A Pragmatic Analysis Of Deceptions In A Dream Of Red Mansions

Deception (abbreviated as DEC) is indispensable with daily conversation. It is frequently employed as a pragmatic strategy of speech acts in verbal communication and has good effects on smooth interaction. Thus researches on DEC are always the major subjects for scholars of various fields , like psychology, sociology and linguistic pragmatics. Sociolinguists have made static description of rules regulating DEC usage in static situation. Yet the use of DEC is flexible and dynamic, thus it is necessary to study from pragmatic point of view.DEC, as a pragmatic strategy, is used in communication, and is constrained by all kinds of cultures. It is involved in people's linguistic choices. The author intends to use the adaptation theory and"3 with 1"theory to analyze DECs used in the communication process. Jef Verschueren's adaptation theory will be used to guide and explain DEC phenomena as a strategy. On one hand, people may or must apply DEC to avoid conflict, embarrassment, and error in making choices to adapt in communication, thus to improve his or her pragmatic and communicative ability. On the other hand, the adaptation theory investigates the language phenomenon from the integral perspectives, such as from cognitive, social, and cultural perspective. Qian Guanlian in his monograph Pragmatics in Chinese Culture: Speechology in Humanistic Network puts forward the first pragmatic theory against Chinese culture background, that is, 3 with 1 theory, which is an exploration in the history of formation and in the development of pragmatic theory system. 3 represents the interference of 3 ultra-symbols linguistic factors (symbol bunch adhering to people, context and intelligence).1 stands for the implicated meaning beyond literal meaning. This theory points out the separate and synthetic influence of the above 3 factors results in the implicated meaning. In his opinion, pragmatics is actually speechology in humanistic network. The author, based on these above two theories, analyzes DEC in people's speeches occurring in A Dream of Red Mansions and finds that DEC is actually the outcome of linguistic choices interadapting to language users'mental world, social world and physical world; the outcome of interference of humanistic network; sometimes it is also a presentation of linguistic aesthetics and expression of speaker's personalities.In this thesis, the author will also investigate the polite, dynamic and purposive nature of DEC in character utterances in the novel A Dream of Red Mansions, demonstrating the fact that pragmatic theories are capable of giving an excellent explanation of literary works.This thesis has theoretical and practical significance in intercultural communication and translation. As an interpersonal rhetoric, DEC is inevitably influenced by social and cultural factors. In turn, the pragmatic research on this project will benefit our daily communication, which is hoped to decrease or avoid pragmatic error, embarrassment, failure, etc. in communication, thus to improve the efficiency of communication. In addition, this research will be applied in language teaching and learning, cross-cultural communication, the exploitation of artificial intelligence, and many other fields with abundant theoretical and empirical evidence.