The Interpretation of the Irony in Pride and Prejudice from the Perspective of Speech Act Theory.docVIP

The Interpretation of the Irony in Pride and Prejudice from the Perspective of Speech Act Theory 　　Abstract：The employment of irony makes Pride and Prejudice become one of the most significant novels in the world. The paper tries to make a application of speech act theory to the analysis of irony in Pride and Prejudice. 　　Key words：speech act theory; irony中图分类号：G648文献标识码：B文章编号：1672-1578（2014）16-0012-011.Introduction 　　Austin is one of famous British realistic critic. Pride and Prejudice is her masterpiece. Her works display such shrewd wit, delicate irony, and accomplished characterizations that Jane Austen now ranks as a master of the English novel and contributes a lot to literary world. To analyze literary works by way of linguistics is seldom. In this paper, the novel is analysed in terms of speech act theory. 　　2. Irony and Speech Act Theory 　　The term irony is derived from the greek iron. It means that the appearance of things differs from their reality, whether in terms of meaning, situation, or action. It is ironical when there is a difference between what is spoken and what is meant. Irony is the most important symbol in Jane Austens novels. 　　Speech act theory is the core theory in Pragmatics. Its theory is applied to the interpretation of words and the analysis of the relationship between rhetoric and human speech-act. Assertives, directives, commissives, cxpressives, declaratives are speech acts in illucutionary act. Here, we just focus our analysis on the Illocutionary Act: an act which is to show the speakers intention. 　　3. Analysis of Illocutionary Acts and Irony in Pride and Prejudice 　　3.1Analysis of assertive irony. Assertives are the kind of speech acts that commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed propositions, such as the statements of facts, assertions, descriptions, and conclusions. The verbs used, such as assert, state, claim, affirm, deny, inform, notify, remind etc. 　　In the first chapte Mr. Bennrt said to his wife: