A Pragmastylistic Study Of Women’s Plights In A Raisin In The Sun

Lorraine Hansberry is the first African American playwright to appear on Broadway.Her first play,A Raisin in the Sun,tells the story of the Youngers’ mutual support and adherence to their dreams when they are in trouble.Characters are an important part of the play.Three distinctive female characters are vividly depicted.Under the influence of racial discrimination in America in the 1950 s,the three women are in different plights,on which the thesis will do research.With the development of pragmastylistics,the play mainly composed of stage directions and dialogues,has become its main research object.Through the pragmastylistic analysis of stage directions,the characters can be better excavated.The Cooperative Principle can be used to analyze characters’ conversational meaning,while the Politeness Principle can be used to explain why the characters abide by or violate the Cooperative Principle.With the help of the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle,the relationship and conflict between characters can be better presented.Therefore,through the pragmastylistic analysis of stage directions and dialogues,this thesis attempts to interpret the images,the representations and reasons of plights,as well as self-rescue of the three black women in A Raisin in the Sun,and then demonstrate that the reasons for the plights of the three black women vary with their social identities.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction first introduces the life and achievements of Hansberry,the main plot of A Raisin in the Sun and the research significance.Secondly,it includes the literature review of A Raisin in the Sun at home and abroad.Lastly,it introduces the theoretical basis,and basic structure of the thesis.The main body of the thesis includes three chapters.The first chapter mainly focuses on the images of three women in plights by pragmastylistic analysis of stage directions.As the head of the family,Lena wants to meet the daily needs of the family.As a wife,Ruth undertakes the housework at home.As a daughter and student,Beneatha longs for freedom.The second chapter analyzes the dialogues of the characters in the play with the help of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in pragmatics,in combination with the analysis of related stage directions,and discusses the plights of the three black women and the reasons for their plights in detail.Under the oppression of racial discrimination,three black women are facing the survival plight.They are respectively in different difficulties due to gender prejudice,lower class status,economic disadvantage and cultural conflict.The third chapter interprets the self-rescue process of the three women in different plights through the pragmastylistic analysis of dialogues.When facing different difficulties,the three black women make corresponding self-rescue efforts.When facing the common plight,the three black women can unite together as a community and try to escape the plight.The conclusion summarizes the full study and points out that,as a play showing a black family life in America,A Raisin in the Sun shows the readers the real life of black women under the background of racial discrimination in American society in the 1950 s.By analyzing the different plights of the three black women in American life,the thesis,on the one hand,reveals that the reasons for the plights of the three black women in America are diverse;on the other hand,it shows that black women of different social identities and in different plights can get rid of the plights and get self-rescue by individual and common efforts.