A Pragmatic Approach To Gender Difference Of Language In Emma

Gender difference of language refers to some characteristics in a certain language to distinguish men from women in specific ways. This subject is widely analyzed by linguists in every language. Based on the previous studies on gender difference in language, linguists have concluded several tendencies. For example, men tend to use direct strategies in their speech, while women are more euphemistic. Men are more inclined to use imperatives and strong words to show their opinions, while women are more kind and pay more attention to the relationship with other participants in conversation.Researches on Jane Austen, who is one of the greatest female writers in the world, are numerous from various perspectives in literature. Emma is a representative work of Jane Austen who is famous for her love story description and her ironic writing techniques. Focuses on its decent language, delicate description have never stopped at home and abroad. In China, studies on Emma always concentrate on its style, its characterization and its irony.Many critics have probed into the interdisciplinary literary criticism and made great achievements. As to literary criticism, difficulties exist in the combinative research between pragmatic theories and literary works. This thesis is devoted to the question of gender difference of language with pragmatic approaches. Based on the theories of pragmatics, this thesis focuses on the conversations selected in Emma to study gender difference in language. In order to explore how women and men differ in observing or flouting pragmatic principles, theories of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Face Theory are employed.To analyze gender difference in language, this paper attempts to make some contribution to the cooperative research between pragmatics and literature and to develop some suggestions for the miscommunication and discrimination between males and females. This thesis consists of three chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion. The first chapter introduces four theories of studies of gender difference; they are deficit theory, dominance theory, difference theory, and conversation analysis theory. Those theories are focused on historic reasons and social reasons of the language difference between males and females. Those theories are employed to the following analysis of chapter two and chapter three. Those two chapters are mainly devoted to analyze selected conversational fragments with the approaches of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Face Theory. Maxims of CP and PP are employed to analyze the language of main characters in Emma to conclude ways and reasons of gender difference in language.