Nghiên cứu về phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ trong một số truyện ngắn của 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 phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ số truyện ngắn 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 phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ số truyện ngắn 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 Rationale Aims of the study Scope of the study Significance of the study Design of the study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF THEORIES AND RELATED LITERATURE 1.1 Theoretical Background a Characterization b An overview of irony c Irony in Pragmatics 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 Recapitulation 38 Limitations of the study 38 Implications for language teaching and learning 39 Suggestions for further study 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………… I v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table – Classification of Speech Acts (Searle, 1969) 15 Table – 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 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: “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” 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 only passenger She dined at the captain’s table, chatted with the crew and soon turned out to be a crashing bore As desperate as they were, the captain and the crew decided to arrange an affair between Miss Reid and a young radio-operator to silence her for the rest of the journey Verbal irony The writer identifies five verbal ironic expressions employed in the characterization of Miss Reid Example 1: “She was a crashing, she was a stupendous, she was an excruciating bore.” In this example, irony can be found in the way the narrator used extreme adjectives (“crashing”, “stupendous”, “excruciating”) to combine with the noun “bore” Example 2: “She was a great dreamer and she narrated her dreams at intolerable length.” Once again, the narrator employed ironic tone and word choice to mock at Miss Reid’s boring and non-stop talks Example 3: “She hit on the commonplace like a hammer driving a nail into the wall.” Example 4: “She plunged into the obvious like a clown in a circus jumping through a hoop.” As can be seen from Example and 4, the narrator used witty comparisons to describe how annoying Miss Reid was when she kept talking on and on It seemed that there was no subject upon which she did not have anything to say Example 5: “She bombarded them with foolish questions.” 31 In this example, it is easy to recognize the narrator’s scornful tone when he used the verb “bombard” Obviously, he employed the ironic language to satirize Miss Reid’s thirst for information Dramatic irony As can be seen in the story, Miss Reid was really self-convinced that she had many interesting talks with her fellow-passengers, as well as the captain and his crew She was even certain that they liked her as much as she liked them, and she was successful in not only imparting to other people a great deal of interesting information but also giving all of them a good time In fact, she did not know what the people on board thought about her They found her a crashing bore, and they were so desperate that they decided to arrange an affair between her and a radiooperator to silence her for the rest of the voyage Situational irony In the first half of the story, the narrator misled readers into believing that Miss Reid was a good talker He described her as a woman who had many interesting talks with not only her fellow-passengers but also the crew members, and readers are certain that the people on board fancied her conversations Then on a sudden, Miss Reid was portrayed as a boring talkative spinster She was such a crashing bore that the captain and his crew desperately wanted to silence her To sum up, in this part, the writer briefly presents the data collection as well as the analysis on different types of irony used the development of the female characters in five Maugham’s short stories The data collected and analyzed in this part will be synthesized and discussed in the next chapter 32 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION In this chapter the writer presents the results of the study and discusses on types of irony used in the characterization of the female characters She also discusses on the pragmatic functions of the ironic expressions and the way W.S Maugham used irony in the selected short stories 4.1 Types of irony used in the development of the female characters Pie chart 1: Types of irony in the selected short stories The above pie chart is to show types of ironic expressions used the five selected short stories It is clear from the pie chart that verbal irony is the dominant one among three types; and it makes up 79% The percentages for dramatic and situational irony are 6% and 15% respectively In the total of 33 ironic expressions collected from five short stories, verbal irony is the most widely used among three types However, the number of verbal ironic expressions in each story tends to be no more than six In fact, in order to successfully create an ironic tone, writers need to consider character actions, conversations, plot, setting, etc Every factor must work together as a piece to achieve the level of irony needed without overdoing it In the selected short stories, Maugham employed verbal irony mainly in the way he described the female 33 characters and their dialogues; however, he did not bombard readers with satiric words or dialogues one after another In other words, irony in the selected short stories plays a role as spices to make the stories wittier and more amusing In terms of dramatic and situational irony, these two types usually appear through the macro structure of the stories Therefore, readers should read carefully to recognize these two types and understanding their effects Moreover, it can be seen in the data analysis part that Maugham tended to combine two or even three types of irony in the stories, which seems to be a feature of his unique writing styles 4.2 Pragmatic functions of these ironic expressions As the writer of this study was inspired by the feasibility of applying Speech Act Theory in studying irony, she would like to approach irony used in the selected Maugham’s short stories from this point of view According to Searle (1969) Speech Act Theory, speech acts can be understood as actions performed via utterances, and the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act From his point of view, by performing an illocutionary act, the speaker expresses an illocutionary intention Hence, as a special illocutionary act, irony also carries the ironic illocutionary intention as well After collecting and analyzing the data, the writer of this study would like to present some findings on pragmatic functions of irony used in the selected short stories a Verbal irony Verbal irony, which is most frequently employed in the stories, appears through the micro structure - the interchange and conversation among characters, or it is expressed through the way Maugham portrayed the female characters This type 34 of irony, first, serves as representative speech act in which Maugham described the female characters’ appearance, personalities or dialogues Moreover, verbal irony also functions as an expressive speech act in which he expressed his feelings towards the female characters More specifically, he employed irony as a device to mock at them For example, when describing Louise in the story “Louise”, Maugham wrote: “If they had a difference of opinion she gave in to him at once, for she was the most submissive wife a man could have, but her heart failed her.” Although Louise had such a “weak heart” as she always said, she was never a submissive woman If she were submissive, she would obey her husband’s words without any kinds of resistance Maugham employed the ironic language to sneer at the fact that Louise was just taking advantages from her ill health to achieve what she wanted b Dramatic irony Dramatic irony, which refers to the difference between what the characters believe to be true and the facts that the reader knows, only appears in the stories “The Escape” and “Winter Cruise” For example, in “The Escape”, from the beginning to the end of the story, Ruth Barlow always believed that Roger’s love for her stayed the same However, readers are aware that Roger suddenly fell out of love with her and he had a cunning plan to escape from her: he took her to see houses after houses to find a suitable accommodation before getting married Ironically, after an exhausting house hunting, Mrs Barlow did not realize that it was Roger’s counsel Tired as she was, Mrs Barlow decided to leave Roger for good Dramatic irony also serves as representative and expressive speech acts which provided a witty insight into the female characters’ behaviors and beliefs c Situational irony Situational irony is regarded as the discrepancy between what is expected in a certain situation and what actually happens This type of irony was employed in 35 four stories: “The Three Fat Women of Antibes”, “The Luncheon”, “Louise” and “Winter Cruise” For example, in the story “Louise”, from the narrator’s point of view, Louise was just using her “weak heart” to manipulate the people around her Readers are convinced that Louise had quite a strong nerve and a good health, since she survived her two husbands’ deaths Moreover, she was able to go to all the liveliest parties, to gamble very heavily, to dance and even to flirt with young men Therefore, when her daughter, Iris, insisted on getting married despite Louise’s ill health, readers expect that Louise would still manage the shock as she had always done However, on Iris’ wedding day, Louis died from a fatal heart attack Situational irony, in the four stories mentioned above, functions as an ironic directive speech act of leading readers to expecting a situation which is contrary to what actually happens 4.3 W.S Maugham’s use of irony in the selected short stories It is apparent that irony play in a significant role in the way Maugham created his writing style First and foremost, Maugham often combined two or three types of irony when writing stories without making his writings too intense and complicated with many satiric expressions and plot twists In terms of verbal irony, he used this type as a means to mock at the female characters In fact, this is the most popular function of irony For example, in “The Three Fat Women of Antibes”, Maugham introduced Mrs Richman as a woman who “was very well content to be a widow with a handsome fortune.” When people think about a widow, they often picture a sad, lonely woman However, he used the adjective “content”, which satirically revealed that a great fortune might be a reasonable compensation for the loss of her husband Additionally, Maugham also actively employed verbal irony to amuse For instance, in the story “Winter Cruise”, 36 the writer wrote: “She bombarded them with foolish questions.” The amusing function of irony in this example is easily recognized through the verb “bombard” Maugham used irony to emphasize Miss Reid’s thirst for information Meanwhile, dramatic and situational irony was used to create riveting plots In the selected short stories, the female characters appeared in conflicts with themselves or with other characters Hence, it makes the readers want to see how they solve the problem For instance, in “The Three Fat women of Antibes”, the three fat women struggled with Lena’s nourishing meals and ability to win at bridge, and readers become more curious about how the fat women could handle the situation To sum up, Maugham combined different types of irony in the selected short stories However, the dominant type is verbal irony, which was found in the way he described the females’ appearance, personalities and dialogues Maugham employed irony as a means to not only create engaging female characters but also riveting plot twists 37 PART III: CONCLUSION Recapitulation This study is carried out to investigate how ironic expressions are employed in some of W.S Maugham’s short stories The data is collected from five short stories: “The Three Fat Women of Antibes” (1936) “The Escape” (1925), “The Luncheon” (1924), “Louise” (1925), “Winter Cruise” (1936) Since several researchers such as Van Dijk (1976), Zhang (2013), Haverkate (1990), Kenkadze (2012) have studied irony from the standpoint of Speech Act Theory, the writer also approached ironic expressions in some of Maugham’s short stories from this point of view As a special illocutionary act, irony also carries the ironic illocutionary force as well Through identifying and analyzing ironic expressions, it is revealed that in the total of 33 ironic expressions collected from five short stories, verbal irony is the most widely used among three types with 79% The percentages for dramatic and situational irony are 6% and 15% respectively 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 Limitations of the study Due to the data sources, this study has some unavoidable limitations After choosing short stories in which the female characters were protagonists or antagonists, the writer has to read them carefully to identify irony as well as its 38 functions However, since irony does not occur vividly in every story, some of the stories were not chosen as data sources Therefore, if the writer could access to more writings of Maugham, the data collected might be different, which might affected the results of the study Implications This study is conducted to investigate how ironic expressions are employed in some of W.S Maugham’s short stories The writer of this study hopes that this thesis will serve as a reference for students who would like to enhance their knowledge about British Literature as well as the application of Speech Act Theory into studying irony They can use this thesis as an extra reading to study about Somerset Maugham and the use of irony in his fictional works Moreover, since irony is considered a special illocutionary act, it carries an ironic illocutionary intention which varies from culture to culture Therefore, hopefully this study would be useful for anyone who wants to investigate how irony could be translated from one language to another Suggestions for further study If more time was allowed, the author would like to conduct: - An investigation into the characterization of female characters in more of Maugham’s work (possibly in different genre) - A more profound study into Maugham’s writing style - A comparison of irony in some of Maugham’s writings and their Vietnamese editions 39 REFERENCES Austin, J.L (1962) “How to Do Things with Words” Oxford: The Clarendon Press Bacolni, M & Amenta, S (2008) “Isn‟t it Ironic? An Analysis on the Elaboration of Ironic Sentences with ERPs” The Open Applied Linguistics Journal p 9-17 Barbe, K (1995) “Irony In Context” Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company Colebrook, C (2004) “Irony” London: Routledge Cook, Jiyon (2005) “A Pragmatic Analysis of Irony” Language & Information Society, 6, p 18-35 Cuddon, J.A (1998) “A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory” 4th Ed Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Erdogan, A (2010) “On The Concept of Irony in Rorty” Unpublished MA Thesis – The Graduate School of Social Sciences – Middle East Technical University Galperin, I.R (1971) “Stylistics” Moscow : Higher School Publishing House Giora, R (1998) “Irony” In J Verschueren, J-O Östman, J Blommaert and C Bulcaen (eds.) “Handbook of Pragmatics” (1-21) Philadelphia: John Benjamins 10 Grice, P (1975) “Logic and conversation” Syntax and semantics 3: Speech arts Cole et al p.41-58 Elsevier Retrieved from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/studypacks/Grice-Logic.pdf 11 Harrison, M (1998) “The Language of Theatre” London: Routledge ISBN 0-87830-087-2, p.51-52 12 Hirsch, G (2011) “Between Irony and Humour: A Pragmatic Model” Pragmatics & Cognition, 4, p 530-561 40 13 Huang, Lihua, (2011) “A Pragmatic Study of Irony in Samuel Beckett‟s Plays” Applied Economics, Business and Development: International Symposium 2011, p.22-27 14 Lang, B (1996), “The Limits of Irony” New Literary History, 27 (3), p 571588 15 Leech,G.N & Short, M.H (2001) “Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose” Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press 16 Maugham, W.S (1988) “Sixty-five Short Stories” London: William Clowes Ltd 17 Muecke, D.C (1969) “The Compass of Irony” London: Methuen & Co Ltd 18 Ospina, S (2004) “Qualitative Research” US: New York University Press 19 Palinkas, I (2013) “Irony and The Standard Pragmatic Model” International Journal of English Linguistics, 3(5), p.14-19 20 Patton, M.Q (2002) “A Guide To Using Qualitative Research Methodology” Retrieved May 15th, 2015 from http://evaluation.msf.at/fileadmin/evaluation/files/documents/resources_MSF /MSF_Qualitative_Methods.pdf 21 Searle, J (1969) “Speech Act An Essay in the Philosophy of Language” UK: Cambridge University Press 22 Snicket, L (2002) “Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography” US: Harper Collins 23 Sperber, D., & Wilson, D (1995) “Relevance: communication & cognition” Cornwall: T J Press Ltd 24 Thompson, A.R (1948) “The Dry Mock: A Study of Irony in Drama” US: University of California Press 25 Van Dijk, T.A (ed.) (1976) “Pragmatics of Language and Literature” Holland: North-Holland Publishing Company 41 26 Zhang, Ting (2013) “Irony in The Mayor of Casterbridge: A Literary Pragmatic Study” International Journal of Knowledge and Language Processing, 4(1), p 35-46 42 APPENDIX List of Verbal Ironic Expressions Collected Story 1: “The Three Fat Women of Antibes” Example 1: “She was very well content to be a widow with a handsome fortune.” Example 2: “It was increasingly difficult to find dresses to make her look as she liked to look.” Example 3: “She had on a beautiful silk wrap which she held tighly round her neck with one hand to look as slim as possible and she held her head so high that he should not see her double chin.” Example 4: “But when she turned away from the departing train, she heaved such a vast sigh of relief that the platform shook beneath her.” Example 5: “I can’t help think that if she really cared for her husband, she would hardly eat so much.” Story 2: “The Escape” Example 1: “Mrs Ruth Barlow, for she was twice a widow, had splendid dark eyes and they were the most moving I ever saw.” Example 2: “When Roger told me that he had at last persuaded her to marry him, I wished him joy.” Example 3: “It could hardly have been that he grew tired of her conversation, for she had never had any conversation.” Example 4: “Mrs Barlow had the patience of an angel.” I Story 3: “The Luncheon” Example 1: “She gave me the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose.” Example 2: “I never eat more than one thing I think people eat far too much nowadays A little fish, perhaps I wonder if they have any salmon.” Example 3: “I never eat more than one thing unless you have little caviar.” Example 4: “I never drink anything for luncheon, except white wine My doctor won’t let me drink anything but champagne.” Example 5: “I never eat anything for luncheon Just a bite, I never want more than that I couldn’t possibly eat anything more unless they had some of those giant asparagus.” Example 6: “I’ve just had a snack and I shall enjoy a peach.” Story 4: “Louise” Example 1: “He gave up the games he excelled in, not because she wished him to, she was glad that he should play golf and hunt, but because by a coincidence she had a heart attack whenever he proposed to leave her for a day.” Example 2: “If they had a difference of opinion she gave in to him at once, for she was the most submissive wife a man could have, but her heart failed her.” Example 3: “Louise’s health forced her to spend the winter at Monte Carlo and the summer at Deauville.” Example 4: “For the next two or three years, Louise managed, not withstanding her weak heart, to go beautifully dressed to all the most lively parties, to gamble very heavily, to dance and even to flirt with tall slim young men.” Example 5: II “- Your heart’s much better, isn’t it? - It’ll never be better I saw a specialist this morning and he said I must prepare for the worst - Oh, well, you’ve been prepare for that for nearly twenty years now, haven’t you?” Example 6: “- I hate the thought of anyone sacrificing themselves for me - My dear Louise, you’ve buried two husbands, I can’t see the least reason why you shouldn’t bury at least two more.” Story 5: “Winter Cruise” Example 1: “She was a crashing, she was a stupendous, she was an excruciating bore.” Example 2: “She was a great dreamer and she narrated her dreams at intolerable length.” Example 3: “She hit on the commonplace like a hammer driving a nail into the wall.” Example 4: “She plunged into the obvious like a clown in a circus jumping through a hoop.” Example 5: “She bombarded them with foolish questions.” III ... Although Louise had such a “weak heart” as she always said, she was never a submissive woman If she were submissive, she would obey her husband? ?s words without any kinds of resistance Maugham employed... for she was the most submissive wife a man could have, but her heart failed her.” Although Louise had such a “weak heart” as she always said, she was never a submissive woman If she were submissive,... 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