Nominal and Verbal Choice of Ibsen in Hedda Gabbler: A Pragmatic Study

Abstract

The play by Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabbler is a modern feminist play that invokes to get deep meaning packed within nominal and verbal expressions used by Ibsen.This study is an attempt to investigate the nominal and verbal choices of Ibsen, their structure and function under the theoretical framework of Implicature. Many studies have been conducted on Ibsen and Pragmatics but getting lexical choices of Ibsen has not been investigated. A qualitative methodology has been adopted to get the deeper meaning of Hadda Gabber and pattern of lexical choices used in the play. The study has taken randomly the dialogues of the character as a unit of analysis, analyze them according to Grice Theory and Co-operative Principle and predicts that Ibsen has used multiple patterns of lexical choices- nominal and verbal. They are complex, modern, and null. The function of these expressions in the text is to implicate the penetrate pragmatic meanings packed within formal structure.