The Dramatic Discourse In Downtown Abbey:A Conversation Analysis

Downton Abbey is a classical British costume drama created by Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes.Since its broadcast,the show has won many awards,including the Guinness Book of World Records “the most acclaimed TV series in the world” in 2011,which is the first British TV series to win this award.With its profound British historical background and typical British aristocratic cultural atmosphere,the play has been commented as a condensed British textbook by some scholars.British slightly conservative language,contradictory and slightly conservative aristocratic personalities,exquisite lines and aristocratic stories in the historical background,bring people to the visual impact of the last century,showing the classic Englishness.Although this play has achieved great success at home and abroad,relevant research results have emerged one after another,at present,there are few academic works in the study of Downton Abbey from the perspective of Stylistics in China.Therefore,with the help of Stylistics and Conversation Analysis,this paper studies the typical dramatic dialogues in Downton Abbey,so that readers can see what they may not notice when they watch the play.The purpose is to reveal the stylistic features and functions of dramatic conversation,as well as their roles in depicting characters,expressing interpersonal meaning and highlighting the theme of the text,so as to let readers better understand and appreciate the art of conversation and the deep meaning of this script.Through stylistic analysis,we find that at the lexical level,dramatic dialogues often use short and simple words.At the same time,colloquialisms,vague expressions and idioms also appear frequently in dialogues.At the syntactic level,dramatic sentences tend to be simple,loose,elliptical and incomplete.Meanwhile,the interrogative sentences and imperative sentences appear very frequently.In addition,normal non-fluency phenomena,such as elision and pause,are also common in dialogues.Through conversation analysis,we can draw the following conclusions.First,the amount of turns of the characters is directly proportional to their status,and people with higher status always has more voice.Second,the dialogues between the characters play an extremely important role in shaping the personalities of the characters.And it can reveal the power relationship between speakers and reflect its social background and characteristics of that period as well.Third,Downton’s hierarchy and power relation is actually a microcosm of British society,reflecting the social structure of Britain in the Edwardian period.Fourth,in a drama,conversations can not only promote the development of the plot,but its contexts could also reflect the complex relationships between the characters,which is beneficial to the themes reflected in this drama.