A Pragmatic Study of Speech Acts in the Novel “Jazz” by Toni Morrison

Abstract

This research aims at analyzing Representatives and Expressives Speech Acts in Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz to examine the narrator’s intention the characters' utterances. Various types of Speech Acts are explored within the paradigm of a literary discourse. The crux of the thesis is to investigate how linguistic analysis can help in understanding literary works and to address the following research questions: 1) What types of speech acts especially Representatives and Expressive are found and commonly used in the novel? 2) What are the messages of the author by using these types of Speech Acts? 3) Is Morrisons’ Jazz a suitable discourse for applying speech acts? 4) How does applying speech acts help in understanding its course? 5) Can characters be analyzed through speech acts?. Therefore, this thesis is a pragmatic study focusing on speech acts, as manifested and investigated in Morrison’s Jazz. Finally, the richness of the Pragmatics of literature can be inspiring for further studies. The integration between literature and linguistics underscores the significance of the interdisplinary approach to interpret linguistic aspects in terms of literary discourse and to interpret linguistic markera in terms of aesthetic or poetic style.