5.1　Major Findings

This paper adopted the methodology ofAustin and Searle's SAT to proceed an analysis.As we know，Austin and Searle's SAT concerns mainly on illocutionary act，and irony is a special kind of illocutionary act.Besides，Austen had achieved a great command in maneuvering various pragmatic techniques in favor ofirony.So with Speech Act Theory being the framework，this thesis aims to make a tentative exploration on the ironic speech acts，using Jane Austen's famous work Sense and Sensibility as language material.

Using qualitative research method，the paper achieves to prove that various ironic speech acts in this book can find convincing illustrations with SAT as the background，affirming that the use of SAT in literary criticism and appreciation has a solid theoretical foundation and is practically feasible.It is also hoped that in this way the readers will have a deeper and more thorough understanding ofAusten's works.

Irony turns out to be a special kind ofindirect speech act.Here，sincerity principle forms a necessary condition in committing any ironic speech act.A successful irony depends mainly on the violating of sincerity principle.For irony，only to understand the surface meaning is surely not enough，so the inference of its implications，or illocutionary force，is necessary.Besides，irony carries with itself a stronger illocutionary force and perlocutionary effects than direct speech acts，which turns out to facilitate the speaker in achieving his or her anticipated objective.

For language materials，it is well-known that Jane Austen is renowned for her use of irony in Sense and Sensibility.In fact，irony is an artistic device used everywhere in Jane Austen's novels and is generally regarded as the keynote and symbol of her style.Jane Austen actually develops a unique art in fiction through the use of irony，which can both hide and expose the strongest feelings of the author.Such kind of novels requires readers to explore the author's real intention with a more complicated state of mind，for the skindeep understanding is far more enough.The writer analyses these language materials from two perspectives of macro ironic speech acts and micro ironic speech acts.Macro ironic speech acts could also be divided and analyzed into two parts：macro literal irony and macro structuralirony.Austen's macro speech acts in Sense and Sensibility are in fact all ironical，so it could be analyzed in both her ironic narration and the whole structure of the story.In skillfully narrating dialogues which belong to micro ironic speech acts，Austen succeeds in having many modes of presentation of character talk at her disposal，including not only direct speech and indirect speech，but also free direct speech and free indirect speech as well as letters.Austin and Searle's speech act theories are paid more attention in this paper and the use of their theories to the irony of Sense and Sensibility is illustrated with more examples.For Austin，felicity conditions are necessary for a successful speech act，so if we sin against any of these conditions on purpose，irony appears.In this paper，void，breaches and insincerities which all belong to infelicities are spared to analyze the ironic examples of this novel.The use of Searle's speech act theory is a detailed exploration from both macro perspective and micro perspective.Austen's macro irony is manifested in this paper through the adoption of both macro literal irony and macro structural irony.From micro perspective，the writer explores in detail of the four kinds of micro ironic speech acts：assertive irony，directive，commissive irony and expressive irony.And all of these are illustrated in examples.