics in the study of literary works are verified.In addition,this thesis further proves that linguistics and literature complement each other.Literature provides a high quality research corpus for linguistic research,while linguistics provides a more objective and systematic research method for literature research.In addition,pragmastylistics provides an objective perspective for the appreciation of drama,and deepens the understanding of the theme of drama.It is helpful to the interpretation of the characters‘ personalities and conflicts in drama.Pragmastylistics provides new ideas and new methods for the appreciation of drama,and it also enlightens the research and appreciation of other literary works.