DORIAN GRAY’S LINGUISTIC PORTRAIT: A LINGUO-PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE (BASED ON OSCAR WILDE’S NOVEL AND ITS 1945 FILM ADAPTATION)

Abstract

The article examines the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of characters’ utterances as pragmatic mechanisms for constructing Dorian Gray’s linguistic portrait in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and in the 1945 film adaptation (dir. Albert Lewin). The research material comprises the text of the novel and the dialogic component of the film text as represented in the screenplay. The methodological framework draws on speech act theory and discourse-oriented approaches to the pragmatics of fictional discourse. The analysis focuses on identifying typical illocutionary actions (directives, representatives, commissives, expressives) and describing their perlocutionary consequences within scenes that mark the turning points of the character’s moral transformation. The comparative analysis shows that in the novel perlocutionary effects are largely “unfolded” through narrative explication of the addressee’s reactions and the protagonist’s internal changes, whereas in the film they are more often presented as a rapid causal chain “utterance–reaction–action,” which enhances the visibility of pragmatic efficacy in speech. It is established that Lord Henry acts as the primary inducer of perlocutionary shifts in Dorian through aphoristically structured directives and evaluative representatives. As the plot develops, however, Dorian increasingly relies on his own high-force illocutionary acts – especially prohibitions, ultimatums, and commissives in the form of threats, which secure control over the interactional frame and regulate access to the “truth” embodied in the portrait. The most significant adaptive shift lies in the pragmatic “compression” of dialogue: while the adaptation does not change the basic communicative strategies, it increases their explicitness and accelerates perlocutionary outcomes, so that Dorian’s linguistic portrait acquires the features of an agent of communicative power earlier than in the novel. The article concludes that the difference between the novel and the film text is determined not by the repertoire of speech acts, but by the way they function pragmatically in character construction.