Study Of Directive Speech Acts From The Perspective Of Speech Act Metonymy In American Plays

Although there are much traditional research on speech acts,most of them remain at the pragmatic level,without a good explanation of why conversationalists can conduct pragmatic inference so quickly and effortlessly,and without exploring the conceptual nature of pragmatic inference.Panther and Thornburg first analyzed speech act theory from both cognitive and pragmatic perspectives,and proposed a theory of speech act metonymy,which made up for the shortcomings of traditional research.According to Panther and Thornburg’s state of affairs scenario theory,speech acts,especially indirect speech acts,should follow a metonymic rule.Speech act is a structured action scenario that consists of three parts: the BEFORE phase,the CORE and RESULT phase,and the AFTER phase.There is a metonymic relationship within the phases of an action scenario,and any part of the scenario can be used to metonymize the entire speech act according to the needs of communication.The theory of speech act metonymy is more complete after adding relevant pragmatic parameters,which can effectively explain the cognitive mechanisms and pragmatic inference mechanisms in the use of speech acts.This thesis mainly applies Panther and Thornburg’s speech act metonymy theory and relevant pragmatic parameters to analyze the directive speech acts in the American comedy Why Women Kill.Speech acts have always been the hotspot of linguistic research.The research involves the following three aspects: 1.The distribution of different scenario structures in directive speech acts.2.The distribution of different scenario structures among the three heroines in the sub-classification of directive speech acts.3.Pragmatic parameters that affecting the three heroines’ choice of different directive speech acts.By analyzing the use of metonymy of the three heroines’ directive speech acts in Why Women Kill with pragmatic parameters,this thesis finds that: Firstly,the CORE phase of the action scenario is the most common in directive speech acts,followed by the BEFORE phase and combined structure of the speech act scenario.This is because the CORE phase can most directly express the speaker’s intention,while the BEFORE phase and combined structure of the speech act scenario are often used to illustrate the preconditions and motivations for the occurrence of the action,so they are also widely used.Secondly,the distribution of sub-classification of directive speech acts in different scenario structures are different.For example,the BEFORE phase of an action scenario is mostly used for request speech acts,while the CORE phase of an action scenario is mostly used for order speech acts.Finally,due to the influence of pragmatic parameters such as power,optionality,cost-benefit and convention of politeness,the three heroines also have different choices of directive speech acts.This thesis expounds how people use speech act metonymy in their daily life,and further proves that speech act metonymy theory is effective in explaining the use of speech act.The popularity of the American comedy Why Women Kill has not decreased since its launch,and research on it has emerged in an endless stream with various methods.The innovation of this thesis lies in the analysis of directive speech act from the cognitive and pragmatic perspectives,combined with pragmatic parameters,and the analysis of film and television plays from the new perspective of metonymy of speech act,which deepens the readers’ understanding of the characters’ personalities and relationships.It also provides a new research approach for finding communicative purposes,identifying the causes of misunderstandings,avoiding misunderstandings,and improve communication efficiency.