An Analysis Of Power Relation In Pride And Prejudice From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

According to the Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG)proposed by Halliday,language can serve three metafunctions:ideational function,textual function and interpersonal function.Ideational function allows people to describe our experience of the real world by using language;textual function refers to the fact that we use language to organize our messages and interpersonal function enables people to share their personal experiences and express their mental activities,which can help to demonstrate positions,identities,attitudes and motivations of the speakers in communicative activities.Interpersonal function serves as the essential way to establish and maintain social relation for speakers,which can be manifested by the mood system and modality system.Those language choices of mood and modality system exist variously in the discourses of characters,which is connected with the speakers' social status,wealth,age and so on,namely the power relation.Thus,this thesis aims to illustrate the realization of power relation among the main characters in Pride and Prejudice by analyzing the distribution of the mood system and modality system.Through exploring the reasons for the manifestation of power relation,this thesis will serve as guidance for people to find out how to appreciate and interpret the personalities of these main characters and the social background.Based on the theoretical foundation of the interpersonal function,this thesis regards the Austen's masterpiece "Pride and Prejudice"as the corpus and attempts to make an analysis of power relation in Pride Prejudce from the aspects of mood system and modality system.Through revealing the personalities of characters and appreciating the language features,this thesis provides an interpretation of the relationship between society and language.By making a deep study of power relation realized by the discourses of the characters,this thesis aims to unfold the social issues and contradictions in nineteen centuries.In recent years,some previous researches about Pride and Prejudice mainly have focused on the view of marriage,the discourse analysis based on pragmatics,and the interpersonal meaning of feminism.However,this thesis will appreciate this profoundly meaningful and famous literature by analyzing power relation in Pride and Prejudice.Power relation,as one of the important concepts in sociolinguistics,tends to be used to reflect social relationship and regarded as a social phenomenon which can reflect social gaps in different social contexts.The differences from the identity,treasure,age and so on can cause the differences of power relation in communicative event.Some people who come from the advantageous group on power relation are inclined to decide the speech topic and take up the superior speech right.Even they can control the listeners' behavior and exert command on the others by their superior power relation.In Pride and Peyudice,there exist some differences between characters,such as social status,fortune,age and so on,that is to say,there are some differences in power relation among those characters.And those differences in power relation can be projected in the discourses of characters.So the analysis of power relation in Prde and Prejudice indeed provides a new way to interpret this classic literature.Through analyzing the distribution of the mood types,metaphor of mood,values of modal operators and the metaphor of modality in the discourses of characters in Pride and Prejudice,it has been found that the application of language choices in mood and modality system contributes to demonstrate the power relation existing in the discourses of characters.The advantageous group on power relation tends to use the imperative mood,interrogative mood and the median and high values to demonstrate their authority and superiority,while the disadvantageous group tends to use them to demonstrate their efforts to strive for the speech right and self-esteem among the nobles.And the advantageous group also applies the low values to express their politeness and good cultivation.What's more,the language potential and context can also help to illustrate the manifestation of power relation.Thus,this thesis has found that there is a close relation and a mutual effect between society and language.It is beneficial for us to appreciate and interpret the power relation of this classic work from the perspective of interpersonal function.