VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies Faculty of Post-graduate studies **************** NGUYỄN KIM OANH A Minor thesis on: A STUDY ON HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND THE NEWNESS OF LANGUAGE USE IN ‘PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’ BY JANE AUSTEN (NGHIÊN CỨU CƠ SỞ LỊCH SỬ, XÃ HỘI VÀ TÍNH MỚI CỦA VIỆC SỬ DỤNG NGÔN NGỮ TRONG TÁC PHẨM „KIÊU HÃNH VÀ ĐỊNH KIẾN‟ CỦA JANE AUSTEN) Field: Linguistics Code: 602215 HANOI – DECEMBER 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies Faculty of Post-graduate studies **************** NGUYỄN KIM OANH A Minor thesis on: A STUDY ON HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND THE NEWNESS OF LANGUAGE USE IN ‘PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’ BY JANE AUSTEN (NGHIÊN CỨU CƠ SỞ LỊCH SỬ, XÃ HỘI VÀ TÍNH MỚI CỦA VIỆC SỬ DỤNG NGÔN NGỮ TRONG TÁC PHẨM „KIÊU HÃNH VÀ ĐỊNH KIẾN‟ CỦA JANE AUSTEN) Field: Linguistics Code: 602215 Supervisor: Dr. Phạm Đăng Bình HANOI – DECEMBER 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgement. ii Table of contents. iii PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale of the study. Aims and objectives of the study. Methodology of procedures. Design of the study.
Data collection and date analysis. Scope of the study. 4 PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1. Definitions of key terms.
Discourse and discourse analysis. 11 iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Introduction to Jane Austen. Introduction to „Pride and Prejudice‟.
16 CHAPTER 3: HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF BRITISH NOVELS 3. Themes and forms of the late 18 and early 19 century novels. 19 CHAPTER 4: NEWNESS OF LANGUAGE USE IN ‘PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’ 4. Austen‟s distinctive writing style.
Newness in language use. Language use in the three leading conversations. 30 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Newness of language use.
The matter of love and love expressing. Contributions of the study. Suggestions for further studies. I v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART 1: INTRODUCTION This initial part stated the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, objectives, the scope of the study, and the overview of the rest of this research paper.
Above all, it was in this part that the research question was identified to work as clear guidelines for the whole research. Rationale of the study In the eighteenth century, the readers were delighted by a new form of prose, which was called „novel‟ for the first time by Daniel Defoe – the first considerable British novelist. A „novel‟ with a certain length did bring amusement, pleasure and joy to those who were concerned when the contemporary British society was dreadfully chaotic in the virtue of the changes in the monarch. In the innovation of this new form of prose, there appeared a remarkable number of writers and their works.
They were coined to emphasize not only the social changes but also the imaginary stories, which exposed their hope for a better life, so even the family or social class problems were best put down in words by one of the most famous female novelist in Britain and all over the world – Jane Austen. Peter Washington in his commentary once implied that Jane Austen belonged to the fantastic side of the English comedy that appealed so strongly to the readers, not only in Britain but also from all over the world. She was also said to be the first novelist capable of “conveying both interior and exterior of human life” as well as “developing the means of representing the totality of human life” (Ian Watt, 1957) In the six novels written during the very last decades of the eighteenth century, she truly succeeded in describing “the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which to me the most wonderful I‟ve ever met with … that a pity such a gifted creature dies so early” as Walter Scott (1826) once stated in his 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. All the certain circumstances were just within the leading involvement of one family and their neighbours and friends in which Austen created “some heroines who were credible with minds, with the capacity to think for themselves with ambition and wit”; and „Pride and Prejudice‟, the novel about marriage, was said to be the best of them all.
„Pride and Prejudice‟ was coined to construct the frame of the contemporarily social satire, within the relationship between people from the middle and upper classes. It initially commenced the era of „country family novels‟ which set a “prying inquiry into the manner, human dignity and great strain” on the characters and the society they were living in, which made her novels connected to the contemporary world more than the traditional society of the eighteenth century as Diệp Minh Tâm (2002) once commented. Further more, it ranked one of the greatest novels of all time following “Wuthering heights” by Emily Bronte - 1847) and was read even if it was not taught at school. The researcher was impressed by the name of the novel at first and became overexcited about the novel since she finished reading it for the first time.
The novel was really linked to both of the real world and the emotional changes inside individuals, especially the female. Therefore, putting extra effort in investigating what impressed her really fed her desire to understand the people and society at the time. Aims of the study This study was carried out with the hope of exploring the background of the temporary Britain leading to the remarkable changes in its literal history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries especially in the view on British novels. The study also aimed at answering the question: “What is Jane Austen‟s distinctive writing style?”.
The answer to the question would help the students of Linguistics, the novel's readers as well as those who wished to specialize in 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com English Literature realize what made Austen one of the most successful female novelist of the century. Right from the start, the researcher expected to find out the historical and social background of the British Literature and briefly analyze the language use in „Pride and Prejudice‟ which exposed Austen‟s distinctive writing style. Last but not least was the researcher‟s desire to understand the novel, which was really related to the controversial matter of love and love expressing. Methodology of procedures 3.
Design of the study The study was divided into three main parts. While Part One dealt with the general information which contained the rationale, aims and objectives, methodology and scope of the study, Part Two went into further details of the historical and social background; and the newness of language use in Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice through four chapters. The suggestions for further research would not be omitted in the last part. Data collection and data analysis The study used the descriptive and contextual methods of data collecting and analyzing.
Basing on the huge resources of library and internet materials, the researcher analyzed and then agglutinated those ideas into her own brief clear and understandable viewpoints. On the other hand, several differences in the changeable literal trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would be briefly stated in her Analysis on how main characters exposed their own „pride‟ and „prejudice‟ in some certain circumstances through the three volumes. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the study As could be seen from the title, the study strongly focused not only on the historical and social background but also on the language use of the novel which played the most important role.
To understand that newness of language use in the novel, the researcher had to pay her full attention to the main characters‟ leading conversations in the three volumes which helped expose the cherish love and the theory of „pride‟ and „prejudice‟ – the main themes of the novel. Amongst the three conversations, the first two would be thoroughly analyzed, for the reason that the first „conversation‟ brought the two main characters by their mistaken first impression and the second conversation was about the conflicts finally resolved. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1. Definitions of key terms To be able to analyze the newness of language use through the three acts of the novel, there were several key terms: discourse and discourse analysis, literary style and language use, which needed to be deeply understood.
So for the purpose of providing a clear and deep understanding of the matter, this first chapter would focus on the definitions of those key terms while mentioning some necessary information about previous studies that related to the matter of the study. Discourse and discourse analysis Through centuries, 'discourse' was defined in various ways by a number of scholars. „Discourse‟ was 'stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive'. (Cook 1989:156) „Discourse‟ was considered 'a communicative event which draws on the meaning potential of the language (and other systems of communication) to carry communicative value (the illocutionary force) of speech acts through utterances.
In other words, it referred to “the interpretation of communicative events in context.” (Nunan 1993:7-8) It could be said that there were no significant differences between those definitions since the notion of „discourse‟ was all about how the language use was understood in such verbal events. Sharing a lot in common with Malinowski, linguists (Hymes, 1960s; Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969; Grice, 1975; and Halliday and Hasan, 1973, 1978, 1989, 1994) had 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com drawn certain attention to this branch by clarifying some “contextual, grammar and cohesional models as well as pragmatic and conversational viewpoints”. However, at the limitation of the minor thesis, the researcher wanted to focus on the role of contextual analysis in the three major discourses for the reason that 'context' was created by the discourse and vice versa. It was what and how people could depend on to interpret the discourses created in each context as Nunan (1993:7-8) cited that J.
Firth and Dell Hymes also appreciated the idea that people always reacted toward how they understood and predicted what the others were going to say next. More systematically, Halliday (1989) developed a model of contextual analysis, just following the context of situation, which included three components as followed: Components of a Feature of the context SITUATION Field of discourse what was happening, to the nature of the social action that was taking place Tenor of discourse Who were taking part in the situation Mode of discourse The role assigned to language 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Example 1: A short conversation was given and analysed in Halliday and Hasan‟s theory (1989) as an example: Doctor: Have you been vomiting? Patient: Em, yeah. I vomitted about … I vomitted twice … two days ago at school and I vomitted about um eight or ten times last night. Patient: Oh, er, just sort of altogether, you know, Dr M gave him anti-biotic capsules for him to take because he's also got … Doctor: a throat.
Patient: A bit of infected tonsils yeah and he said that, you know for him to spit the capsule out … I don't know whether he was trying to swallow it down or what but he did. Doctor: Ah Look, I don't think you can go past an appendix there. Just, you know, number one, he's got no pain just there and is sore there and I think he's probably got something blocking in the appendix and it's giving him this constant pain and trouble.