2.3 Theories of Pragmatics

With respect to the concrete stylistics, pragmatics is relatively abstract. Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context. It focuses on the function of language in context. The pioneers of pragmatics are Austin, Searle, Grice, Leech, Sperber, Wilson and Levinson. The most famous and widely-used pragmatic theories are Austin’s Speech Act Theory and Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Therefore, the present study will adopt two theories to analyze Emma Watson’s speech.

2.3.1 The Speech Act

Proposed by Austin, the Speech Act is the performance that a sentence contains. In the real communication, a sentence usually intends to express the speaker’s purposes of speaking. And there are mainly three different purposes. Take a sentence for example:

John, I am cold. (The windows of the house are all open.)

The locutionary act of this sentence is reflected by words “ John ”, “ I ”, “ am ” and “ cold ”. The utterance is to speak out the fact that the speaker is cold.