Use Of Xiehouyu In A Dream Of Red Mansion: A Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Xiehouyu (XHY) is a kind of unique language form in Chinese idioms, and also a component of the Chinese culture. It is difficult to find the corresponding counterpart in terms of structure in other languages. Previous studies,however affluent they are, mainly dwell on the argumentation of the origin, denomination, categorization, structure, rhetoric function, so on and so forth. The study of XHY in use is rare in China or abroad.In view of the inadequacy of the previous studies, this thesis attempts to make a relatively thorough and comprehensive pragmatic research into Chinese XHY based on the dynamic context adaptation of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory. From the present study, we know that speaker's use of XHY is influenced by the contextual correlates.The corpus of this paper is based on masterpiece A Dream of Red Mansion. As is well known, A Dream of Red Mansion is one of the most famous classical novels in Chinese literature. Particularly, its art of language has been regarded as the peak of the Chinese classical novel. There are many XHYs used in A Dream of Red Mansion, which amount to 97 pieces. With the help of XHY, the characters in the novel become more vivid and the theme of the novel has been deepened. From the present research, we know that dynamic contextual correlates lay much influence on locution intention of the speakers when they use XHYs. The XHYs are employed to adapt to various contextual correlates which can be subdivided into three aspects: the mental world, the social world and pragmatic distance. As for the adaptation to the mental world, it can be divided into speaker-oriented adaptation and hearer-oriented adaptation, and the choice-making practices should adapt to communicators'cognitive and emotive aspects such as: personalities, emotions, wishes, intentions and so on. As for the adaptation to the social world, speaker's knowledge background, social convention, social status and social reality are taken into consideration; when it comes to the pragmatic distance, it means to adapt to the degree of on-going intimacy between speaker and hearer.