Instability Of Value System As The Cause Of The Unstable Conversational Power In Macbeth

First as a thane, then as a king and later as a tyrant abandoned by his inferiors, Macbeth bares different identities in different discourse. Power, according to Weber, is the ability of people and institutions to influence or control the behavior and material lives of others. In drama, characters' power exists in different discourses, but it has to be re-negotiated in conversation. In the play, Macbeth has different power relation with other characters in different discourse and conversation.The purpose of the present thesis is an attempt to study and explain Macbeth's conversational power change. Firstly, the characteristics of Macbeth's conversational power change will be studied through conversation analysis and (im)politeness theories with reference to his identities in different discourses. It is discovered that Macbeth and other characters shares various power relations in discourse as well as in conversation. Three basic categories of conversational power relation can be identified: dominance of conversation by certain party / parties, power balance through failure of dominance and power balance through absence of dominance. It is argued that the sections where Macbeth's conversational power does not accord with his discourse identities mark the decline or rise of his power in conversation. The paper attempts to identify two major declines of his conversational power and three cycles of power change throughout the plays. To begin with, it is discovered that Macbeth's conversational power, with reference to his discourse identities, appears unstable in different discourses. Secondly, the cause for the change of Macbeth's conversational power is explored through the perspective of value system. It is suggested that morality, power and social recognition, as three basic elements of his value system, affect the change of his conversational power. The paper also suggests that Macbeth'svalue system is alternatively dominated by these three elements but it is unstable. The paper tries to show that Macbeth's value systems goes through three stages of development. While the value system in the first stage and the second stage is dominated by morality, power and social recognition respectively, there appears to be no dominance by any basic elements in the value system in the third stage. The collapse of value system in each stage causes the decline of his conversational power. It argues that the three stages of value system development accord with the three cycles of conversational power change. It can therefore be concluded that Macbeth's unstable value system is the cause of the instability of his conversational power.