The Pragmatics of Courtship in Selected British Novels

Abstract

Despite the fact that courtship is prevailing over time and place, it has remained somehow pragmatically unexplored. It refers to an interpersonal interaction involving two people from the opposed sex in pursuit of a successful marriage. The current study tries to bridge the gap in the literature by investigating courtship in selected British Victorian novels from a pragmatic perspective. Specifically, this study attempts to do this task by answering the following questions: What are the pragmatic aspects of courtship in the data scrutinized? And what are the pragmatic strategies used to manifest these pragmatic aspects? The study hypothesizes that Participants in the British novels examined utilize certain strategies of courtship more frequently than others. Based on the findings, it can be asserted that the British novels selected are loaded with the pragmatic manifestations of courtship. These are pragmatic by nature because they cannot be interpreted apart from their context of use. Additionally, the eclectic model of courtship designed has proven to be successfully workable in analyzing the data of this work.