The Words And Meaning Of The King Lear

The King Lear is Shakespeare's greatest work,and is also a work which suffers the dispute.The author believes that the story of King Lear begins at the causes of a dislocation between language and significances of the dialogue,and King Lear itself also has such characteristics: To some extent, it is a contradictions of "statement" and the "intention", it is dislocation and ultimately harmonious in this play.The play shows the language and significances, the writting and saying, the appearance and substance, the meaning and truth and a series of the complex relationship between the problem.To find the difficult meaning of this drama, we can not take realistic look at the characters in this play, at the same time, not merely take the view of Lear from the perspective of this drama.Play dues to the two semantic rules, standards of conduct, and values between the ideas, it showed examination Cordelia did not say what the father wants to hear. Lear's political discourse is closely linked to power, when he lost political power, he also lost the right to speak. Lear's tragedy began with the truth that he was flattered and deceived, and can not see the difference between the language itself and its significances. Cordelia and Kent are the reflection of the idea in this play, their language are honest and rustic, their values with the requirements is in their own words.They wanted to make distinction between Goneril and Regan and themselves. The language in this play helps us having better understanding of the characters. In addition, the King Lear has two distinctly different words, by the contrast of the two kind of words, Shakespeare links the use of language and its narrative functional.The vulgar language reduces the using of the elegant language, and guides the audience know the truth, be far from the falsely. Shakespeare's language using is more perspective, and they take a very important role in the drama.If we want to understand this work, we must explore the links between language and the significance at first. In King Lear, there are several language forms to help us understanding this play:1. PunsThe Puns mean a language not only has one meaning, the meaning can be more than superficial, and arrived in the depths of completely different meaning. At first, Lear did not distinguish the different meaning between his daughters. In other words, Lear didn't deem them as puns. Goneril and Regan had been able to hoodwink Lear, a major reason is that meaning is not a single carrier in the lanuage. When Lear lost his power and had harsh treatment he began to realize the complexity of the meaning behind the language, had began to use Puns. This Puns using, it can be said that from the beginning, it exposed with the hidden political crisis, and constantly reminds us that the public external meaning and the private hidden implicit meaning may be entirely different.2. Paradox and IronyParadox and irony in the drama suggests the audience that there is a reversal of values,a confusion of right and wrong. An important theme of the drama, is make the distinction between the real noble and the hypcritical ones——Lear's tragedy is from the failure of such distinction (a reversal of the positive and negative),Gloucester's tragedy is from the same failure of such distinction(without distinction).The contradictions of paradox in the language level,is a organic unity in the significance level.The aradox and irony are often linked, in addition to maintaining the semantic contradictions, but also means more implicit irony. The irony in the drama helps us link up the plot from beginning to end, and deepens the impending premonition of this tragedy to the audiences.3.The changing of language styleThere is a language in the context of this play to make advance of the circumstances and characters and such obvious drama factors.The conversion of protagonist Lear's language style makes us understand the tragic characters.Lear's language style changes from proud ordering type to confused hesitant type, and turned to crazy chaos disorder,and humility Finally. We can see the changing of his situation and mood form his changing of language style. The play has a tragic hint in the language conversion: Lear's fate is just like his language style, it reduced from the king's glory to the common people in the dust.4. A variety of coexisting discourse modelsLear's language model,is changing gradually from a self-from to a form which the other person mixed the discourse.With the contrast with the collapse of Lear's language system,Edgar has a capacity using various modes of discourse.The drama praises this capacity certainly.It reflects to the capacity conreoling the different language models freely, and the capacity answering rapidly and cleverly in the different context.Through the parody of elegant language, Shakespeare laid the hypocrisy of this language and showed its behinding powerless meaning.The King Lear can be seen as the problem of language and significance of the West, namely, the relationship between the saying and writting, significance and meaning, truth and performance, appearance and essence,the things the imitation, and so on. The World Order in the King Lear is relying on the concept of grading distinction of Western philosophy. As this distinction had been destroyed ,the confusing appeared in the play. As for the restoration of order, not only regain political power from the evil hands of a party, but also to re-establish normal semantic order to restore a series of hierarchical relationships. To make the the material subordinating the spirit, the significance subordinating the meaning, the expression subordinating the truth. The outcome of the drama is re-builded of the order, Albany's words"Speak what we feel,not what we ought to say"was was down as a solicitation provisions, the semantic order and the values has been re-established.