An Interpersonal Interpretation Of Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is a British drama television series in a historical period created by Julian Fellowes and co-produced by Carnival Films and Masterpiece.The TV series was set in the early 20th century in the fictional Yorkshire country estate of Downton Abbey.It depicts the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era-with the great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy.From the perspective of Interpersonal Metafunction in Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL),language is used to interact with other people,to establish and maintain relations with them,to influence their behaviors,to express our own viewpoint on things in the world,and to elicit or change theirs.This paper aims to analyze the three stages of the development of relationships in Downton Abbey among Lady Mary and Matthew,Anna and Mr.Bates,Isobel and Violet.From being unfamiliar to familiar,the three groups go through a whole process of love relationship and friendship.By analyzing dialogues among them in a functional approach,particularly in terms of Interpersonal Metafunction,the interpretation of the relationship in the Downtown Abbey is realized by Mood System,Modality System and Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor.This paper has combined quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and analyze data.Firstly,the author has worked out the total number of word types and the total number of word tokens and the frequently-used modal verbal operators by employing the AntConc3.2.4w.And then with the aid of annotated software UAM corpus tool,the selected data base has been annotated manually and quantitative statistics have been achieved.Different systems of interpersonal resources are resorted to express meanings,and the meaning is mainly reflected by the use of interpersonal resources.Language is used to express meanings,and meanings are realized through the use of language.In this paper,the interpersonal meaning is achieved through dialogues among the main characters in the progression of the relationships.And different language resources are employed to express different kinds of relationships.The results show that with the progression of relationships,the language used in Mood,Modality and Interpersonal Grammar Metaphor vary a lot.Therefore,it is of theoretical significance and also makes an enrichment to Interpersonal Metafunction and Systemic Functional Linguistics.