REFUSAL STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH LITERARY DISCOURSE: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND THE GREAT GATSBY
Keywords:
refusal strategies,, pragmatics, class distinctions, face-threatening act,, symbolic function,, modernist individualism, sAbstract
This study explores the use of refusal strategies in English literary discourse through a pragmatic analysis of two canonical novels: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). Drawing upon speech act theory (Searle, 1969) and politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), the research identifies and compares how characters employ linguistic and pragmatic means to perform refusals within socially charged contexts. Refusal, as a face-threatening act, often reflects interpersonal power relations, gender roles, and class distinctions. Through close reading and qualitative discourse analysis, this paper demonstrates that Austen’s characters rely heavily on indirect and mitigated refusals to maintain social decorum, whereas Fitzgerald’s characters tend to use more direct, emotionally charged refusals reflecting modernist disillusionment and individualism. The findings highlight that refusal strategies in literature serve not only communicative but also symbolic functions, revealing characters’ moral, social, and psychological dimensions.
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