An Adaptation-Theoretical Study Of Scarlett’s Utterances In Gone With The Wind

Gone with the Wind, a great masterpiece which the famous American authoress Margaret Mitchell spent 10 years writing, has been on the top of the American bestsellers for more than half a century since its first publication in 1936. So far, the novel has foreign versions of over 40 kinds of languages and sold more than 30 million copies.In 1939, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name, which is also a great success. Ever since its coming into being, the novel has attracted wide attention. Many scholars commenced their study on this novel, but mostly from the perspective of literary criticism, few from the pragmatic perspectives, and the studies of the main characters’ utterances from the perspective of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory are scarce. On this standpoint, this thesis attempts to make a detailed pragmatic analysis of the heroine Scarlett’s utterances on the basis of Adaptation Theory, aiming to prove the great interpretation power of Adaptation Theory.The present study has the following major findings:First, it is feasible to apply Adaptation Theory as a new perspective to literature appreciation theoretically and practically, which can be testified by the analysis of the corpus. Second, the heroine Scarlett’s utterances are the outcome of linguistic choices dynamically interadaptable with language users’physical world, social world and mental world to realize her communicative purposes.Third, Adaptation Theory offers a new perspective for the study of Scarlett, the most energetic woman in American literature.The adaptation-theoretical analysis of Scarlett’s utterances enables us to gain a better understanding of her subtle psychological changes as well as her unique personalities.In this thesis, Adaptation Theory is combined with literature interpretation and appreciation through qualitative analysis, which helps enrich the adaptation-theoretic research and widen the perspective scope of appreciating literary works, thus sheds us new light on how to teach literature in college.Besides, the present study has practical significance for guiding us to communicate more successfully by using communicative strategies.