The Pragmatics of Gossip in Some of Jane Austen's Novels

The Pragmatics of Gossip is an attempt to investigate the linguistic construct of gossip in some of Jane Austen''s novels from a pure pragmatic perspective.It pragmatically tackles gossip in these literary works. Consequently it tries to identify the pragmatic structure of gossip that is the major pragmatic components of which gossip is composed and to identify the major pragmatic strategies employed in the initiation maintaining and termination stages of gossip as well as the most common strategies appealed to in each of the aforementioned stages of gossip.Moreover the work attempts to show whether the pragmatic strategies used by gossipers in the novels under investigation have contributed to the themes of the novels.Finally The study aims to develop a comprehensive model for the pragmatic analysis of gossip in literary works in general.