الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract The study of literary work should come together with linguistics. An American Tragedy (1925) is one of the famous works of Theodore Dreiser, a famous American naturalist writer, who is very subtle in his portrayal of characters. This thesis aims to employ three pragmatic tools, speech Acts, Implicature and Deixis, to analyze this famous literary work. The researcher explains Speech Act Theory in order to explore the sophisticated personalities of different characters in the novel. The analysis begins with the general theme of the novel and Dreiser’s intention behind writing the novel. Then, it establishes the relationship between speech acts and dramatic discourse. Since, there are written dialogues containing speech acts, an effort is made to shed light on the illocutionary forces of typical linguistic utterances and their perlocutionary effect on the readers. The analysis of the speech acts based on Searle’s typology of speech acts. The carefully chosen assertive, commissive, directives, expressive and declarative speech acts are thoroughly interpreted against the existing social, economic, political and cultural aspects of American society at that time. It is pointed towards the end of this part that the analysis gives authenticity to the characters. Particularly, using speech acts to analyze literary works is a new way in the appreciation of literary works because it can help readers have a better understanding of the essence of the works. In the novel, there are lots of conversations, and we can clearly feel that the literal meaning and the implied meaning are very different. Explaining of implicature theory and using it as a tool in this study add a lot to clarify Dreiser’s message. Deixis as the crucial element of pragmatics is also clarified since the ability to produce and comprehend communicative acts requires a special knowledge of context. This special knowledge of context is so related to the notion of deixis. Deictic information is so important for the interpretation of any utterance. |