A Pragmastylistic Study Of Interpersonal Rhetoric In Hamlet

Rhetoric traditionally refers to the study of effective use of language in communication. It has now also been understood as the art of using language skillfully for pursuasion, or for literary expression, or for public speaking. Leech's concept of "Interpersonal Rhetoric"(1983) focuses on the interpersonal and rhetorical aspects of the discipline of pragmatics. The application of pragmastylistics to the study of interpersonal communication is an interdisciplinary study of language and literature. Based on the interactive feature of literary texts, this thesis exploits the insights of narrative studies, rhetorical studies, stylistics and theories of dramatic studies to a considerable extent, and incorporates them within the general framework of interpersonal rhetoric in pragmatics. By choosing dramatic text, which is the least studied of the literary genres, as the object of study, it explorates the interpersonal features of dramatic text. It takes stage directions, which are not taken as part of the play and are often deliberately ignored by both dramatic critics and literary critics, into the scope of pragmastylistic study of drama.By analysing Shakespeare's most famous tragedy, Hamlet, on both the macro-level outside the text between the writer and the reader and the micro-level within the text between characters, it points out the interpersonal rhetoric which the writer employs to his readers, and thecomplex relationship between the writer and the readers in dramatic texts. The application of the expanded model of studying interpersonal rhetoric to discourse analysis of dramatic text proves to be fruitful. First, it broadens the scope of literary stylistics and contributes to theories of dramatic criticism in its own way. Second, it will facilitate literary teaching and reading, by enabling them to perceive the potentially complex relationship between the writer and the readers.