Pragmatic Account Of The Misunderstanding Of Irony In Jane Austen's Novels

The present study is a pragmatic analysis of the misunderstanding of irony, drawing heavily on the Relevance Theory and the Adaptation Theory. As a kind of misunderstandings, the misunderstanding of irony has long been ignored by most of the researchers. It is seen as a common communicative failure triggered by irony. However, we believe that it is under the influence of various contextual factors, which would not only have negative effect as what has been considered, but produce some other unexpected results in communication, especially in what happens in Austen's fictions. In an attempt to inquire into the conversational phenomenon, and then to gain more understanding and appreciation of Jane Austen's novels, this study carries out the main analysis in the following two parts.The previous two chapters intend to construct a theoretical framework for the misunderstanding of irony. Starting with the definition of misunderstanding, Chapter One presents a review of previous studies on both misunderstanding and verbal irony. The survey of the former researches leads us to the possibility for the present study. Chapter Two lays down the theoretical framework of this study on the basis of the Cooperative Theory, the Relevance Theory and the Adaptation Theory. We find the misunderstanding of irony is caused by such factors as the speaker's intention and the hearer's misjudgment of it; the differences between the speaker's and the hearer's personalities, emotions, beliefs, wishes, and social status.The second part consists of Chapter Three and Chapter Four, which devotes to an analysis of the misunderstanding of irony in Austen's novels. Chapter Three introduces the research methodology and data collection. Austen's works are chosen because of their fame and popularity, especially when the author excels at using irony and producing lifelike conversations to her characters. There are a lot of misunderstandings of irony in her novels in accordance with the definition of misunderstanding and Thomas's classification. Chapter Four carries out the qualitative analysis based on the collected examples. We discuss the identification of the hearer's misunderstandings, the misunderstandings of the speaker's intention, and the factors that interfere with the hearer's interpreting the irony. The discussion leads us to a better understanding of Austen's characters and her writing style, and to the probe of the functions of linguistic strategies employed in literary work to make the depiction more vivid.Being a preliminary study of the misunderstanding of irony, the present paper, to some extent, supplements the existing researches on the Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory, enriches the understanding and appreciation of Jane Austen's writing style and her novels. However, more substantial research is believed to shed more light on the related study and the study of literary work.