Implicatures And Explicatures Of The Heroine's Language In Courtship And Marriage In Fortress Besieged-As Viewed From The Relevance Theory

Fortress Besieged,or Wei-cheng is a novel with love and marriage as the theme written by Mr.Qian Zhongshu and published in book form in 1947.This novel,based on the background of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression,mainly describes the nature of some Chinese intellectuals in old China through a vivid depiction of the survival situation of love,marriage and career of the protagonist Fang Hongjian.Sun Roujia is the most full-featured and complicated female character in Fortress Besieged.It can be seen from the novel that men and women have a significant difference in the expression of explicatures and implicatures in conversational communication due to their different genders.Taking the characteristics of Sun Roujia's utterances as a case of study,based on D.Sperber and D.Wilson's Relevance Theory,this thesis analyzes and interprets the utterances of the female character Sun Ruojia in Fortress Besieged.This study is conducted under the theoretical framework of D.Sperber and D.Wilson's Relevance Theory,analyzes and classifies Sun Roujia's utterances in her courtship and marriage in Fortress Besieged.According to the Relevance Theory,this thesis deduces the implicatures from the explicatures of discourses,and then summarizes the changes and reasons of Sun's linguistic expressions in courtship and marriage.These changes are not only related to women's long-standing historical status and cultural influence,but also to women's growth environment and characteristics of their personality.Sun Roujia,as a typical example of Chinese women,used more implicatures to express their inner thoughts in the stage of courtship.Her utterances were more euphemistic and supportive,which is completely consistent with the traditional social image of Chinese women who were gentle,modest and courteous.These traditional social standards for measuring women's image prevented women from displaying their full personality.After marriage,Sun Roujia no longer pretended to be pure and weak,she began to show her stubborn,arbitrary and selfish.In traditional Chinese culture,marriage has become a career for women all their lives,the family has become the only place for women to realize their self-worth.Sun Roujia showed her will and desire to rule the family.She devoted all her mind to the small family and did not care about the outside world.By comparing the meanings and relations of Sun Roujia's utterances in her courtship and marriage,this thesis makes a more comprehensive analysis of the character's personality and inner world,so as to reveal the characteristics of women's language in terms of relevance.By studying the meaning and relevance of female language in communication,we can have a deeper understanding of the relationship between women's verbal expressions and their true mind.At the same time,this thesis provides a better foundation for understanding gender language.Hopefully,it may also throw some light on the study of gender differences in language.