The Importance of Being Earnest as Regards Both Propositional and Pragmatic Behaviour

Abstract

Shewan’s by now classic Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism (1977) suggests that in The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s characters adhere to Brown & Levinson’s Politeness Principle in their dialogues. This article partly criticizes such an assumption; it holds that in the dialogues the characters’ utterances flout the Politeness Principle, thus leaving room for Wilde’s conception of the self to come through. The article also states that such a flouting can only be understood by inserting a new variable into Brown & Levinson’s equation Wx = D(S,H) + P(H,S) + Rx.