Awatef Boubakri
University of Gabes, Tunisia
Abstract
This article is based on the assumption that the analysis of
literary discourse from pragmatic perspectives takes into consideration the
specificity of the literary work. The literary work under focus is Oscar
Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The present research applies two
pragmatic theories, namely speech act theory and implicature to the play and
raises the question of how Wilde’s purpose is pragmatically achieved. It argues
that the play is characterized by the frequent violation of the Maxim of
Relation. It also shows that the violation of this maxim results in four
recurrent pragmatic strategies and that these strategies interrelate with four
main themes of the play. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used:
The utterances marked by the violation of the relation maxim are analyzed in
relation to their context and then they are classified into strategies and
themes. Consequently, it is shown that whenever one of the four strategies is
used, its use aims to deal with a specific theme. This research has found that,
not only does the interrelationship strategy/theme contribute to Wilde’s
purpose behind writing The Importance of Being Earnest but it also accounts for
the specificity of this play. It accounts for its unity because the unifying
interrelationship is between irrelevance as the main strategy and seriousness
as the main theme.
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