An Analysis Of The Dialogues In The Film Schindler' List From The Viewpoint Of Textual Function

Nowadays, film has become one of the most influential media. The development of film promotes the improving of the filmic language. Since the invention of sound film, sound has become an indispensable component of the filmic language. In the film, sound effects are mainly achieved through dialogues. Therefore, the study of the dialogues made by the characters not only helps to understand the central idea of the film, but also helps to discover the lingual features of the film. The current studies of filmic dialogues are mostly from the pragmatic viewpoints, mainly focusing on how the filmic dialogues relate to the character shaping. Nevertheless, there are few studies of filmic dialogues that are conducted from the perspective of textual function.The thesis is based on the classic film Schindler's List directed by the well-known Jewish director Steven Spielberg. From the perspective of systemic-functional grammar, by using the theory of thematic structure, thematic progression, information structure and cohesion included in the textual function (one of the three language functions) as the main theoretical framework, the author tentatively analyzes the dialogues of the film to make known the textual features of the dialogues in the film.From her close reading of the scenario Schindler's List, the author summaries 23 groups of the dialogues which are closely related to the plot of the film, and then selects randomly 13 groups of them as the research object. According to Halliday's theory about thematic structure, information structure and cohesion, the thesis analyzes the textual function of the filmic dialogues in detail, and finally gets the following findings:1. The study of the thematic structure and thematic progression finds that the simple theme, the unmarked theme, and the constant-theme pattern take the largest percentage; it conforms to the features of the oral style.2. The study of the information structure finds that the unmarked information structure dominates in the filmic dialogues and the marked information structure also has a large proportion; tone and accent are used to emphasize something or somebody, thus highlighting the information focus.3. The study of the cohesion finds that the cohesive devices of reference and repetition are most largely used in the dialogues. 4. The study of the textual function makes people have a better understanding of the central idea of the film, find out the characteristic of the filmic language, so that they may have a deep understanding of the filmic context.The last but not the least, it expands the application scope of Halliday's functional grammar in the field of filmic discourses to some extent. And it is an addition and development of the previous studies. It is hoped to provide some valuable reference to the deep study of the filmic discourse.