ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF YELLOWFACE BY R. F. KUANG

Abstract

This thesis presents a systematic pragmatic analysis of illocutionary acts in Yellowface (2023) by R. F. Kuang, a satirical novel set within the contemporary American literary publishing industry. Grounded in Speech Act Theory as initially proposed by J. L. Austin and subsequently systematized by John R. Searle, the study investigates how the five categories of illocutionary acts — representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations — operate across the novel's narrative and dialogic discourse to construct meaning, characterize the unreliable narrator, expose interpersonal power dynamics, and develop the novel's central thematic concerns with racial appropriation, cultural identity, and institutional complicity in the publishing world. The study further draws on Jacob L. Mey's framework of literary pragmatics to situate illocutionary analysis within the broader narrative and ideological context of the text. The analysis demonstrates that June Hayward's first-person narration constitutes an elaborate and systematically infelicitous illocutionary performance: her representative acts of self-assertion are revealed as strategic self-deception; her expressive acts of apology and contrition are exposed as hollow performances lacking the sincerity conditions that authentic expressives require; and the competing declarative acts of the publishing industry and social media communities dramatize the fragility and contestability of authorial identity in contemporary cultural production. The study argues that Kuang's deployment of illocutionary acts is not merely a stylistic feature of the novel but its central critical instrument, through which the mechanisms of racial privilege, self-justification, and institutional bad faith are exposed with satirical precision. As the first full pragmatic analysis of Yellowface, the thesis makes an original contribution to the emerging scholarship on Kuang's work and to the broader field of literary pragmatics.