An Analysis Of The Dialogues In The Vampire Diary From The Perspective Of The Foregrounding Theory

As a special artistic form, TV series comes from life and beyond life. TV series has become a crucial part to pass time and enjoy ourselves in people’s lives. Besides the use of vivid pictures, the dialogue has become a major form to show the series’ contents. Without dialogues, the audience would not understand the contents of the series, not mention the expression of the theme or the creating of the characters’ personalities. Hence, as a special artistic language, dialogue has the indispensable effect in describing the contents, revealing the theme and creating the characters’ personalities.This thesis mainly studies the dialogues in The Vampire Diary from the perspective of the foregrounding theory. From the related theses, the author found there are lots of papers focusing on The Vampire Diary from other different perspectives. Some analyze The Vampire Diary with other works in comparative study; some study the theme; some study the translation edition; others analyze the novel in terms of Cooperative Principle. As to the foregrounding theory, many researches apply this theory into the analysis of poems, few relate the theory to the study of a TV series. After the review and reference of the predecessors’ research results, the author of this thesis analyze the dialogues in The Vampire Diary from the perspective of the foregrounding theory. Hence, we will understand the dialogues and characters’ personalities and have a better understanding of the series.This thesis is composed of three parts:The first part is a brief introduction to the thesis. The foregrounding theory has been stated both at home and abroad. Besides the research contents, the significance of the thesis has also been introduced.The second part consists of four parts, which is the main contents of the whole thesis.Chapter One is the literature review which consists two parts. The review of studies on the foregrounding theory is stated in the first part, including its definition, classification and historical development both at home and abroad. The overview of The Vampire Diary is introduced in the second part. It gives us the main idea of the TV series and the contents and theme of The Vampire Diary.Chapter Two explains the deviation phenomenon in The Vampire Diary. Deviation is the language phenomenon that is achieved by the use of different materials from the norms. The norms of the language refer to the rules and conventions of a language. However, the rules and conventions may change with times and the norms may differ in different situations, including phonological deviation, graphological deviation, lexical deviation and semantic deviation. This chapter can be classified into four parts. The phonological deviation, such as sub-standard pronunciation, mispronunciation, special pronunciation and phonemic patterning. In this paper, we will only emphasize on phonemic patterning. For the graphological deviation, such as the type of print and punctuation, we will study this deviation from the perspective of ellipsis and dash. For the lexical deviation including compounding, affixation, conversion, misspelling and abbreviation, this paper emphasizes the compounding, affixation, conversion. And the semantic deviation including symbolism, simile, synecdoche, irony, hypobole and oxymoron, personification, metaphor and plalindrome. This paper only analyse the first six parts. All these deviational phenomena have been reflected in The Vampire Diary and provided precious resources for us to study the foregrounding theory.Chapter Three analyzes the over-regularity phenomenon in The Vampire Diary. Over-regularity refers to the language phenomenon that the same language material occurs repeatedly. We can see that over-regularity refers to the repetition or parallelism of the same language items, including phonological over-regularity, lexical over-regularity, semantic over-regularity, syntactic over-regularity and narratological over-regularity. This chapter can be classified into five parts. The phonological over-regularity, includes alliteration, end-rhyme and assonance. The lexical over-regularity means the frequent use of model verbs and adjectives. The semantic over-regularity is the subtle repetition of the meaning, and it adopts the form of parallelism, known as semantic parallelism. The syntactic over-regularity comprises repetition and parallelism. The narratological over-regularity is in the last part, which focuses on the description of the scene. All these over-regularity phenomena can be found in the TV series of The Vampire Diary and provide reference value for the study of the foregrounding theory.Chapter Four analyzes the effects of the foregrounding theory, which mainly focus on three parts:the strengthening of the theme of the TV series is introduced in the second part. Creating personality of the characters are introduced in the third part, it focuses on the distinctive personalities of Damon, Stefan, Caroline and Elena. And the creating the ironic effect.The last part of the thesis is the conclusion. Besides the brief introduction of the deviation phenomena and over-regularity phenomena at different levels, the shortcomings are also pointed out in the detailed analysis of The Vampire Diary. The author provides some suggestions for further research. Hence, the researchers can make a comprehensive and in-depth study of The Vampire Diary from the perspective of the foregrounding theory.