Research On The Interactive Relationship Between Language And Power In Mixed-gender Communication In English Movies

The difference of gender language is one of the most common research subjects in recent years. Many researchers have studied it from the following three aspects: sexism in English, linguistic differences in gender discourse system and different conversational styles in mixed-gender communication. Most of them have explored the surface of language facts, but the internal relationship between language and ideology is less concerned. Critical discourse analysis, which aims at showing how the discourse or language use can mystify power relations and mask ideologies, makes up for this deficiency. It studies the ideological sense hidden behind linguistic structures from the perspectives of society and ideology, to further disclose the complicated relations between language, power and ideology. This thesis intends to study the interactive relationship between language and power relations in mixed-gender communication by adopting the method of critical discourse analysis. Since movie origins life, the data of the mixed-gender conversations is collected from thirty dialogues of the English movies, whose subjects are mainly about love and daily life. The thesis first introduces the studies relevant to the present research, including gender discourse and power relations in mixed-gender communication. Lakoff (1975) proposes the power/dominance theory for indicating the gender differences in language, which indicates that inequality of male and female is reflected in language use. The research of Lakoff gives some inspiration to this thesis, although it is ineffective on deep analysis of language. Then the thesis introduces the theoretical framework and analytic tools, which consists of Critical Discourse Analysis and three metafunctions of Systemic-Functional Grammar. The central part is the critical analysis of the thirty mixed-gender dialogues from the perspective of transitivity system, the mood system, the choice of theme and cohesive devices, which manifests that transitivity analysis discloses men are decisive and assertive, mood analysis uncovers men's authority, choices of theme displays women's insecurity, and cohesion analysis discloses the superior-subordinate relationship between men and women. All these data and analysis show the covert power relations hidden behind in mixed-gender conversations in the movies. In addition to the social effects, the further interpretation still gives the interactive relationship between power and gender discourse, i.e. language has power, and power chooses language. It is hoped that the present research will be of much value both in the field of the application of critical discourse analysis and in the study of hidden power relations existed in mixed-gender communication.