A Linguistic Approach To The Creation Of Characters In Shakespeare’s Four Great Tragedies

Since the publication of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello,King Lear and Macbeth, a large amount of academic research has been done. Buthardly any study has been conducted touching upon the creation of characters fromthe perspective of language. This dissertation is based on the theory put forward bythe English linguist Geoffrey N. Leech. The author of this dissertation seeks tosummarize in a comprehensive manner the linguistic devices adopted by Shakespearein the four great tragedies and intends to make a detailed analyses of the functionsthey perform in the creation of characters. In order to demonstrate how Shakespearepresents his characters in a vivid and convincing manner, the author of thisdissertation adopts an approach of close reading and a detailed analysis.The first part of the dissertation is an introduction which includes three parts:Shakespeare’s Life and Dramatic Composition; Literature Review; A LinguisticApproach. In the first part, the author outlines Shakespeare’s life and four periods ofhis dramatic composition. In Literature Review, the author not only makes a summaryof influential schools in the history of Shakespearean criticism and their respectiverepresentatives, but also lists a category of the recent academic researches in thisregard. In the part of A Linguistic Approach, the author attempts to present majorideas put forward by Leech in a concise manner and clarify some important termssuch as foregrounding, defamiliarization, deviation and repetition.Chapter One deals with schemes and the very functions it performs in thecreation of characters. The author first of all endeavors to explain what schemesmeans, making it clear that repetition occurring on the level of surface grammaticalstructure makes language all the more foregrounded and that it serves as a great boonin the creation of characters. In this chapter, the author divides schemes into threecategories: free verbal repetition, verbal parallelism and syntactic parallelism. Withthis classification, the author makes a detailed summary of these linguistic devicesShakespeare employs in the four great tragedies and explores their very functions in the creation of characters.Chapter Two is devoted to tropes and the very functions it performs in thecreation of characters. The author firstly makes clear the definition of tropes,emphasizing that like schemes, deviation occurring on the level of semantics makeslanguage all the more noticeable and that it contributes a lot to the creation ofcharacters. In this chapter, the author divides tropes into two groups: metaphor andparadox (oxymoron). With this classification, the author summarizes these linguisticdevices in the four great tragedies and makes a detailed analysis of their veryfunctions in the creation of characters.Chapter Three focuses on other deviations which encompass register deviationand lexical deviation of pun. In the four great tragedies, both thou (thy, thee, thine,thyself) and you (your, yours, yourself) are used in alternation. The alternate use ofyou (your, yours, yourself) and thou (thy, thee, thine, thyself) is not arbitrary. On thecontrary, it plays a vitally important role in the creation of characters. The authormakes a summary of these linguistic devices and analyses their very functions ofcreating characters.In Conclusion, the author sums up how Shakespeare presents his characters inthe four great tragedies by the employment of the afore-mentioned linguistic devices.The author maintains that one of the striking characteristics in Shakespeare’s fourgreat tragedies is the display of diversity, profundity and complexity of human beings.With these linguistics devices serving as a tremendous help in the creation ofcharacters, Shakespeare scores a great success in portraying his characters at all levelsand in all dimensions, presenting to readers diversity, profundity and complexity ofhuman beings. Readers are thus blessed with a panoramic picture of human beings.