（英语语言文学专业论文）从顺应理论看王熙凤的言语交际策略.pdf

chinese abstract i 摘 要 本文以维索尔伦的语言顺应理论(linguistic adaptation theory)为依据来研究王熙凤 的言语交际策略，旨在运用语言顺应理论对王熙凤的言语交际策略进行分析，归纳和总 结王熙凤成功交际的规律，即王熙凤的话语是否与语言使用者的物理世界，社交世界和 心理世界相顺应。 王熙凤，作为中国古典小说红楼梦中一个极善于交际的重要人物，其语言极具 特色, 历来受到诸多学者的广泛关注，从文学评论角度到近年来从语用学的崭新视角对 其语言的分析，并得出了不同的结论。本文通过对过去研究的分析和借鉴，以维索尔伦 的顺应论为基础，拟对王熙凤的言语策略进行动态和较全面的分析。这种分析以王熙凤 的一些日常交际对话为语料，综合考虑语言、社会、文化、心理和认知等因素对王熙凤 的语言选择的影响， 探讨了在言语交际过程中， 王熙凤依据时空的变化、 说话的对象 （包 括权力地位和社会关系的不同） 及心理意识的不同来选择相应的策略以不断地顺应社会 规约及说话人的心理动机、性格、信念和意图，也即王熙凤能够成功地使用各种言语交 际策略是交际能够顺利进行的关键所在。我们的结论是，王熙凤的言语交际策略是一种 有意识地为适应交际需要不断做出选择的过程。 这些选择虽然可以出现在语言结构的任 何一个层面，但王熙凤能够根据交际时的情况而决定选择哪一种具体的形式（主要包括 合适的称谓、语言风格、词汇、语句类型以及话题的选取） ，且这些选择主要是与物理 世界、社交世界和心理世界相顺应的结果。 本文从顺应论的角度分析王熙凤的言语策略，具有理论和实践意义。理论上拓宽了 语言研究的视野，提供了一种借鉴西方理论，立足汉语文化，研究汉语语料的新方法； 实践中，帮助我们更透彻地理解王熙凤这个语言鲜明的重要人物。加强了交际者的语言 沟通能力，指导我们在更加融洽的气氛中顺利进行言语交际。目的是希望语言研究者加 强我国外语界和汉语界的沟通， 引用西方理论立足汉语这种新的研究方法得到更进一步 的关注和研究。 关键词：王熙凤；言语交际策略；选择顺应论；物理世界；社交世界；心理世界 english abstract ii abstract the present study is undertaken to investigate wang xifengs communicative strategies on the basis of jef verschuerens linguistic adaptation theory. it tends to dig out the mechanism involved in production of wang xifengs communicative strategies and probe into the rules for her successful communication, that is, whether wang xifengs communicative strategies are the outcome of linguistic choices interadaptable with language users physical world, social world and mental world. wang xifeng, one of the most outstanding characters in the famous chinese classic fictiona dream of red mansions, is good at dealing with people with her extraordinary language, which has long captured the interest of scholars. the orientation of language analysis has shifted from literary criticism to research from pragmatic perspective in recent years. based on naturally occurring data in wang xifengs daily communication, concerning the influence of language, society, culture, psychology and cognition, this paper investigates that, in the process of linguistic communication, in order to achieve her communicative needs, wang xifeng adopts different strategies according to the changing of space and time, the power correlated and the social relationships between the speaker and hearer, as well as the psychological elements, so as to continuously adapt to the social-cultural norms and those mental influences like the utterers motivation, personality, beliefs and intention. it is the crucial point for wang xifengs successful communication. this study indicates that, on the basis of the linguistic adaptation theory, it is a process of intentional choice making for wang xifengs linguistic communicative strategies, so as to obtain or reach her communicative needs. wang xifeng can make different choices of strategies through various linguistic structures, but she only chooses to use the one which can realize her communicative goals in accordance with the particular situation. the linguistic structures wang xifeng opts for mainly include appropriate terms of address, language style, word, sentence type and conversational topic. the choices of wang xifengs communicative strategies are the result of adaptation to the physical, social and mental world. through the analysis of wang xifengs communicative strategies from adaptation theory, both theoretical and practical significance of this thesis can be explored. theoretically, it enlarges the vision of linguistic studies and widens the scope of the studies on chinese which sets up a new angle on wang xifengs study. practically, it helps us to have a better understanding of wang xifeng and enhance our communicative capability which can guide us english abstract iii to communicate under a more harmonic atmosphere. more attention of communication between the chinese circle and the western circle is expected. key words: wang xifeng; communicative strategies; the adaptation theory; physical world; social world; mental world 湘湘 潭潭 大大 学学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的 研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其它个人或 集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均 已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留 并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。 本人授权湘潭大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检 索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 涉密论文按学校规定处理。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 introduction 1 introduction 0.1 the rationale of the paper wang xifeng, one of the most outstanding characters in the famous chinese classic fictiona dream of red mansions, is good at dealing with people. there were so many surveys on wang xifeng in the past years while a pragmatic perspective has become a new research method in recent years. hence, the choice of this research topic is based on the following considerations: firstly, the appearance of jef verschuerens understanding pragmatics, demonstrates us a theoretical framework for linguistic pragmatics from a general functional perspective. with the understanding that language use is a cognitively, socially and culturally conditioned form of behavior, verschueren successfully provides us a tentative answer to the impertinent question “what do people do when using language?” therefore, verschuerens general functional perspective enables us to explore the research object in question from the cognitive, social and cultural angles. secondly, as the adaptation theory has so powerful explanation in language use, as he ziran and yu guodong said “verschueren has undoubtedly demonstrated the most convincing, and thus the most influential interpretation of it in his book.”(1999: 428) the question is whether it can be probed into the rules and effects involved in production and usage of wang xifengs communicative strategies. so the doubt needs us to investigate. thirdly, appealed by pragmatics in chinese culture: speechology in humanistic networks (qian guanlian, 1997), a good example of putting pragmatic theory into practice in the chinese context, it is believed that deep investigation into such kind of research can both broaden our pragmatics scope and have some practice meaning on chinese study. 0.2 the problem with the existing studies it is undoubtedly believed that the explanatory power of the linguistic adaptation theory is mainly displayed by its proposal of the general functional or pragmatic (i.e. cognitive, social, and cultural) perspective for linguistic study and its revelation of the inter-adaptive character between linguistic structure and the context in which the former is used. such a view widens the range of pragmatics and sets this theory of pragmatics apart introduction 2 from others. however it is doubtful if it is the same as in explaining some chinese phenomena such as the similar study of qian guanlin who puts western theory into the practice of chinese. nowadays the researches on a dream of red mansions in our country are exceptionally flourishing, and the study of character utterances is especially rising. wang xifeng, as the typical character in this novel, impresses the readers, many scholars have made specific studies on her. relevant works have been published on this character, such as wang chaowen (1980)， wu ying (1987), li xifan (1997), wang kunlun (2004)， hu wenbing (2005)， chang jinlian (2006) and so on. it is a great pity that although wang xifeng has being studied from literary criticism perspectives, most of them pay great attention to the implicit descriptions about wang xifengs thoughts, personalities and her representation in feudal society. these researches have contributed a lot to the literary evaluation of the novel. however, few studied her utterances from the perspective of pragmatics. it is true that in recent years, some scholars have begun to analyze some of character utterances in a dream of red mansions from the perspective of pragmatics. in these studies, examples the scholars selected are inevitably including wang xifeng such as qian guanlian evaluates the translation of some of wang xifengs utterances by judging whether they meets the assumption that the pragmatic implications should be preserved as implicit as they are in the original text (1999: 299-312). ding jianmin and yan shuang select some of wang xifengs utterances as the case study to investigate the realization conditions of illocutionary point when using the strategy of pragmatic ambivalence (2002: 15). these studies prove to be quite valuable for their new research method. however, there is still much room for the analysis of wang xifengs utterances from pragmatic angle. it is worthy of investigation which helps to have a better understanding of wang xifeng from a new angle, and develop persuading arguments. as ran yongping (2005: 411) said that nowadays some chinese scholars would not really confront the new achievements of western pragmatic research and there is no real communication between the chinese circle and the western circle. hereby, scholars from both home and abroad will certainly shorten their research dimensions. it is a crucial problem of how to promote the development of chinese pragmatic in view of current pragmatic research achievements in the west. 0.3 purposes of the paper the starting point of this paper is the authors curiosity of the adaptation theorys explanation effect and the possibility of application in chinese (wang xifengs introduction 3 communicative strategies for example). on the basis of this viewpoint, this thesis intends to probe into the rules and effects involved in production and usage of wang xifengs communicative strategies in the perspective of adaptation theory, namely, a kind of tentative communication between the chinese circle and the western circle. specifically speaking, the purpose of this paper can be considered from both theoretical and practical importance. as to the theory, on the basis of verschuerens adaptation theory, this study aims to probe into the rules involved in production and usage of wang xifengs(the utterer) communicative strategies which take into consideration of the influences of language users physical, social, cultural and psychological factors on wang xifengs communicative strategies and also the adaptation of wang xifeng to these factors. some daily occurring utterances of her will be analyzed to illustrate this point. as to the practice, this study is expected to give us a more incisive understanding to wang xifeng with the help of pragmatic knowledge and enhance our communicative capability which can guide us to communicate under a more harmonic atmosphere. 0.4 methodology a qualitative analysis of the collected data is adopted in this research. as to the data, the present study is an empirical one, in which all the conclusions made in this study are based on daily occurring data without any preset plan for what is to be obtained and what to be derived from the data. these data include wang xifengs utterances make in her daily communication with different people in different situations. 0.5 outline of the thesis this paper generally consists of three sections: introduction, body of the thesis, and conclusion. the body is divided into five chapters which can be generally seen as three parts. part one (chapter 1) is about the previous relevant studies on wang xifeng utterances analysis. she is one of the famous characters in chinese classic work a dream of red mansions. part two (chapter 2) offers fundamental research theory and the adaptation theory applied in the present study which paves a way to the next part of the analysis. part three (chapter 3, 4, 5) is the detailed analysis of the rules and effects involved in production and usage of wang xifengs communicative strategies from the physical world, social and mental points of view in order to test whether those factors are accompanied with when wang xifeng consciously opts for an appropriate communicative strategies by means of choosing proper introduction 4 linguistic structures (forms) to put these strategies into effect, so as to strengthen the viewpoint abiding by the adaptation theory. firstly, the introduction of the paper includes the motivations to choose this thesis by demonstrating a preview of the existing problems and its expected aims to obtain. chapter one gives us a review of past studies on wang xifengs utterances in a dream of red mansions. the orientation of language analysis has shifted from literary criticism to the newly-born pragmatic research in recent years, which shows us the achievements and limitations. hereby, it is worthy of systematically investigating on wang xifengs communicative strategies in her speech from pragmatic perspective. chapter two presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of communicative strategies by language user (wang xifeng). according to the adaptation theory proposed by jef verschueren, the general perspective on language use enables us to explore the research object from the cognitive, social and cultural angles and conduct a rather systematical research on the intentional use of wang xifengs communicative strategies. chapter three analyzes the adaptation of wang xifengs communicative strategies to the physical world, which can be divided into adaptation to time and space. according to the changes of time and space, wang xifeng dynamically chooses her communicative strategies by means of appropriate linguistic structures (forms) so as to put the strategies into effect. chapter four demonstrates wang xifengs employed strategies in the choice-making process from the social world. there are two major parts that we can not neglect in social world: one is the power and the other is social relationships. they largely influence the choice-making of wang xifengs strategies. correlating with power and communicating with different people, wang xifeng consciously changes her communicative strategies, in which the proper linguistic structures (forms) are needed to help her to reach communicative goals. chapter five involves that wang xifengs communicative strategies are mainly driven by her assessment of what the mental world of the interpreter looks like. it is impossible to take all the psychological factors into account, so in this chapter the author mainly discusses on the utterers motivation, personality, beliefs and intention. and yet, the interpreters mental world is treated as what is reflected in the utterers (wang xifeng) mind. finally, the conclusion proposes the thesis major findings and its limitations. it is worthy of us to make further research in the future. chapter 1 review of past studies 5 chapter 1 review of past studies 1.1 the literary criticism perspective as we know, a dream of red mansions has not only a profound ideological content and progressive political tendency, but an art form so brilliantly integrated with the language by which readers are fascinated and moved. with superb artistry cao xueqin presented a panoramic genre-painting, a whole gallery of highly individual yet typical characters through detailed description of their different idiosyncrasies, thoughts and feelings. especially in the use of character utterances, cao xueqin shows outstanding skills, putting such distinctive speeches into each characters mouth that the reader feels as if he can see and hear the speaker. “it is always employed to portray and reflect characters thoughts, feelings and personalities and it also contributes to construct plots, explain the background, and enhance the emotional appeal and atmosphere. therefore, the study of character utterances is of key importance.” (page, 1973: 25) wang xifeng, one of the distinct characters in this novel who impresses the readers, has long captured the interest of scholars. most of them try to explain some literary aspects from the characters in this novel. mr. yu in his 红楼梦研究 confirms that cao xueqin write this novel with a realistic attitude, and this confirmation could be proved with the fact that no one of the characters is perfect in their personality though some of them are rather pleasant, such as wang xifeng. (yu pinbo, 1973) from the viewpoint of literary criticism, some critics focus their studies on assessing the characters personality, emotion, social relations and so on. as to the analysis of wang xifeng, many relevant works have been published on this character, such as wang chaowen (1980) with his 论凤姐 ， wu ying (1987) with his 红楼梦人物新析 ， li xifan (1997) with some parts of his 红楼梦艺术世界 ， wang kunlun (2004) with his 红楼梦人物论. 王熙凤论 ， hu wenbings (2005) 红楼梦人物谈 ， chang jinlians (2006) 王熙凤 etc. most of them pay great attention to the implicit descriptions about wang xifengs thoughts, personalities and her representation in feudal society. these researches have contributed a lot to the literary evaluation. in the process of research, these scholars work out the implicitness to a great degree through finding out the relevant co-text. in this sense their studies come into the scope of the chapter 1 review of past studies 6 pragmatic implications, though without consciously utilizing the pragmatic theories to provide detailed persuading proofs for their researches. 1.2 the pragmatic perspective it is a great pity that although many people have studied wang xifeng from the literary criticism, most of them pay great attention to the implicit description on wangxifengs personality, capability, emotion, thoughts, few studies her utterances from the perspective of pragmatics. pragmatics is a new arising discipline. the past twenty-old years had witnessed an ever-growing interest in pragmatics, which was introduced into literature by the american philosopher charles william morns in 1937. in his foundations of theory