Tài liệu Study on irony related to female characters in some short stories by w.s.maugham

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGÔ THANH HUYỀN A STUDY ON IRONY RELATED TO FEMALE CHARACTERS IN SOME SHORT STORIES BY W.S. MAUGHAM (Nghiên cứu về phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ trong một số truyện ngắn của W.S.Maugham) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Hanoi - 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGÔ THANH HUYỀN A STUDY ON IRONY RELATED TO FEMALE CHARACTERS IN SOME SHORT STORIES BY W.S. MAUGHAM (Nghiên cứu về phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ trong một số truyện ngắn của W.S.Maugham) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Dương Thị Nụ, PhD. Hanoi - 2016 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis, entitled, “A Study On Irony Related To Female Characters In Some Short Stories By W.S. Maugham” and the work presented in it is my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own research. I confirm that when I quoted from the work of others, the source was always given and no part of this work has been published before submission. Hanoi,2016 Ngô Thanh Huyề n i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT During the period of completing this research, I have received great assistance and support from many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Ms Duong Thi Nu, who initiated me into this study and has always been willing to give me clear and sighted guidance as well as valuable suggestions and corrections in the completion of this research. Secondly, I want to thank all of the lecturers, professors and doctors teaching at the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies of ULIS for their lessons and supports during my MA course. I would also like to thank my parents, my dearest friends: Nguyen Linh Chi and Nguyen Hoang Son for their love, support and caring. The research paper could not have been fulfilled without them. ii ABSTRACT This study is carried out in an attempt to investigate ironic expressions and their pragmatic functions in the development of female characters in some short stories written by W.S. Maugham. However, because of the data sources and knowledge, the writer will only focus on five short stories: “The Three Fat Women of Antibes”, “The Escape”, “The Luncheon”, “Louise”, and “Winter Cruise”. In order to conduct this thesis, the writer approaches irony from the stand point of Speech Act Theory (Searle, 1969). Through identifying and analyzing ironic expressions, it is revealed that in the selected short stories, verbal irony is the most widely used among three types. Verbal and dramatic irony perform representative and expressive speech acts which describe the female characters’ appearance, personalities, dialogues, and express the narrator’s feelings and attitude towards the female characters. Meanwhile, situational irony functions as ironic directives which lead readers to expecting a situation which is contrary to what actually happens. In the selected short stories, W.S. Maugham often combined two or three types of irony. Apart from using irony as a means to mock, Maugham also employed it to amuse and to emphasize the female characters’ special features. Some implications in language teaching and learning English are then drawn out. Hopefully, the thesis will serve as a useful reference for students who would like to enhance their knowledge about British Literature, the application of Speech Act Theory into studying irony as well as the translation of irony. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .................................................................................................. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ................................................................... v PART I: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 1. Rationale ............................................................................................................ 1 2. Aims of the study ............................................................................................... 2 3. Scope of the study .............................................................................................. 3 4. Significance of the study .................................................................................... 3 5. Design of the study............................................................................................. 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF THEORIES AND RELATED LITERATURE 5 1.1. Theoretical Background .................................................................................. 5 a. Characterization .................................................................................................. 5 b. An overview of irony ......................................................................................... 6 c. Irony in Pragmatics ............................................................................................ 9 1.2. Related Literature ............................................................................................ 14 a. W.S.Maugham’s life and career ......................................................................... 14 b. Previous studies on irony ................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................... 19 2.1. Research design ............................................................................................... 19 2.2. Data and data source ....................................................................................... 20 iv 2.3. Data collection procedure ............................................................................... 20 2.4. Data analysis procedure .................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER 3: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS ................................ 22 3.1. Data Collection................................................................................................ 22 3.2. Data Analysis .................................................................................................. 22 a. “The Three Fat Women of Antibes” .................................................................. 22 b. “The Escape” ...................................................................................................... 24 c. “The Luncheon” ................................................................................................. 26 d. “Louise” ............................................................................................................. 28 e. “Winter Cruise” .................................................................................................. 30 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ................................................ 33 4.1. Types of irony used in the development of the female characters ................. 33 4.2. Pragmatic functions of these ironic expressions ............................................. 34 4.3. W.S. Maugham’s use of irony in the selected short stories ............................ 36 PART III: CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 38 1. Recapitulation .................................................................................................... 38 2. Limitations of the study ..................................................................................... 38 3. Implications for language teaching and learning ............................................... 39 4. Suggestions for further study ............................................................................. 39 REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 40 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………..I v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1 – Classification of Speech Acts (Searle, 1969) ......................................... 15 Table 2 – Number of ironic expressions in the selected short stories .................... 21 Pie chart 1: Types of irony in the selected short stories......................................... 32 vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale The term “irony” is derived from the ancient Greek word εἰρωνεία (eirōneía), which means dissimulation. As a rhetorical device, irony refers to the disagreement between the meaning intended by the author and what is actually said. It is believed that irony plays an important role in literature as one of the most effective rhetorical devices. In some cases, it is even more efficient than a direct statement since it helps create a private joke between the author and the readers. Besides, irony is also intended to provoke the readers into critical thinking and analyzing a situation. By comparing and contrasting what appears to be the case, and what is actually the case, the readers can arrive at a better understanding of the author’s intent. For example, in “Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography”, Snicket writes: “Today was a very cold and bitter day, as cold and bitter as a cup of hot chocolate; if the cup of hot chocolate had vinegar added to it and was placed in a refrigerator for several hours.” As can be seen from the above sentence, Snicket makes an enjoyable ironic statement by creating a structure that is more complex than what a reader may usually expect. In terms of pragmatics, irony can also be considered a subject of interest which has been studied by many linguists such as Grice (1975), Amante (1981), Kaufer (1981), Muecke (1982), Brown and Levinson (1987), and Hutcheon (1992). However, irony has still remained its attraction as well as complexity as Balconi and Amenta (2008, p.9) stated: 1 “Although frequent in our everyday conversations, irony remains a complex communicative and pragmatic phenomenon whose correct decoding requires specific linguistic, communicative and cognitive abilities.” Since how irony works, positively or negatively, depends on several factors such as people’s taste, points of view, habits, education, it seems to be really difficult to fully understand irony in daily communication and especially literary works. Being inspired by the complexity of irony in literary works, the writer of this thesis would like to investigate how ironic expressions are employed in some fiction writings. When she approached British Literature, she was strongly impressed by W.S. Maugham. Maugham is a famous English writer whose writings are characterized by narrative facility, simplicity of style and an ironic point of view. After reading a collection of Maugham’s short stories, the writer was fascinated by the way Maugham portrayed his characters, especially female characters. They were described not only specifically but also vividly. All of these inspire the study: “A Study On Irony Related To Female Characters In Some Short Stories By W.S. Maugham” 2. Aims of the study The main aims of the research are as follows: - To identify different ironic expressions used in the development of female characters in some short stories by W.S. Maugham - To realize the role and contribution of these ironic expressions to the development of female characters in the selected stories. - To propose an insight into Maugham’s use of irony 2 In order to achieve the above aims, the study is conducted to find out the answer to the following research questions: 1. What are the ironic expressions used in the development of female characters in some short stories by W.S. Maugham? 2. What are the pragmatic functions of these ironic expressions? 3. What are the features of Maugham’s use of irony displayed through the selected short stories? 3. Scope of the study This study focuses on the ironic expressions in only some short stories written by W.S. Maugham. The main emphasis of the study is put on identifying these ironic expressions and their pragmatic functions to propose an insight into Maugham’s use of irony. 4. Significance of the study Theoretical significance: This study is expected to verifying the correctness and significance related to pragmatictic theories of irony by working on some fiction works Practical significance: This thesis helps gaining an insight into the use of ironic expressions in some short stories by W.S. Maugham. 5. Design of the study The study consists of three main parts: Part 1: Introduction In this part, the writer would like to present the rationale, the aims of the study, the research questions, the significance and the scope of the study as well as the research methodology. 3 Part 2: Development This is the most important part of the study which consists of the following contents: Review of theory and related literature, Data collection and analysis, and Findings and discussion. Part 3: Conclusion In the final part, the writer will briefly present the summary of the study, the limitations, the implications in language teaching and learning as well as some suggestions for further study. 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF THEORY AND RELATED LITERATURE In this chapter, the writer presents the theoretical background related to characterization, irony and irony in pragmatics. Basic information about W.S. Maugham as well as previous studies on irony is also briefly reviewed. 1.1. Theoretical Background a. Characterization According to Harrison (1998, p.51), characterization is the concept of creating characters for a narrative. Writers build characters by revealing their appearance, speech, thoughts, actions and other characters’ reactions. Regarding appearance, writers portray characters by describing their looks, clothes, and demeanor. For example, in “A Christmas Carol”, Charles Dickens described Scrooge with the following lines: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue…” Apart from appearance, characters can be created through speech. If a story is told by a first-person narrator, he reveals his personal trait as he tells his own story as well as what he thinks or feels by using pronouns like I, me or we. However, there are some cases in which some first-person narrators mislead or lie to the audience. Besides, dialogue also reveal a lot about characters and their relationships with each other. Therefore, when analyzing the characterization in a story, readers should pay attention to what characters say and do not say and how they respond to each other. 5 Concerning actions, what characters do and how they treat each other often reveal the most about them. By observing characters’ actions, readers are able to determine what characters’ personality is, what motivates them and how they deal with conflict. Additionally, writers can take readers into the characters’ minds to describe their thoughts and feelings. As reading, readers are able to investigate whether the characters’ thoughts and feelings match their speech and actions. Last but not least, writers also build a character by describing how other characters react to him/her. In terms of types, there are two types of characterization: direct and indirect. While direct characterization tells readers directly what characters are like or what their motives are, indirect characterization shows readers the characters through speech, appearance, thoughts, actions and other characters’ reactions but allow readers to decide what characters are like. b. An over view of irony Definition of Irony Until now, it seems that there is no persistent definition for the term “irony” since it depends on the study field in which irony is researched. The term “irony” has its root in Greek and derives from εἰρωνεία (eirōneía), which means dissimulation. Nowadays, irony is widely used to refer to a contradiction between appearance / expectation and reality. As a figure of speech, irony refers to the disagreement between the meaning intended by the author and what is actually said. According to Thompson (1948, p.10), irony can be understood as 6 “a discrepancy or incongruity between expression and meaning, appearance and reality, expectation and event. What we notice and then call irony is a striking discrepancy which is artfully arranged to draw attention to itself, or which, through occurring by chance, likewise compels our attention.” Specifically, Muecke (1969, p. 53) defined irony as “ways of speaking, writing, acting, behaving, painting, etc., in which the real or intended meaning presented or evoked intentionally quite other than, and incompatible with, the ostensible or pretended meaning.” Besides, briefly, Galperin (1971, p.142) claimed that irony was a rhetorical device which based on recognition of the logic – dictionary meaning and contextual meaning while these two coexisting meanings were opposite. From these views, it can be concluded that irony means far more than just “saying one thing meaning another”. The term is used to refer to the way of using words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. In short, an expression or utterance is considered as an ironic one when it is characterized by a contrast between apparent and intended meanings. Types of irony There are two classifications of irony; while the first one is based on what the ironist expects from his semantic displacement, the second one takes modern theories of rhetoric as its basis. - Classification based on semantic displacement First and foremost, irony can be classified on the basis of what the ironist expects from his semantic displacement. These are classic irony, romantic irony, and critical irony. (Erdogan, 2010) 7 Classic irony is usually employed in the course of a dialogue in which the speaker intends to contrast his reasoning to the interlocutor’s, thereby pointing to a disparity between the two. However, the disparity is intended to resolve immediately on the speaker’s side, giving way to further dialogue to make the interlocutor follow the speaker’s reasoning. Romantic irony, on the other hand, is distinguished by the spirit of romanticism: a conception of “universe founded in chaos and incomprehensibility rather than in a divinely or drained teleology” (Mellor, 1980, as cited in Erdogan, 2010). A romantic ironist employs irony to constantly undermine given meanings, with the hope that this undoing will eventually result in a state of privilege and security he has been longing for (Lang 1996, p.576). The third type of irony, in terms of the ironist’s intention, is critical irony. Critical irony still wants to displace the meaning in traditional and grand narratives, but it differs from the romantic irony in that it does not hope and aim for a greater narrative. - Classification based on modern theories of rhetoric Within the scope of this study, the writer would like to employ the classification based on the modern theories of rhetoric. In terms of rhetoric, irony can be classified into three types: verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony. (Cuddon, 1998, p.427-432; Colebrook, 2004, p.13) Verbal irony is a statement in which the meaning intended by a speaker is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed. In other words, verbal irony refers to the contradiction between what is intended and what is actually said. For example, the Prologue in Act I of “Romeo and Juliet” opens with “Two households, both alike in dignity,…” however, as the play goes on, the 8 readers then realize that both of the families are violently competitive, thus, undignified. Another type of irony is dramatic irony which refers to the difference between what the characters believe to be true and the facts that the reader knows. More specifically, it denotes the fact that the readers know beforehand more about the situation, truth or end than the character himself. For example, in “Romeo and Juliet”, the readers know that Juliet took a sleeping potion and isn’t really dead. However, Romeo doesn’t know about this fact. Having great sorrow and unceasing anguish, he then commits a suicide. The most common type of irony used in fiction is situational irony. It is regarded as the discrepancy between what is expected in a certain situation and what actually happens. This type of irony often arises from the circumstances and events of a story. For instance, the readers usually expect a happy ending for young lovers. In fact, in “Romeo and Juliet”, the couple finally spends eternity together, but not in the way that the readers had hoped. Among these three types, dramatic irony and situational irony usually appear through the macro structure of the fiction; therefore, it requires the reader’s perceptivity to recognize these two types of irony as well as their dramatic effects. Meanwhile, verbal irony often appears through the micro structure - the interchange and conversation among characters, or it is expressed through the way the author describes the characters. c. Irony in pragmatics In terms of pragmatics, it seems that irony has been a subject of interest because a number of approaches to this issue have been proposed since 1975. The 9 study of irony in pragmatic begins with the work of Grice, then moves onwards to Relevance Theory Indirect Negation Theory, Speech Act Theory, and so on. The Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) The cooperative principle includes four maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner which should not be flouted in order to avoid ambiguity. However, the flouting of these maxims allows the speaker to use different figures of speech and enrich the conversation, be more polite or less aggressive than the speaker would be if he followed the rules based on the four maxims. If the cooperative principle is fully observed, there is no difference between the sentence and the speaker meaning. Grice later proposed a theory of irony, in which he argued that using irony means flouting at least one of the maxims of the cooperative principle. However, it is not possible to go by this principle in every situation. As Barbe (1995, p.54) points out, there are situations when irony is “expected and acceptable”. For instance, in the performance of a stand-up comedian, irony is expected by the audience so it is questionable if irony is in fact flouting for example the maxim of relation. Barbe (1995) further claimed that not every conversation can be led by the cooperative principle. The Relevance Theory (Sperper & Wilson, 1975) Later, Sperper and Wilson criticized Grice’s theory of irony, and argued that irony is not always present if at least one of the maxims is flouted. They proposed the relevance theory, assuming that every utterance fulfilling or flouting Grice’s maxims was formulated in that way for a reason. Therefore, they are relevant, and it is the interpreter’s job to decode the speaker meaning based on the sentence meaning, the context and on the seemingly irrelevant information that the speaker gives. 10 The Indirect Negation Theory (Giora, 1998) Giora agreed with Grice in dividing the interpretation of an utterance into two sections, first understanding the literal meaning, secondly the underlying message. Giora’s indirect negation theory argues that the negation in irony cannot be direct, so grammatical, and only indirect. She then proposed that irony is a form of indirect negation, which means the ironist negates without using an overt negation marker (Giora, 1998, p. 4). She further argued that direct negation cannot be used in interpreting literal irony. If a literal ironic utterance is grammatically negated, its meaning will not reflect the underlying ironic meaning. For example if the utterance “This meat is black” is directly negated, it becomes “This meat is not black” which does not correspond with the underlying meaning, “This meat is uneatable”. Speech Act Theory - Feasibility of applying Speech Act Theory to verbal irony Several researchers such as Van Dijk (1976), Leech & Short (2001), and Zhang (2013) have approached irony from the standpoint of speech act theory. To begin with, Van Dijk (1976) suggested that “ literature” itself be regarded as pretended speech act with its own felicity conditions. Therefore, fiction can be considered a one-sided conversation between the author and the reader in which the author not only informs the reader “about a particular fictional world, but also needs to achieve a rapport with his readers, an identity of view point where by the contents of the fiction will be interpreted and evaluated in an appropriate way” (Leech & Short, 2001, p.257). Based on Van Dijk (1976)’s and Leech & Short (2001)’s opinions, Zhang (2013) claimed that irony, as a technique of expressing the author’s or characters’ 11 attitudes, used by the author in his communication with the reader can be a type of pretended speech act with indirectness and intention as its characteristics and insincerity as a felicity condition. Concerning indirectness, irony is a figure of speech expressing purposes in a roundabout way. When irony occurs, there is apparently a mismatch or even a contrast between the intended meaning and the literal meaning. Hence, it can be inferred that indirectness is a characteristic of irony. The second point is that when uttering an irony, a speaker can adjust the level of emphasis of the ironic comment to affect the interlocutor. Therefore, intention is another feature of irony. With regard to insincerity, based on Searle’s set of felicity conditions, Zhang (2013) argued that sincerity forms a necessary condition in producing any speech act, and it requires that the utterances the speaker produces be in absolute consistent with the speaker’s intentions. On the contrary, insincerity acts as a felicity condition in the case of irony because the proposition expressed via irony is usually opposite to the meaning intended by the speaker. Moreover, in Van Dijk’s (1976, as cited in Zhang, 2013) point of view, a successful irony depends mainly on the condition of insincerity. Inspired by the feasibility of applying Speech Act Theory in studying irony, the writer of this thesis would like to approach ironic expressions in some of Maugham’s short stories from this point of view. - An overview of speech act The concept of “speech act” was proposed by Austin in 1962, and later developed by Searle in 1969. More than half a century ago, Austin gave a series of lectures at Harvard, which were published posthumously as a book entitled “How to Do Things with Words”. In this book, Austin presented a new picture of analyzing meaning. Meaning is described in a relation among linguistic conventions correlated with 12