PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF OCULESICS IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS BY JONATHAN SWIFT

Abstract

While gestures are daily fact of life in the real world, we frequently overlook their
importance in fictional worlds. This is perhaps not surprising, for as students of
language we have become so accustomed to examining the words of a text that we
often fail to pay adequate critical attention to the presence of non-verbal forms of
communication. Gulliver's Travels provides a compelling example of this. Gestures
abound in Gulliver's Travels, yet their nature, purpose, and effects have been ignored.
Far from being a mere formulaic addition to a travel narrative, they are, I believe, an
essential element of the text, employed by Swift in a variety of ways. Gestures, it will
be seen, are used to provide a realistic and effective means of communicating between
people who do not share a common language, to de- lineate Gulliver's character, to
manipulate the reader's response to Gulliver, and to implement several of Swift's
philosophical themes.