Analysis Of The Personality Differences From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor

Hong Lou Meng has made remarkable contributions to the development of Chinese literature by the outstanding creation of hundreds of characters. Since its birth, this masterpiece has attracted many scholars’academic interests on its unique and peculiar characters, especially the female figures. Previous studies on the characters in the fields of foreign language studies in china from interpersonal grammatical metaphors perspective, however, are found insufficient and most of the studies focus on the discussion of the several main characters. Very few of them pay attention to the rest of the minor characters.Based on the theoretical framework of Halliday’s interpersonal grammatical metaphors, this thesis explores the entire conversations of Qingwen and Zijuan with the purpose to compare the two maids’personalities. According to Halliday, there are two main interpersonal grammatical metaphors:metaphors of mood and metaphors of modality. When people choose their expressive way in their communicction, their personolities, of course naturally, are demonstrated in their way of speech. Thus it’s quite worthwhile to analyze the two kinds of metaphors on the study of the two maids’characters. This theory conducts a carefully study on the total120chapters, finding out the specific locations of Qingwen and Zijuan’s conversations showing in the whole HLM. Statistic method is used to calculate the numbers of each interpersonal metaphor respectively and objectively in Qingwen and Zijuan’s conversations, thus to find the existence of the metaphors of mood and metaphors of modality. Then, the analysis is followed by a detailed and extensive explanation of the functions of interpersonal GM, which is the process of finding what personalities the two maids possess. Through such analysis, we find out the two maids’different personalities reflected through the adoption of mood metaphors and modality metaphors. There are two points needed to be mentioned to a concrete degree.1. There do exist interpersonal grammatical metaphors in the two maids’conversations. Qingwen employs32interrogative,5imperative mood metaphors and3modality metaphors expressed in the subjective way. However Zijuan adopts nearly all kinds of interpersonal grammatical metaphors, most of which are the interrogative mood metaphors and subjective modality metaphors.2. Through detailed analysis of the rich-sampled interpersonal grammatical metaphor, the thesis draws the conclusion that Qingwen is apt to select mood of interrogative, imperative, and subjective to express her great courage, brightness and aggressiveness as well in character. While Zijuan is inclined to employ metaphors of interrogative, imperative, and also declarative to demonstrate her wisdom, decency, tolerance, together with thoughtfulness. Moreover, both the two maids employ the explicit subjectivity modality to show their own ideas and thoughts. Thus they’re both maid girls with strong willing to express judgments of themselves. In addition, Zijuan tends to disguise her subjective nature with the explicit objectivity modality; however Qingwen doesn’t show this respect in character. Thus the two maids are created with distinct characters by the author.The outcome of the thesis can still prove the conclusion of the former researches. Thus we can see that the study of characters in literature works can be replenished, perfected and confirmed by means of the researches from the perspective of interpersonal GM.