A study of the language of literary texts. This study introduces a range of pragmatic theories and approaches that can be applied to literary texts. It is an ideal introduction to the topic for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates. The book looks at the usefulness of pragmatic theories to the interpretation of literary texts and surveys methods of analysing narrative, with special attention given to narratorial authority and character focalisation. It includes a description of Grice's Co-operative Principle and its contribution to the interpretation of literary texts, and considers Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory, with particular stress on the valuable insights into irony and varieties of indirect discourse it offers. Bakhtin's theories are introduced, and related to the more explicitly linguistic Relevance Theory. Metaphor, irony and parody are examined primarily as pragmatic phenomena, and there is a strand of sociolinguistic interest particularly in relation to the theories of Labov and Bakhtin.
This textbook series provides advanced introductions to the main areas of study in contemporary Applied Linguistics, with a principal focus on the theory and practice of language teaching and language learning and on the processes and problems of language in use.