Conversation Analysis Of Dialogues Between The Hero And The Heroine In Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, which is one of the most representative works by the well-known woman writer Charlotte Bront? in Britain, caused quite a stir in the 19th century literary world after publication. Its compelling beauty and shock has drawn the attention of numerous readers all over the world including researchers and scholars for its smooth and flowing plot, vivid characterization of the characters, classic dialogues between the hero and the heroine. Besides, the author succeeds in creating the first governess in British literature who has a positive and independent outlook on love, life, society as well as religion and struggles to quest for freedom and equality. The study on literary works, the world classic Jane Eyre in particular, is rich, and the approaches and perspectives are various, such as pragmatics, functional grammar and translation study. Like pragmatics, sociolinguistics is also concerned with language in use. However, investigating literary works from the perspective of sociolinguistics, especially the bulge theory and interactional sociolinguistics, seems to be limited. This paper aims to investigate the conversation between the hero and the heroine in the novel from the perspective of sociolinguistics.Using conversation analysis as the methodology, the research is undertaken to explore the major structure and pattern occurring in the dialogues between the hero and the heroine through studying the turn-taking variables, such as turn number, turn length, interruption and topic initiation. As the plot of the novel is progressing, the social relationship between the two characters changes accordingly. The study focuses its attention on how and why the changes in social relationship are reflected through the conversation, which is elaborated using the bulge theory and interactional sociolinguistics. The bulge theory notes that there is a qualitative difference between the speech behavior which speakers use to intimates, status unequals and strangers on the one hand, and to non-intimates, status equal friends, coworkers and acquaintances on the other. And the middle section which is more toward the center shows marked differences and forms a bulge. Interactional sociolinguistics signals that speakers tend to employ various conversational strategies to achieve some aims or to claim their identities. The sex of the speakers, the social relation between the participants and the changes in their mutual relationship can be indicated through conversation in that it is a social phenomenon.Adopting the above theories in sociolinguistics, the present study is designed to discuss the following three research questions: 1. What is the major pattern of conversation between the two main characters in the novel in terms of turn-taking? 2. How are the changes in social relationship between the two characters reflected in the conversation? 3. Why do the changes of conversation arise?The research is conducted in the following ways: firstly, collect all the two main characters'conversations in the novel which are found from chapter 12 to 15, 17 to 27 and chapter 37 to 38 in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bront? published by Wordsworth Editions in 1992; secondly, according to the development of the plot, all the dialogues occurring between the hero and the heroine are classified into five stages; thirdly, calculate the numbers and percentages of the turn-taking variables in the novel, such as turn number, turn length, interruption, and topic initiation, and then fill the statistics in the table for each stage; lastly, make in-depth discussions on the research questions, based on the theories and statistics in the diagrams.Such is the findings of the research: 1. The conversation between the two main characters follows mainly a journalistic IR pattern; 2. The changes in the conversation is correlated with those in their social relationship. Mr. Rochester uses rich strategies to prevent him from being pushed down and maintain his power and male superiority by employing more and longer turns, more interruptions and initiations. In addition, he invariably dominates the conversation as a quick journalist; 3. In their daily conversation the heroine is often oppressed by the powerful hero, which can be noticed by her fewer and smaller turns, fewer interruptions and initiations. Besides, she frequently replies to Rochester as a passive respondent. Meanwhile, she sometimes uses more and longer turns, more interruptions and initiations to exhibit her quest for independence as well as fight for equality and freedom and gain more chances to speak, which probably turns out to be a vain attempt and may not deny the fact that she is dominated by Mr. Rochester in their conversation.