On The Identity Construction Of The Heroine In Friends From The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Linguistics

Identity construction has been a focus issue in philosophy,linguistics,sociology,psychology and so on.The research objects are mainly politicians,writers,and teachers,but are seldom about personal identity in daily conversations.Friends is a famous American TV sitcom with humorous daily conversations,in which Rachel is the most attractive character among six protagonists.She grows up in a rich family but she runs away from her arranged marriage on the wedding day in order to live an independent life.The whole story is said to be the struggle history of Rachel from a poor waitress in Central Perk to a manager in fashion.Her utterances in different social relations is worthy of our attention.According to Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL),language has three metafunctions:experiential,interpersonal and textual metafunction.It has been applied to many kinds of research.By analyzing the transitivity,mood and modality system,this thesis attempts to analyze the language use by Rachel in her conversations with bosses,lovers and friends,with qualitative and quantitative methods,to prove the relationship between language and identity.The data are collected from ten seasons of Friends and are annotated and analyzed manually.The findings indicate that Rachel constructs multiple identities in different social relations,which can be realized in different aspects:IFirstly,in conversations with bosses,she constructs the identities of an outspoken woman,a respectful subordinate and a supporter in front of bosses,which are mainly realized by mood and modality.She mainly uses declarative clauses and seldom uses imperative clauses,and gives mostly expected answers and uses metaphors,low and medium value modal operators to be polite and respectful;she also constructs different identities with male and female bosses:she presents herself as a poor woman and intimate friend before female bosses,and as a desirable employee before male bosses.She talks about gossip and smokes with female bosses and talks about ability and work with male bosses.Second,in her conversation with lovers,she constructs different identities during different periods:before she falls in love,she is a giver and captivated woman,mainly realized by transitivity,mood and modality system.She makes her lover the Actor and Senser and uses many low value modal operators to ask for his suggestion or gives services.When in love,she is a humble and passionate lover,mainly realized by transitivity and modality.She always expresses her love and passion with herself as the Senser and a large number of mood adjunct.When arguing,she is a dictator,rebutter and complainer,mainly realized by mood and modality.She gives lots of unexpected answers such as contradiction to his statement,and she gives order and complains with high and medium value operators as well as plenty of mood adjunct to stress her anger.In her conversation with friends,Rachel constructs the identity of a narrator,supporter,help-seeker,carer and an innocent spoiled girl.She uses plenty of material processes to describe her experiences,relational processes and mental processes to express her opinion and feelings;she is the Actor and Senser most of the time and talks about everything in her life;her friends are also constructed as the Actor and Senser to be cared about and encouraged;she uses declarative clauses to talk about herself and her friends,while interrogative clauses are used to seek help from them;the large proportion of high value modal operators is used to support her friends or show her innocence.From the research above,it can be found that the relationship between language used by Rachel and her identity is dynamic and dialectical.To some extent,her utterances are dictated by her identity.For example,in the social relation with bosses,she constructs the identity of a respectful subordinate.On the other hand,identity is construed and strengthened by use of language.Language also changes with context.In the same social relation,different identities are constructed according to different contexts.For example,Rachel constructs different identities when she argues with her lover and when she is in love.Besides,people have the individual initiative,so Rachel not only constructs the common identity in each social relations,but also constructs the individual identity consciously,such as the construction of identity as an upright woman before her bosses.This thesis studies identity construction in an American sitcom from the perspective of SFL,to gain a better understanding of the relationship between language and identity in television works,and it also sheds some lights on identity construction in daily conversation and has some positive significance for female identity construction.