A Pragmatic Study Of Understatement In The Acadians

This thesis applies the Adaptation Theory, the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in the analysis of the representations and functions of understatement in the Canadian novel The Acadians.With the application of the Adaptation theory, the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in data analysis, we try to find out how and why the speakers choose understatement as a linguistic strategy to adapt to different communicative contexts. Besides, based on former researches, the pragmatic functions of understatement are summarized, that is, the courteous function, the self-protection function and the vagueness function.The thesis has some practical significance. It might help people have a better understanding of understatement and improve their communicative competence and interpersonal relationships. This thesis might be taken for reference in English teaching. Teachers could apply linguistic theories to the analysis of a certain linguistic phenomenon in teaching process, thus arousing students'interest in English learning and promoting their communicative competence. Furthermore, the analysis might be helpful to the appreciation of literature from the perspective of pragmatics, thus promote the interdisciplinary researches between linguistics and literature.