A Pragmatic Analysis of Antony’s Oration in Julius Caesar
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31973/aj.v3i142.3870Keywords:
Politeness, Speech Acts, Persuasive CommunicationAbstract
The present study attempts a pragmatic analysis of Antony’s famous oration in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It aims to identify which speech acts were employed in this oration for the end of achieving a high level of persuasion and, hence, characterizing Antony’s peculiar persuasive style. To achieve this objective, the study adopts a pragmatic analysis utilizing the speech act theory whereby all speech acts uttered by Antony were hand-picked and collated to represent the data of the study. In the analysis of the data, Searle’s (1969) model for categorizing speech acts was adopted to best reflect the speech acts that helped exhibiting the persuasive intent of the writer. Leech’s (1983) politeness principles are adopted to show how polite the characters to each other. The finding of the study shows that the role of speech acts for persuasive goals was vital. It can be concluded that speech acts such as declarations, commissives, directives, etc., were all employed to achieve this rhetorical intention, however, the speech acts of representative were the most significant to portray Antony’s peculiar persuasive style.
Downloads
References
Austin J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press.
Bach, K., & Harnish, R. M. (1979). Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, p. xvi.
Brown, P. & Levinson, S., C. (1997). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, H. H. (1979). Responding to Indirect Speech Acts. Cognitive psychology, 11(4), p.430-477.
Ching, M.; Michael H. and Ronald L. (1980). Linguistics on Literature. London: Routledge and Kegar and Paul, p.4.
Cutting, J. (2002). Pragmatics and Discourse. London: Routledge, p.43-44, 49, 50.
Al. A’dhemi, N. (1998) ‘’Indirect Illocutionary Act of Interrogation Structures in Modern English Texts and ELT Textbooks’’.(Unpublished M.A. Thesis), University of Baghdad.
Farch, L. (2002) ‘’Illocutionary Forces of Imperative Sentence; in English and Arabic: A Comparative Study: Unpublished MA Thesis. The University of Jordan, p.45,52, 38.
Leech, G. (1980). Exploration in Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Br, p.13.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman, p. 40, 82, 131, 143, 179.
Mills, S. (2003). Gender and Politeness (Vol. 17). Cambridge University Press, p.137.
Niazi , N. (2004) . Novel and Interpretation: A pragmatic Approach. 1st ed. Forum for cultural studies, p.32.
NÖth, W. (1995). The Handbook of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, p.52.
Ohman, R. (1981). ‘’Speech Acts and the Space between’’ in Freeman Donald (ed) Essays in Modern Stylistic. London. Methneu,p.367.
Pratt, M. (1977). Towards a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. USA. Indian University Press, p.16, 69.
Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A Contrastive Study of Requests and Apologies. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamin,p.2, p.47.
Searel, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, p.17.
Searle, J. (1975). Indirect speech acts. Syntax and semantics, ed., by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 59-82. New York: NY: Academic Press, p.76.
Schauer, G. A. (2009). Interlanguage pragmatic development. London: International Group, p.12.
Searle, J. R., Kiefer, F., & Bierwisch. M. (eds.). (1980). Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics. ISBN 90-277-1043-0. London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, p. vii, viii.
Short, M. (1989). ‘’Discourse Analysis and Drama’’ in Carter Simpson (ed). Language Discourse and Literature. London: Vawin Hyman,p.149.
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to pragmatics. London: Long man Group Ltd, p.164.
Yule, G.(1996). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, p.3,60.
Vanhoozer, K. J. (2002). First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics. Intervarsity Press, p. 182.
Watts, R., J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.10.
Abd Al-Aziz, N. (2003, ‘’The Ability of Iraqi CEFU Learners to Recognize and Produce the Illocutinary Force of Imperative Structures’’. (Unpublished M.A. Thesis) University of Baghdad, p.2, 98.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright and Licensing:
For all articles published in Al-Adab journal, copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under an open access Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, meaning that anyone may download and read the paper for free. In addition, the article may be reused and quoted provided that the original published version is cited. These conditions allow for maximum use and exposure of the work.
Reproducing Published Material from other Publishers: It is absolutely essential that authors obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, schemes, tables or any extract of a text) which does not fall into the public domain, or for which they do not hold the copyright. Permission should be requested by the authors from the copyrightholder (usually the Publisher, please refer to the imprint of the individual publications to identify the copyrightholder).
Permission is required for: Your own works published by other Publishers and for which you did not retain copyright.
Substantial extracts from anyones' works or a series of works.
Use of Tables, Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks if they are unaltered or slightly modified.
Photographs for which you do not hold copyright.
Permission is not required for: Reconstruction of your own table with data already published elsewhere. Please notice that in this case you must cite the source of the data in the form of either "Data from..." or "Adapted from...".
Reasonably short quotes are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission.
Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks that are completely redrawn by the authors and significantly changed beyond recognition do not require permission.
Obtaining Permission
In order to avoid unnecessary delays in the publication process, you should start obtaining permissions as early as possible. If in any doubt about the copyright, apply for permission. Al-Adab Journal cannot publish material from other publications without permission.
The copyright holder may give you instructions on the form of acknowledgement to be followed; otherwise follow the style: "Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year].' at the end of the caption of the Table, Figure or Scheme.
How to Cite
