An Analysis Of Power Relations And Personalities In Of Mice And Men Based On Turn-taking System

Turn-taking theory put forward by Sacks,Schegloff and Jefferson is one of the most important branches of conversation analysis,which is mainly used to study the inherent conversational structure pattern in people’s daily communications.With the development of the research fields of conversation analysis,turn-taking theory has gradually played a significant role in studying dramas.Based on previous studies,Li Huadong and Yu Dongming further refine the framework of quantitative turn-taking analysis,which better promotes the interpretation of characters’ dialogues in literary works.On the basis of the theoretical framework of turn-taking system and quantitative turn-taking analysis model,this thesis mainly explores two protagonists’ power relations and personalities by analyzing their dialogues.Of Mice and Men is one of the representative masterpieces of John Steinbeck,which describes the living conditions of American ranch workers from the lower class during the Great Depression in the 1930 s.It also depicts the sharp conflicts caused by social realities in the ranch and the disillusionment of ranch workers’ American dream.Of Mice and Men mainly shapes its characters and narrates its plots through dialogues,and it was once adapted into film and drama,which means that it is a novel with outstanding dramatic characteristics.Thus dialogues in Of Mice and Men can be used as research corpus of turn-taking analysis,which can further promote the interpretation of this novel’s characters and plots.This study takes two protagonists George and Lennie as its research center and extracts 14 representative dialogues as its research materials.To better reveal two protagonists’ power relations and their personalities,their performances in different kinds of dialogues will be analyzed in detail.Based on turn-taking theory and the quantitative turn-taking analysis model,this thesishas the following three findings:(1)In 14 extracted dialogues,there are 6 extracted dialogues that both George and Lennie get involved in at the same time,including 2 two-person dialogues,2 three-person dialogues and 2 multi-person dialogues.In these above 6 dialogues,George and Lennie control dialogue topics or try to gain topic-control to get the initiative.Though Lennie controls a few topics,in most cases,George controls dialogue topics or tries to gain topic-control more frequently than Lennie does,which reflects that George is more advantaged in these 6 extracted dialogues.(2)As for the changes of George’s and Lennie’s average turn-length,both of the two protagonists have a continuous decline in their own average turn-length from two-person dialogues to multi-person dialogues.Besides,George’s average turn-length is always longer than that of Lennie in each kind of dialogues,which reflects George’s high participation and active position in extracted dialogues.In terms of two protagonists’ overall turn-type changes in three different kinds of dialogues,with the increase in the number of characters,their overall number of each turn-type can be basically regarded as a decline.From two-person dialogues to multi-person dialogues,their number of initiative turns and number of responsive turns decrease continuously.Their number of IAR(initiative turns after response)remains unchanged from two-person dialogues to three-person dialogues,but the number of which has a sharp decline in multi-person dialogues.As for interruption and monologue,they just account for a small number of two protagonists’ five turn-types.Interruption is used in a three-person dialogue once only and monologue is used in two-person dialogues four times.However,these two kinds of turn-types aren’t used in multi-person dialogues.Therefore,it can be concluded that with the increase in the number of characters,especially in multi-person dialogues,two protagonists become more and more passive and disadvantaged.(3)From two-person dialogues to multi-person dialogues,power relations and personalities concerned with George and Lennie are revealed through their verbal strategies of topic-control,reduction in their average turn-length and the basically reduced frequency of the usage of five turn-types.In terms of power relations just between George and Lennie,George is a powerful character,he has an advantaged position in his dialogues with Lennie,which is revealed through his frequent topic-control and longer average turn-length.Thus George is a character with intense controlling desire.On the contrary,Lennie seems to be timid and follows George’s words,but he knows his situation in different dialogues very well by conjecturing George’s thoughts.As for the power relations between the two protagonists and other main characters in the ranch,George and Lennie can be regarded as a whole.George and Lennie are two powerless characters with inferior and disadvantaged statuses in the ranch,which can be displayed through their decreasing length of average turn-length and their basically reduced frequency of the usage of five turn-types from two-person dialogues to multi-person dialogues.In the comparison of power relations between two protagonists and other main characters,it’s easy to find that George and Lennie are two close and intimate friends.George cherishes his friendship with Lennie and helps Lennie out of trouble more than once.He also needs Lennie because Lennie can provide him with a sense of security.And Lennie is a timid and coward character,who extremely relies on George in three-person dialogues and multi-person dialogues.This study uses 14 representative dialogues in Of Mice and Men as its research corpus and uses quantitative turn-taking analysis model as its research method.By combining linguistic research methods with literary works,this study further makes up for the deficiencies in single text analysis and provides a new angle to interpret Of Mice and Men more objectively.