Analysis of Discourses in Jane Eyre From the Perspective of Pragmatics

Abstract

Jane Eyre, as an autobiography of the author Charlotte Bronte, which has been credited as an “influential feminist text” by the Penguin edition since it was published in 1847, in London, England. It is a novel about the orphan Jane Eyre’s lifetime who experienced lots of difficulties and distress and finally lived a happy life. Many scholars studied the novel from different perspectives, and most of them studied it mainly form the following five aspects: exploring the feminism in the novel; analyzing the characters’ images based on Appraisal theory; discussing the protagonists’ dual character based on Freudian psychoanalysis; exploring the Christian cultural elements in the novel from the point view of religion and culture; elaborating the real reasons why the two leading characters had a tortuous relationship by applying Ethical literary criticism. While few studied it from the point view of pragmatic theories. Given this, the paper selects typical dialogues from the novel and analyzes them on the basis of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Leech’s Politeness Principle, in the hope of revealing the speakers’ conversational implicature and providing an unique visual angle for the appreciation of the novel.