Conversation Analysis in a Literary Context. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Leipzig (Anglistik), course: Pragmatics, language: English, abstract: Conversation analysis is one of the central elements in pragmatics. After introducing several pragmatics basics like the pragmatics principles it is important to relate them to a whole conversation. Since utterances do not occur alone but always within a conversation, they need to be analysed as unit. Regarding that, pragmatics wants to study language in use, whereby use is always conversation and communication. However, there is also a close connection to discourse analysis which includes power relations in institutional conversations, feminist analysis as well as literary studies. The interface of all these fields constitutes itself out of communication, of language in use. Therefore, the structure of this paper will be divided into two parts: the first one establishes the theoretical background with important terms for conversation analysis. Depending on the author, there are always slightly different aspects highlighted which will be summarized in that part to share the same background. Secondly, these tools will be applied to a literary text where especially the addition to a textual interpretation is shown. Taking Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen as the literary example, the attempt is to use a well-known text which concentrates mainly on accurate description of the real world. However, the tool of conversation analysis might be an addition to other interpretation and proves therefore as a interdisciplinary idea.