This thesis is an attempt to study three commissive speech acts, namely offer, promise, and refusal in Jane Austen's “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma”.
The study treats the problem whether the mentioned speech acts are employed directly or indirectly, which politeness strategy is mostly used to perform them, whether their grammatical structures run in parallel to those found in literature concerning them, and which one is the dominant among the three speech acts.
Consequently, the study aims at investigating offer, promise, and refusal in Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma, finding the most common pragmatic strategies used to express the speech acts, finding the politeness strategies, and the type of grammatical structures used in the data, setting up the felicity conditions for the commissives in the novels, and comparing the two selected novels according to the type of speech act, grammatical structure, and politeness strategy.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Preliminaries
1.1 The Problem of the Study
1.2 Aims of the Study
1.3. Hypotheses of the Study
1.4 Procedures
1.5 Limits
1.6 Significance
1.7 Definitions of Basic Terms
1.8 Methodology of the Study
1.8.1 Data of the Study
1.8.2 The Model Adopted and the Mathematical Technique
1.9 Jane Austen's Life and Works
1.9.1 Pride and Prejudice
1.9.2 Emma
Chapter Two: Commissive Speech Acts
2.1 Pragmastylistics
2.2 Speech Act Theory
2.2.1 Definition
2.2.2Classifications
2.3 Speech Acts and Politeness
2.4 Commissives Analysis
2.4.1 Speech Act of Offer
2.4.2 Speech Act of Promise
2.4.3 Speech Act of Refusal
Chapter Three: Analysis and Discussion of the Commissives in Pride and Prejudice
3.1 Analysis and Discussion of Offer
3.2 Analysis and Discussion of Promise
3.3 Analysis and Discussion of Refusal
Chapter Four: Analysis and Discussion of the Commissives in Emma
4.1 Analysis and Discussion of Offer
4.2 Analysis and Discussion of Promise
4.3 Analysis and Discussion of Refusal
Chapter Five: Comparisons, Conclusions, Recommendations and Suggestions
5.1 Comparisons
5.1.1 Offer in Pride and Prejudice and Emma
5.1.2 Promise in Pride and Prejudice and Emma
5.1.3 Refusal in Pride and Prejudice and Emma
5.1.4 The Selected Commissives in the Two Novels
5.2 Conclusions
5.3 Recommendations
5.4 Suggestions
Research Objectives and Themes
This thesis aims to investigate the use of three specific commissive speech acts—offer, promise, and refusal—within Jane Austen's novels "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma." The research seeks to identify the pragmatic strategies, politeness patterns, and grammatical structures employed by characters to perform these acts, while establishing the felicity conditions required for their successful realization and comparing their frequency and application across the two selected works.
- Analysis of commissive speech acts (offer, promise, and refusal) in a literary context.
- Examination of pragmatic and politeness strategies used in indirect and direct communication.
- Comparative analysis of character linguistic behavior across "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma."
- Application of speech act theory and felicity conditions to determine the status of specific utterances.
- Exploration of the relationship between social rank, gender, and the use of commissive acts.
Excerpt from the Book
2.4.3 Speech Act of Refusal
The SA of refusal falls into the category of commissives since it commits the refuser (not) to perform an action (Searle, 1977: 43). In Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 'refuse' as a verb is used to say that you will not do something that somebody has asked you to do, you do not want something that has been offered to you, or you will not allow something (2010: 1280).
95- He refused to listen to what I was saying .
Refusal is essentially a way of saying 'no, I will not do it' by the hearer in a response to the speaker's utterance, in which the speaker has conveyed to the hearer that he wants the hearer to do it (Wierzbicka, 1984: 94). It is a response negatively to an offer, a suggestion, an invitation, a request, or a command (Searle and Vanderveken, 1985: 195). By refusal SA, a speaker "[fails] to engage in an action by the interlocutor" (Chen et al., 1995: 121).
Generally, refusal can syntactically be expressed by declarative sentences:
i- Although refusal as negative SA functions to answer and op-pose some other SA, it is not inherently negative. Consequently, it can be accomplished by a declarative without any negative element (Turnbull, 2003: 66; and Israel, 2004: 709):
Summary of Chapters
Chapter One: Preliminaries: This chapter introduces the research problem, objectives, hypotheses, methodology, and provides a biographical overview of Jane Austen relevant to the study.
Chapter Two: Commissive Speech Acts: This chapter reviews the literature on speech act theory, defining commissives and outlining the theoretical frameworks used for analysis.
Chapter Three: Analysis and Discussion of the Commissives in Pride and Prejudice: This chapter presents the detailed linguistic analysis and discussion of offers, promises, and refusals specifically found in the novel Pride and Prejudice.
Chapter Four: Analysis and Discussion of the Commissives in Emma: This chapter provides the analysis and discussion of the three selected speech acts as they appear in the novel Emma.
Chapter Five: Comparisons, Conclusions, Recommendations and Suggestions: This chapter compares the findings between the two novels, draws final conclusions, and offers recommendations for future linguistic research.
Keywords
Commissive speech acts, Offer, Promise, Refusal, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Pragmatics, Politeness strategies, Speech Act Theory, Felicity conditions, Pragmastylistics, Discourse analysis, Literary linguistics, Social manners.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this thesis?
The thesis investigates the usage of three specific commissive speech acts—offer, promise, and refusal—within Jane Austen's novels "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma," focusing on how characters employ these acts within their social contexts.
What are the central themes explored in the study?
The study explores how social dynamics, politeness, and individual character traits influence the performance of speech acts, highlighting the role of gender and class in Jane Austen's literary dialogue.
What is the core research question?
The research seeks to determine whether commissive speech acts are employed directly or indirectly, which politeness strategies are dominant, how their grammatical structures compare to existing linguistic literature, and which speech act is most frequent.
Which scientific methodology is used?
The study utilizes a descriptive and comparative methodology, conducting a linguistic analysis of collected data from the novels based on speech act theory, felicity conditions, and politeness models established by linguists like Austin, Searle, and Brown and Levinson.
What does the main body of the work cover?
The main body involves a comprehensive classification and analysis of specific excerpts from the novels, evaluating them against established felicity conditions and politeness theories to interpret the characters' communicative intent.
What define the characteristics of this study?
Key characteristics include its focus on pragmastylistics, its comparative analysis between two seminal novels, and its application of speech act theory to analyze literary dialogue.
Why is refusal identified as a significant speech act in the novels?
The study concludes that refusal is the most dominant commissive act in both novels, often serving to express the agency and independent will of the female characters against societal constraints.
How does Jane Austen use dialogue to characterize her figures?
Austen utilizes an abundance of dialogue and specific pragmatic strategies to reveal character depth, social standing, and moral reform, using speech acts to demonstrate how characters navigate the nuanced rules of Georgian society.
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- Shaimaa Radhi (Autor:in), 2017, The Commissives in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma", München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/378354
