The Study On Functions Of Conversations For Depiction Of Characters In The Kite Runner Based On Turn-taking Theory

The traditional framework of turn-taking is revised by adding two indexes andcompleted via the addition of linguistic features of conversations, which makes theframework more scientific in analysis on the language features of the conversations betweenparticipants in novel. Then the revised framework is employed to analyze the characters personalities in novel, providing the readers with a bigger imaginary space for them toappreciate the novel from a wholly new perspective and at the same time, CAPS is used totestify the result in order to prove the validity of the framework of turn-taking being utilizedto analyze characters personalities despite its limitation.According to Li Huadong and Yu Dongming (2001), there are five aspects in theframework of turn-taking theory: the initial and control of topics, turn-length, turn-type,interruption and monologue, and turn-control strategies which include topic shifting andparalinguistic features. Although this framework is generally quantitative, the aspect of theinitial and control of topics is rather qualitative. Hence, two more indexes are added in thispaper: the rate of turn-control and the rate of initiation, which makes the framework morescientific. In additional, the linguistic features of turns from phonetic level, lexical level,syntactic level and text level are added to complete the framework of turn-taking since thetraditional framework only focuses on paralinguistic features of turns. Moreover,Cognitive-Affective System Theory of Personality, short as CAPS is adopted to further testifythe effectiveness of the framework in analyzing characters personalities in novel.In this thesis, samples are selected from the conversations of the novel The Kite Runnerand they are considered as powerful proof to reveal hero s characteristics from the pragmaticperspective. These samples will be analyzed respectively at first to show the hero s traits byapplying revised turn-taking theory and CAPS will be used as the proof of the effectivenessof the framework. And then a comparison will be made to reveal the differences in differentscenarios along26years, which helps readers to understand Amir comprehensively. Thecurrent turn-taking framework is enriched based on the analysis of the text and it is clear thatturn-taking theory has played a significant role in the analysis on conversations in literary works and that the distinct personality of the characters can be appreciated within theframework of the turn-taking theory is proved as well.