The aim of this study is to develop and increase the capability to the understanding of the literary discourse and to grasp a better attitude of literature and the literary work by enriching and motivating the learners’' pragmatic knowledge and capability and making it part of the teaching/learning strategy how to increase and develop the quality EFL/ESL teaching. Here the researcher will examine an extract from a dramatic discourse of Julius Caesar. The analysis will show part of Mark Antony’s dramatic conversation in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The study will depend on the basic pragmatic categories and consider Antony’s speech enable to show how the interlocutor succeeds in performing the successful message to the readers that is the illocutionary act and force (the communicative intention). This must be understood by the hearers, but this is not uttered directly or explicitly. The dramatic discourse or conversation is different from the natural or artificial conversation and discourse that introduced in textbooks. The dialogue is composed of a limited range of illocutionary types, such as questions and answers.
To exemplify this point, the next section will analyze an extract pragmatically from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Here the researcher will examine an extract from Act III, scene ii from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when Marc Antony delivers a speech at Caesar’s funeral is an example of oratory and tactful manipulation and persuasion, which has been analyzed mostly from a pragmatic point of view.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar
Th e noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men—
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coff ers fi ll:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me (He weeps)
Mark Antony’s funeral speech is a brilliant example of the use of symbols in exercising the rational application. He uses short sentences and plays with different types of a sentence such as a statement (positive) and negative sentences in a very proper and wise way, introducing irony with a pinch of mockery. His technique is successful in sending a message to the people who are gathered in the situation to protest Caesar’s murder.
Throughout his speech, Antony uses various strategies and techniques such as winning and appealing plan to accomplish his hidden and unrevealed goal: that of promoting the gathered people to punish Caesar’s death. He is successful in his task in sending the purpose of his speech; that is why the hearers must understand the illocutionary force (intention) of his speech acts. To achieve his goal that is the persuasion of the mob (roman) people, he pretends that he belongs to them and supports them in doing any action toward the revenge on the assassinators. Still, in reality, he tries all his effort to make the people become of his part and support him to punish Caesar’s murder.
Mark Antony uses the same syntactical structure as another character in the play uses (Brutus) when beginning his speech; he will use different words, though. He shows himself very cleverly that he is close and friendly with the people by using some words as “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” this is the same strategy and technique used by Brutus who is one of the main characters in the play and one of the assassinator members. Antony uses the word” friend” to pretend that he is very close to them, and there is no distance between him and the audience.
The purpose of Antony’s eulogy is to specify the mob people to take revenge on those who assassinated caesura, so. In order to obtain the people’s acceptance, he displays that he is with them and supports them to do that. Antony first make an appealing request to the people “Friends, Romans, countrymen” and then he uses contradictories to stress on his intention ad goal “I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him./ The evil that men do lives after them”.the meaning of this utterance is obscure, although it appears to be unambiguous in a sense. ‘I am here to pronounce the burial speech that is all; I have no purpose of praising Caesar or showing that he was any better than he was. This is a hint given to the people, and they didn’t believe that Antony directly shows his disagreement with Brutus. This is the outcome of Antony’s oratory speech, in which he speaks in conformity in front of people.
Mark Antony’s discourse in Julius Caesar is one of the most persuasive discourses of all time. However, his method here is unclear the connection between the short, simple declarations, and so progress alternative meanings for them.” What is the evil that survives a man’s death:” is it merely the evil deeds he has done or the memory of them, as Brutus appears to have suggested.it seems to only to an animate object. This is an example of a violation of the maxim of the manner in its ambiguity. The good deeds of Caesar have forgotten and buried with him and none remember them. This may show that Antony wants to tell the people that no need to think about Caesar whatever goodness has done is gone, but only the evil actions are left for you. He uses different and obscure utterances, which is contradictory in form but may give sense. He may not come to admire Caesar overtly, but he will speak by indirection of what he knows.
Antony uses contrastive opinion and utterance when he addresses his speech to the people. He says, “He was my friend, faithful and just to me,” but at the same time, he says, “But Brutus says he was ambitious” he tactfully contradicts the fact and speech he produces. He violates the maxim of quality (don’t say what you believe false) when seemingly blames Caesar and glorifies the assassinators because he should do that. He uses verbal irony as a powerful rhetorical device for a convincing argument. In his speech, he combines a large number of rhetorical techniques and questions such as verbal irony, repetition, imagery, and implications, among others. Antony plants suspicion on Brutus’ utterances and purposes again when using the concessive conjunct yet after a rhetorical question. Yet signals and symbols here the unanticipated, shocking nature of what is being said as if Caesar “was ambitious” in the attitude of what was uttered before as: “Was this ambition?/Yet Brutus says he was ambitious”. While he uses conjunction and instead of explaining what Antony said in his speech makes the suspicion more as: “And, sure, he is an honorable man.” In another utterance, Antony uses and combines the word Caesar and Brutus in one statement and phrase. At the same time, it needs to separate or at least make a contrastive emphasis on creating a distinction between those two persons. This shows a clear violation of indirect speech. it is also the violation of the maxim of the manner in which it is what Brutus said, and it’s his opinion not what I (Antony) said and believes. Antony’s speech acts are mostly of a specific or illustrative type (Searle, 1969). But they are presented generally as reported, or statement speech as “The noble Brutus / Hath told you, Caesar was ambitious.” In his speech, Antony doesn’t take fully responsible for what he says to the people, but in fact, he just mentions and quotes Brutus’s speech and people’s words. He combines quotations and general ideas and opinions. Antony’s perlocutionary force was successful to the people who gathered there. The use of the adjective ‘honourable’ is a clear example of the way Antony violates the Politeness Principle maxims. He tries to request the Politeness Principle, which intentionally fails. The manner of the utterances he uses needs the listener and reader to work at a series of inferences. They should comprehend that Antony requests to make several compound declarations in one brief phrase. He infers the betrayal of Brutus (playing on a punning sense of his name), the innocence of Caesar, and constant defend himself.
All in all, Antony’s speech acts as a hidden directive, the result of which is an action - the assassinator’s punishment. He uses a successful strategy by using a metaphor “brutish beasts” and the direct use of irony of “honourable men” as a synonym of traitors and murders. The good point about Mark Antony’s speech (from a pragmatic point of view) is that all the characters spoken about are present (either dead or alive) in the context they are: the people, Brutus, Caesar. That is why there is a high degree of indexicality in the segment. Whenever he wants to persuade and make the citizens to his part and world to punish Caesar’s assassinators, he is careful about his position and situation as a speaker (“I” is employed 20 times). The vocatives he uses “You gentle Romans,” “Friends, Romans, countrymen” (Ibid) have a phatic purpose. He creates his world-of-discourse and gives it with semantic and pragmatic coherence: “My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, / And I must pause till it comes back to me”. The utterances they use and the meanings introduce are amazing in view of what is presented before. To persuade the audience (Roman people) to be a part of his world, he made some radical changes in his discourse and utterance. This is to make the people believe and trust him.
Antony’s speech is meant to make the citizens take to avenge on Caesar’s assassinator; with this purpose in mind, he makes a serious change in the people’s opinion and attitude, i.e., he exploits the people’s beliefs and actions). Antony uses quotations and reported speech to avoid explicit inference. This is a successful strategy he uses when he addresses his speech to the Citizen of Rome. Repetition at an assessable linguistic distance occurs with the same purpose in another cue uttered by Antony: his utterance uses in a different context. He points to the certainty and conformity that whatever i said and is not my attitude, it is a reference to what they believe and their point of view “But Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man” this shows the oratory and eulogy of Marc Antony. The personal appeal is intensified by means of rhetorical questions: “What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?” What I want to highlight at this point is that although “unhappy”, the directive addressed to Roman people by Antony is, actually, very successful and Antony gets his message across, because the exchange ends with citizen’s confirmation of Anton’s words “And I must pause till it come back to me”. Antony’s language is so very persuasive because it thrives on metaphors and irony. Every word or utterance generates some frame in the hearer’s mind.
Antony risks his characteristic to push the Roman citizen “fill” the gaps and get a different ending. As we illustrated, the people are unwilling to accepting Antony’s purpose—they suspect him of being against the murders. That is why the Antony has to create an outlook of belief and friendliness by apparently glorifying the murders. In order to accomplish his goal, Antony helps to the emotional function of language, rhetorically displaying and requesting a relationship in opinions and feelings; vocatives “O judgment!” and demands “Bear with me”. The rhetorical strategy and style of Mark Antony in breaking down expected types of thinking demonstrates the unusual naturalism of Shakespeare’s writing. Thus, Pragmatics helps create the causes of the characters’ tragedy.
The above analysis showed the importance of pragmatics and using it in teaching/learning process In return; the literary text can help improve and develop the students’ and EFL/ESL pragmatic competence when it is considered as part of the teaching plan to develop the quality of EFL/ESL teaching. The focus was on several important elements, meant to reveal the speaker’s skill in making common ground and using people whose opinions, beliefs, and feelings were at first totally different from his.
Thus, second language learners need to acquaint themselves with various features of pragmatic ability since the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge and expertise helps to assist learners in many diverse and multiple ways. Similarly, teamwork among teachers, teacher educators, materials developers, and test designers will lead to strong guidelines of pragmatic ability. Specifically, teachers are frontlines of pragmatic development agenda. In particular, it is teachers who are confronting the study of pragmatic modification schema. Hence, they must integrate pragmatics into their teaching/learning practices along with terminology and syntax.