Context-Based Analysis in Interpreting Meaning and Identifying Sentence Structure in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby Using Utterance/ Force Techniques”

Abstract

Digging up the significance of the context of an utterance, one should know that ‘Utterance’ is a small subpart of discourse shared by speaker and hearer, and indicates facts about the topic of the conversation in which it occurs, not to mention that there are also facts about the situation in which the conversation takes in the first place. Having an integrated background among pragmatics, syntax and social role of context, this study attempts at interpreting meaning and how context affects the structure of a sentence.
Two hypotheses, however, have been included in this regard. First, context might limit the range of possible interpretations. Second, the information provided by context maybe in contrast with the grammatical explicitness of the sentence structure, i.e., the more information a contexts holds, the less explicit the grammatical structures are, and vice-versa. Using Thomas' techniques (1995), utterance/ force, the researcher has analyzed Fitzgerald’s novel, entitled ‘The Great Gatsby’, to find out the interpreted meaning. Taking Green’s (1996:133-35) account into consideration, the identification of sentence structures can be clearly shown. Hence, such an American novel is chosen here because of its richness of meaning multiplicity and its contingency of sentence structures affected by the context. As for the results, it has been seen that context, in all its types, limits the range of possible interpretations, that is, without context it is impossible to reach the intended meaning of the addresser/addressee. Another result is that the relationship between grammatical explicitness and the information provided by the context is often contrary. To this end, the more information a context presents, the less explicit the grammatical structures are.