A Study Of The Theme Of The Familial Affections In Great Expectations From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

At the end of the 1970 s,linguistics and literature criticism were both in their heyday.Then,many interdisciplinary subjects appeared,including literary pragmatics.Literary pragmatics explores the dynamic relation among the author,the work and readers from the pragmatic perspective.And the essence obtained by literary pragmatists emphasizes that the process of creating and that of reading could be perceived as the conversation between the writer and readers.During the process,on the one hand,works act as an access that enables the author to convey his or her intention and minds to readers;on the other hand,readers would explain the text and infer the implicit information of the author.Thus,readers could gain a reflection on social reality and make recreation of the work.This study,in which a method of conversation analysis is adopted to make a text-analysis of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations under relevance theory,is expected to find out,directly or indirectly,the familial affections embodied in the work.The specific research questions are as follows.(1)In Great Expectations,what familial affections between the protagonist Pip and his relatives are reflected?(2)In terms of RT,what dynamic changes of these familial affections are revealed in the conversations between Pip and his relatives in Pip's three different life stages?Through a detailed analysis in terms of words,phrases and sentences reflecting their familial affections and in terms of the relevance of the conversations from Pip's three life stages between Pip and his relatives,this paper aims to explore the familial affections and their dynamic changes.The results show:(1)The results of research show that four different familial affections are existing in this novel.Through anatomizing this novel,words,phrases or sentences which can represent these four familial affections are picked out to show their unique characteristics.Firstly,Pip has a kinship with his sister,Mrs.Joe.Though full of twists and turns,the familial affection is worth praising;secondly,Pip and Pumblechook are legal relatives,however,their familial affection should be abandoned;thirdly,Pip and Joe are also legal relatives,and the affections between them are the purest;lastly,Pip and Magwitch are not relatives,but they are like father and son,and such kind of affection should be cherished.(2)By applying the ostensive-inferential mode,explicature and implicature,contextual effects and optimal relevance and so on under the relevance theory to excavate the key conversations and analyze all of their mental activities behind their utterances,the study finds out the dynamic changes of familial affections as follows:In three different life stages of Pip,the dynamic affectional relationship between Mrs.Joe and Pip changes from Mrs.Joe's rudeness and Pip's resentment to their forgivingness and caring for each other.The dynamic affectional relationship between Pumblechook and Pip changes from Pumblechook's sarcasm and oppression and Pip's hatred to Pumblechook's flattery and Pip's enjoying being flattered,and then to Pumblechook's sarcasm and Pip's aloofness at last.The dynamic affectional relationship between Joe and Pip changes from being intimate friends as brothers to Joe's love and Pip's estrangement,and then to Joe's love and Pip's respect.The dynamic affectional relationship between Magwitch and Pip changes from Magwitch's threatening and Pip's fearing to Magwitch's appraise and Pip's dislike,and finally to taking care of each other like father and son.The results and discussion of two questions prove the uniformity between the analysis of conversations under RT and the familial affections which Dickens wants to communicate.In brief,this study analyzes and reveals four different familial affections in Great Expectations;through the conversations among them,based on RT,these four different familial affections and their dynamic changes are dug out successfully and minutely.The result of this research provides a new possible perspective to interpret and criticize literary works.