A Study On The Awkward Status Faced By American Middle-Class Women From Metaphorical Discourse In Desperate Housewives

Based on social semiotics, Systemic-Functional linguist M.A.K Halliday first introduced the concept of Grammatical Metaphor in his masterwork An Introduction to Functional Grammar in 1985. In his opinion, besides lexical semantic metaphor, there is another kind of metaphor existing on the lexico-grammatical level, which can be termed "grammatical metaphor". According to Halliday, grammatical metaphor can be further divided into ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor. Different from the other theories, Halliday's grammatical metaphor studies metaphor based on the relationship between language and world thus it further reveals the mechanism of metaphor. Halliday's study on metaphor is based on an objective and cognitive philosophy. In recent years, scholars at home and abroad continuous systematized the researches on the mechanism of grammatical metaphor and applied grammatical metaphor theory in approach of systemic-functional grammar in stylistic researches, such as lexical semantic metaphor in novel, lyric; or nominalization in scientific exposition. However, these researches are mainly focused on written language, neglecting the researches on the most authentic material-spoken language. Anthropologist LA Richards used to say that "we cannot get through three sentences of ordinary fluid discourse without the use of metaphor" (I.A. Richards,1923). Statistics has also shown that the application of metaphor is as much as more than 70% in oral communication, which means there are two metaphors in every three sentences. Discourse is a universal cultural phenomenon, no discourse, no culture (I.A. Richards,1923). In addition, spoken language is a style as well. Metaphor in parole is not arbitrary but is restricted by some certain mechanism, as the social status and values of the speakers and the ways speakers use parole, culture and metaphorical thoughts to express their world view. (I. A. Richards,1923) Without doubt, it is a vast field; however the current researches on values from the perspective of metaphor are still rare. The main researches are highlighting on conceptual metaphors in approach of cognitive linguistics, thus there's still plenty of scope for researches on values reflected by grammatical metaphor in approach of systemic-functional grammar. A large number of examples have shown that metaphor is not just a linguistic phenomenon, more importantly it's the basic mechanism of our thought. This research is based on an integrated semantic system. Metaphor is to cognize the experience of one domain through the experience of another domain. Therefore, researches on values through metaphorical discourse based on systemic-functional grammar seem to be valuable. Due to the evaluative function of metaphorical discourse, we can study the speakers'values with the analysis of metaphorical discourse. This thesis takes TV series Desperate Housewives as researching data, try to analyze metaphorical discourse of the characters in the series to uncover the values hold by the speakers.Desperate Housewives has been successfully transmitted 7 seasons since 2004. Although as a soap opera, Desperate Housewives depicts a complex middle-class community under the calm surface. Middle class is the salt of American society which typically reflects the spirits, beliefs and values of the American nation. So it's representative to use it as researching materials. The series is known as under the banner of feminism, taking women as the main characters, but by selecting and analyzing metaphorical discourse from some scenes, then applying ideational and interpersonal grammar theory in approach of systemic-functional grammar to analyze the implication through its literal meaning and studying the values of speakers and interpersonal relationship between both sides of the communication, we can see the class limitations of feminism in Desperate Housewives. Under the glamorous appearance of females, it reflects the restriction to females in a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal society, feminism becomes an empty vogue slogan.Creative points:Based on the theories of SFG, in approach of register theory, grammatical metaphor and appraisal system,21 typical scenes were randomly selected and an effective metaphorical discourse analysis was done to study the overtones of the speaker. Through sampling analysis the thesis has discussed universal rules of metaphorical discourse and as well as the values and awkward status faced by American middle-class women in Desperate Housewives.