Thomas Hardy

The present study aims to investigate speech acts in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d'Urbervilles based on John Austin’s theory. In the present research, the researcher attempts to investigate female characters’ speech acts in the selected novel at three levels of locutionary act, illocutionary act, perlocutionary act. Austin theories have been published in the book titled How to Do Things with Words which introduces speech acts. The philosophers believes that language is used to display the world. In other words, it shows what exists and what does not exist. The same mechanism can be traced and studied in Tess’s speech acts. It might be claimed that for Tess, the language is not the means of transferring meanings. It is a tool through which their psyche, identity, and the course of their life can be constructed. Using linguistic theories in analyzing the selected work can both depict new aspects of the novel and give insights to the linguists. It can be concluded that the speech acts are the reason why Tess fails in the society and have tragic destiny and the link between the characters’ language and psyche would be detected.

The present study focuses on the strategic process of enlisting the readers’ empathetic responsiveness in Thomas Hardy’s major Wessex novels. The analytical perspective draws on Suzanna Keen’s theories in affective narratology; it intends to uncover the stylistic strategies of affective impressionism in the Wessex narratives. The methodological procedure is grounded in the qualitative appraisal of the emotive aspects of Hardy’s realistic representations through critical discourse analysis. The research approach is influenced by the recent mind theories in cognitive science, emphasizing emotional perception as the most significant determinant of the gestalt of interpretations. The semi-fictional world of Wessex capitalizes on an insight into the primacy of emotive sensibility over cognitive rationality. The authorial intentionality in the Wessex narratives aspires to propagate human compassion by resorting to the literary application of the empathy-altruism hypothesis. The melioristic agenda for edification via investment in the readers’ emotive capacities saturates the narratives’ impressionistic composition. The manipulation of the narrative consciousness foci in the major Wessex novels enables Hardy to maintain his readers’ empathetic identification with his characters’ predicaments in a philosophical context. Moreover, the tagged characterization of the protagonists establishes the intended impressions of their temperament and demands the corresponding empathetic responses from the readers.