《欲望都市》中女性语言表达特色研究

  本文关键词：《欲望都市》中女性语言表达特色研究，由笔耕文化传播整理发布。

        语言是为了满足社会交际的需要而产生、存在和发展的。它由人类创造和使用，因而语言中也不可避免地存在着性别差异。这一现象已引起了语言学界的广泛关注。在以往的研究过程中，学者们发现由于女性在日常生活中所处的特殊地位（母亲、日常生活活动的主要组织者和承担者、大部分教师是女性……），女性语言自有其区别于男性语言的独特表现形式。因此，它在一定程度上成为了语言的规范及未来发展趋势的风向标。也就是说，对于女性语言表达特色的研究将有助于语言学家准确把握未来的语言发展方向。由美国HBO有线电视网出品的《欲望都市》描绘了生活在纽约曼哈顿的四名三十多岁的女性好友寻找爱情，体验大都会人生喜怒哀乐的故事。凭借着时尚漂亮的四位女主角身上散发的现代都市单身女性的浓郁气息，以及她们所面临的感情挫折和困扰，这部电视剧自从1998年夏季播出以来，已在越来越多的都市人群中引起了强烈而又广泛的共鸣。这部电视剧共由六季组成，每集又包含大约12节，其中每节时长为20到25分钟。作者认为女性之间的交谈是这部电视剧最引人注目的特色之一，且非常适合作为语料来进行语言学的研究。考虑到文章的篇幅要求，本论文语料均选自剧中第一集的台词片段。本篇论文主要从社会语言学和语用学等方面对《欲望都市》中女性语言的表达特点作了广泛而又深刻的研究，同时也属于多学科的研究范畴。首先，在社会语言学领域，作者利用Wood提出的女性交谈特点（包含平等性、善于发问、响应能力、试探性等四个方面），从女性在日常交往中的实际目的出发，对《欲望都市》中女性语言表达特色进行探讨。研究结果显示，女性语言的平等性指出在沟通中为了让对方感到轻松，女性往往愿意分享自己与之类似的经验或持有相同的意见。剧中四位女主角之间的交谈极为常见，从这些对话中可以看到当今女性具有直接表达情感和看法的倾向，她们乐于对某一事物展开讨论并各抒己见。由于彼此熟识，即便在出现意见分歧时，她们也能够保持良好的友谊和亲密的关系。相对于男性而言，女性更加善于提出问题。这个特点能够帮助她们更好地理解对方，同时还有利于发起一个新的话题，从而保证沟通的顺利进行。研究中作者还通过列表详细分析了英语中较为常见的委婉表达的问句用法，这表明女性在交谈中注重维护他人尊严和面子，展现了其体贴细心的特点。接下来，文中讨论的第三个特点为女性语言的应答性，又称响应能力。通过向他人提供正面的支持性反馈使对方感受到自己得到了尊重与重视。作者还注意到女性的回答中经常出现的感叹词，如“啊”、“哦”、“呃”等，将有助于表达她们的强烈感情。然而，强感叹词甚至是咒骂语的使用体现了女性语言呈男性化、并逐渐向男性语言接近的趋势。女性语言的试探性进一步解释了女性喜欢采取委婉方式表达自我的现象，其主要包含以下三个部分：模糊限制语、语调和附加疑问句。通过研究可以推断模糊限制语在女性语言中更为常见，这与拉考夫的发现相一致。跟男性相比，女性语言在语调方面也有着很大的差别。本文论证了女性倾向于在句尾用上升语调，以此来体现她们对谈话另一方发自内心的关爱。研究还发现，女性更加频繁地使用附加疑问句来确定她们的想法并为对话留有空间以便进一步展开讨论。在语用分析方面，女性通常以积极的态度参与到对话中，并能够对对方的提问做出充分的、真实的且相关的回答，因而倾向于遵守合作原则；男性在很多时候则不能给对方提供适当的回答，他们通常情况下有更大的可能性违反合作原则。从礼貌原则来看，一方面女性角色习惯用委婉提问的方式来表达请求或建议，另一方面她们在人际交往中往往更喜欢给予和接受赞美，此外还擅长向对方表示赞同和同情以示礼貌从而遵守了礼貌原则；相比之下，男性通常不具备上述特点，他们更容易违反礼貌原则。此外，作者通过对语料的分析还发现女性在日常交谈中十分注意保全对方的面子，也就是说，尽量不去触碰敏感的话题，从而避免尴尬的发生。虽然本论文的目标在于研究女性的语言，可作者认为仍有必要从更宽泛的角度来看待这个问题。这就意味着需要进行性别语言的研究，，因为女性语言的特征只有在与男性语言的对比下才能更具独特性和突出性。这也能够解释为什么会有如此众多的学者展开对两性之间语言差异的研究。本论文的创新之处在于将传统的理论框架同现代电视剧的台词脚本相结合，从社会语言学和语用学的角度对男女两性之间语言特色进行对比和分析，这使得女性语言表达特色的研究成果更具真实性，也更能反映出当今美国社会生活中的多种意识形态。与此同时，作者发现Wood理论中女性语言的平等性、善于发问特点同语用学中的合作原则存在一定的联系，而响应能力和试探性也正好反映了礼貌原则及面子理论的本质。由此可以看出，语言学中各学科之间的关系是密不可分、相辅相成的。作者希望通过本文的研究，能够使人们对了解西方思想和文化，熟悉跨文化交际的原则和策略，以及今后开展女性语言表达特色的研究起到一定的推动作用。

    Language comes into being, exists and develops in order to meet therequirements of social communication. Human beings are creators and users oflanguage as well, so it is undoubted that there exist differences in gender language,which have aroused wide concern in the linguistics circle. During the process ofprevious studies, researchers found that compared to male’s language, female’slanguage has its unique form of expression due to the special roles they played indaily life, such as being mothers, central organizers and undertakers in daily life; mostteachers are females, etc. Consequently, women’s language stands for lingualstandards as well as the direction of future development in aspect of language to someextent. In other words, the study on expression features of female language willfacilitate linguists predicting the growing trend of language development.Sex and the City, aired by Home Box Office (HBO), depicts the story of Carrie,Miranda, Charlotte and Amanda, four30-year-old ladies living in Manhattan, NewYork City to find true love and experience happiness and sorrows of life in metropolis.In this TV series, the four fashionable and charming heroines exude full-bodied tingeof modern urban single ladies, and their setbacks and problems confronted inrelationships are reflected as well. Therefore, Sex and the City has caused intense andwidespread resonance among more and more urban population since it premiered inthe summer1998. This series is composed of six seasons with each one includingabout twelve episodes. Every episode lasts20to25minutes. And women’s talk is oneof the most fascinating features of this TV series, which is quite suitable for linguisticresearches. Considering the required length of the thesis, the author has selected thelines appeared in the Season I of the TV series Sex and the City as linguistic data. The author takes Sex and the City as the study object and carries out theextensive and deep study on expression features of female language in it from twoaspects of sociolinguistics and pragmatics respectively. Meanwhile, the presentresearch also belongs to the category of multidisciplinary study. First of all, throughidentifying the purpose of daily communication for women, four features of womentalks concerning equality, the presence of questions, responsiveness, tentativenessobserved by Wood has been used as theoretical basis to explore the expression featureof female language in the TV series. This can be regarded as the analysis fromsociolinguistic perspective. Equality indicates that women would like to share thesimilar experience or have identical opinions in order to make the other party feelrelieved during interaction. Besides, the talks among the four female characters arequite common in the series which signifies nowadays females have the tendency toexpress themselves straightforward especially in the conversations of their owngender. Since they know each other very well, the friendship and intimacy will not beaffected even if any of them speaks out the different voices during communication. Inthe presence of questions, it is found that women tend to use questions of all kindsmore frequently than men do, which help females to get a better understanding of theother party as well as to initiate a new topic or keep interaction going on smoothly.Moreover, euphemistic questions have been analyzed in detail, which also contributeto showing women’s concern for saving other’s face in conversation. The feature ofresponsiveness presents that females are inclined to provide positive feedback onwhat others have said which can make others feel valued and respected. The authoralso notices the frequency of interjections appeared in women’s replying words suchas “Ah”,“Oh”,“Eh” and so on facilitates in expressing their strong feelings. However,the employment of strong expletives embodies the trend of women’s languagebecoming gradually masculine and much more approachable to male’s. In terms oftentativeness, it consists of three sub-sections concerning hedges, intonation and tagquestion, which further explains the phenomenon that women prefer to expressthemselves in an implicit way. It can be inferred from the thesis that verbal hedgesoccur more frequently in females’ language, which is consistent with the findings observed by Lakoff. The second part verifies females’ language differ from male’sgreatly in terms of intonation. It has been proved that women feel like using risingintonation so as to exemplify their heartfelt kindness to the other party. The study oftag questions are more frequently adopted by women to make certain of what they aresaying as well as leave the conversation open for further discussion.As to pragmatic analysis, since females usually take active part in the talks andoffer response sufficiently, authentically and correlatively, they tend to abide byCooperative Principle. On the contrary, males fail to offer proper answers to thequestion of the other party in many cases, so they are more likely to flout the CP.Speaking of Politeness Principle, on the one hand, female characters are used to makea request or suggestion by raising a question in euphemistic way, on the other hand,they often prefer to give and receive compliments during interpersonalcommunication. Moreover, females are expert in expressing agreement and sympathyto show their courtesy. However, males generally do not possess the abovecharacteristics. Thus we can say women tend to observe the Politeness Principlewhereas men violate it. In addition, through the investigation the author also finds thatwomen attach a great deal of importance to save other’s face in daily conversation.That is to say, they try to avoid touching sensitive topic in which embarrassment mayoccur.Although the objective of this thesis aims to study on women’s language, it isstill necessary to see the issue from broader viewpoint which refers to genderlanguage in that the features of women’s language could only be distinctive andprominent with the comparison to men’s language. That is why a lot of researcheshave been carried out to investigate the language differences between the two genders.The novelty of this thesis lies in through the combination of the traditional theoreticalframework with lines of modern TV drama, the language expression features of malesand females have been compared and analyzed from perspectives of sociolinguisticsand pragmatics, so that the results will be more real and further reflect the variety ofideology forms of today’s social life in the United States. At the same time, it is foundthat equality and the presence of questions proposed by Wood has some connections with Cooperative Principle; while responsiveness and tentativeness reflect the essenceof Politeness Principle and Face Theory. Therefore, it can be seen that the relationshipamong different subjects of linguistics is inextricably linked and complementary toeach other. The author is sincerely in hopes of making people better understandwestern thought and culture as well as familiarize with the principles and strategies incross-cultural communication according to the present research. Moreover, this thesisis expected to be beneficial to promote future study on expression features of femalelanguage and relevant field.

《欲望都市》中女性语言表达特色研究

摘要4-7Abstract7-10Chapter One Introduction13-17    1.1 About Sex and the City13-14    1.2 Origin of the Study14-15    1.3 Significance of the study15    1.4 Objectives of the Study15-16    1.5 Organization of the study16-17Chapter Two Literature Review17-30    2.1 Previous Study on Female Language Features17-20        2.1.1. Studies Abroad17-19        2.1.2 Studies at Home19-20    2.2 Language, Gender and Society20-24        2.2.1 Language and Gender20-22        2.2.2 Language and Society22-23        2.2.3 Gender and Society23-24    2.3 Relevant Pragmatic Theories24-30        2.3.1 The Cooperative Principle (CP)24-27        2.3.2 The Politeness Principle (PP)27-28        2.3.3 Face Theory28-30Chapter Three Study on Female Language Expression Features from Sociolinguistic Perspective30-48    3.1 Equality30-33    3.2 Questions33-36    3.3 Responsiveness36-40    3.4 Tentativeness40-48        3.4.1 Verbal hedges40-43        3.4.2 Intonation43-46        3.4.3 Tag Questions46-48Chapter 4 Study on Female Language Expression Features from Pragmatic Perspective48-71    4.1 Female Language in Observing or Violating the CP48-58        4.1.1 Observing or Violating the maxim of Quantity49-52        4.1.2 Observing or Violating the Maxim of Relation52-55        4.1.3 Observing or Violating the Maxim of Quality and Manner55-58    4.2 Female Language in Observing or Violating the PP58-68        4.2.1 Observing or Violating Tact Maxim and Generosity Maxim59-61        4.2.2 Observing or Violating Approbation Maxim and Modesty Maxim61-63        4.2.3 Observing or Violating Agreement Maxim63-66        4.2.4 Observing or Violating Sympathy Maxim66-68    4.3 Observing or Violating the Face Theory68-71Chapter Five Conclusion71-75    5.1 Findings of the Study71-73    5.2 Limitations of the Study73-74    5.3 Recommendations for Further Study74-75Bibliography75-78Acknowledgements78

  本文关键词：《欲望都市》中女性语言表达特色研究，由笔耕文化传播整理发布。