Analysis Of Power Relationship And Characterization Based On Turn-taking

Although Wuthering Heights depicted mental and physical cruelty andsimultaneously challenged strict thought of the Victorian day, including religioushypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality, few people research this EmilyBronte’s only novel from the perspective of discourse analysis which has integratedorganically with stylistics and pragmatics. Turn as an important category of discourseanalysis, is often used to explain the characters of power relations and the character’spersonality. This motives the author to interpret Wuthering Heights from turn-taking.Based on previous researches on Wuthering Heights and turn-taking, this study hasrevised a framework of turn-taking. The five aspects of the model have played vital partin unveiling the power and characterization of literary works. Besides, there existdefinite connections among the five aspects, which are the initiation and control of topic,turn-length, turn-type, interruption and monologue, turn-control strategies.All of the characters have opportunities to control the topics, which are dependentmostly on the situation during the conversations and the relationships among them. Inconversations, the amount that a character initiates a topic and responds to a questioncan be utilized to reveal the power of the literary, while the others’ responses can besomewhat used to expose some aspects of the characterization. For effective and evidentanalysis, the thesis will adopt seven pairs of participants in complicate relations as thesubjects to collect their conversations throughout the novel. The seven pairs selected areHeathcliff and Catherine, Heathcliff, Mrs. Dean and Isabella, Catherine and Nelly Dean;Little Catherine and Hareton, Little Catherine, Linton, Joseph and Mrs. Dean, Catherine,Edgar and Mrs. Dean, Hindley, Heathcliff and Mrs. Dean.Besides, the thesis answered four questions that the author has a strong desire toanswer. They are:(1) What are the power relations in this novel?(2) How do the powerrelations react to the characters’ fates?(3)How does Emily Bronte portray the characters?(4)From the characters’ conversations, what can we learn and realize?The thesis has found that there exist three meanings by applying the framework ofturn-taking to analyze Wuthering Heights:(1) using the framework of turn-taking, notonly can let us have a better understanding of the characters and its mutual relations inthe drama, but also can make the readers comment the characters of the drama based onrelatively objective;(2) The turn-taking analysis has brought a new perspective for thedrama text analysis, which can help people observe the characteristics of the characters, understand the character’s personality, know the relationship between characters and thepower relations in the literary work by analyzing dialogues.(3) The quantitativeturn-taking analysis, applied in written discourse, can help literature lovers have a betterrealization of personality of characters, the relationship between characters and plotdevelopment.