A Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Dialogues Of A Doll’s House

Within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the study is intended to analyze the interpersonal meaning expressed in the dialogues of the main protagonists in Ibsen’s drama A Doll’s House. It is a tentative attempt to probe into the protagonists’personalities, their inter-relationship and the interpretation of theme from the perspective SFL.Based on the theory of interpersonal metafunction, the thesis analyzes the drama in terms of the grammatical resources such as MOOD, MODALITY, and vocatives, which are the main exponents of interpersonal meaning in SFL. Interpersonal meaning refers to the fact that people use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain social relations with others. Language, as a negotiating tool, establishes particular relations between interactants. And interpersonal relations manifest themselves in the interactants’choices of language. The drama is characterized by dramatic dialogues between the two protagonists. Based on the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the thesis examines MOOD (Mood type, subject choice, tense of finite element, and Mood metaphors), MODALIYT (exclusively the modal operators with different modal values) and vocatives in the dialogues with the purpose of deducing the protagonists’personalities, and interpreting their relationship. The dialogues, which appear respectively in the middle, at the beginning and end part of the drama, are grouped into 3 episodes for the convenience of analysis. Through the interpersonal analyses, we have the following findings:1. The mood analysis shows that interrogative mood is the most frequently used mood type by both of the two protagonists. At the beginning of the drama, Helmer uses interrogative moods to show his deliberate questioning and some of the questions are rhetorical ones. At the end of the drama, he employs interrogative mood to express his request in a polite manner. Declaratives take up a high percentage in Nora’s utterances. And they are mainly used to answer Helmer’s questions and express her eagerness to please Helmer. Additionally, Nora often chooses interrogative mood to sound Helmer out or to seek information. The modality analysis reveals that at the beginning and in middle part of the drama, Helmer frequently uses high value modal operators to make commands, and he does not use low or median value modal operator at all; at the end of the drama, he occasionally use some median or low value modal operators to demonstrate his willingness to mend his way. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the drama, high value modal operators is absent in Nora’s utterances, whereas low and median value modal operators is frequently used. At the end of the drama, Nora uses high value modal operators to give commands and express her strong determination to pursue independence. The analysis of vocatives finds that at the beginning and in middle part of the drama, Helmer seems to use vocatives to show his affection and intimacy towards Nora. At the end of the drama, he uses vocatives with cursing meanings to show his anger. However, immediately after the crisis is resolved, he starts to use those sweet vocatives to persuade Nora to stay.2. Changes in the choices of Mood type, modal operators with different modal value, and selection of different vocatives reflect the change of the protagonists’ inter-relationship. Moreover, their personalities can be interpreted in virtue of linguistic analyses. Meanwhile, their different linguistic choices also bring changes to the interpersonal meaning. Ostensibly, Helmer’s language choices serves to establish an intimate relationship with Nora and helps project himself as a perfect husband deeply in love with his wife. In fact, analyses of his language choices reveal that Hemler is good at using language to create distance between them and maintain his authority. His selfishness, rudeness, cowardice and capriciousness is also reflected in his language choices. In the marriage he is the one who has absolute control over everything, and Nora is more a doll than a wife in his eyes. On the contrary, Nora’s language choices mostly reflect her irtention to please Helmer and narrow the distance between them. Suppressed by the image Hemler sets up for her, Nora’s real thoughts and self-awareness is scarcely manifested in her utterances. Analyses of Nora’s language choices suggest that she is an innocent yet brave woman, who conceals her own feelings and accept the image of doll in order to please her husband. It is not until her secret is disclosed that she realizes Helmer’s real character. She finally activates the feminine self-awareness in her and determines to get rid of the image as a doll and tries to be a human being who can think over things for herself.