An Exploration Of Interpersonal Metaphors In The King’s Speech

Interpersonal metaphor, an important part of functional grammar, has beendrawing much attention of scholars in recent years. Interpersonal metaphors are theincoherence of language form and language meaning in the process of using languageto fulfill the function of interpersonal communication. But because of the short termof studying this theory, some problems upon interpersonal metaphors has beenaroused and left unsolved. This paper focused on two problems concerninginterpersonal metaphors with the help of a famous and successful film called TheKing’s Speech. Are there any interpersonal metaphors used in the movie The King’sSpeech? If there are interpersonal metaphors in this movie, what are the functions thatinterpersonal metaphors can produce in people’s communication?In order to answer these two questions above, the author followed basically threesteps below: firstly, the author transcripted the conversations in this film trying tokeep the data true and reliable; secondly, the author found some typical conversationsto analyze their functions and contributions in the communication in this film; thirdly,the author collected the data and results that had been analyzed and found out thefunctions of interpersonal metaphors in interactive communication. The authorextented the exploration to the metaphors of mood and that of modality, and thenanalyzed the conversations on the basis of the film called The King’s Speech on bothperspectives above.The King’s Speech tells us a true story in the form of a film. It is about a languagetraining story of Gorge VI. This film contains not only the normal dialogues that existin other films, but also shows us more dialogues upon language training and how toovercome one’s difficulties to embrace a bright future. Based on the analyzing ofdialogues in this film, the author found out that the grammatical category was of greatimportance in the interpersonal communication. Metaphors mood and metaphors ofmodality played different roles in the interpersonal functions. Metaphors of mood inThe King’s Speech focused on the transference of speech functions produced by theone speaker in his communication. While metaphors of modality focused on the transference of orientation of subjectivity and objectivity. What’s more, the authorfound that the interpersonal metaphors have influences on both the mood adjustingand subjective and objective orientation. Besides, interpersonal metaphors influencedthe organizing the coherence of the context and improving the interactive atmosphere.