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摘 要：話轮转换被逐渐认为是研究戏剧和电影对白的一种热门方法。本文以反映美国资本化社会的世界名著《推销员之死》的电影对白为研究对象，旨在通过科学和逻辑性的研究揭示推销员的死因来证明话轮转换分析在文学作品中的解释力。
关键词：话轮转换；权势；人物性格
Abstract： Turn-taking analysis tends to be considered as a popular method to study the drama and movie dialogue. Death of a Salesman is one of the world famous literary works； it represents the capitalized society in the American. This paper aims at proving the explanatory force of turn-taking in the literary work by giving a scientific and logic analysis to reveal the reason of the protagonist in movie version of Death of a Salesman.
Key words： Turn-taking analysis； power； character
1 Introduction
The previous research on the literary works tends to study the characters and plot by analyzing the background of the story or the whole text， such as close-reading method in European-American Literature Criticism. It is not widely to find the research on the characters in the literary work from the theories in pragmatics， especially， to give the scientific and logic demonstration by listing some analytical data. This paper attempts to analyze the utterance and discourse through some dialogues from the Death of a Salesman. This will certainly find a new way to study the character and give the explanation on the reason of the death of this pity person in the writing of Arthur Miller. Turn-taking analysis focuses on the turn of the dialogue between the speaker and the listener， this analysis could represent the relationship between the two speakers.Who leads the topic in the conversation？ Who utters the most part of the time？ Who puts up a new topic？ Who gets used to keep silent？ All this questions account for the explanation of turn-taking analysis， and this paper will give further study on this theory and analyze the conversation in details. From this point， the dialogue between Willey Norman and his boss Howard can give the readers the answer for the death of the American Dream seeker.
2 The Methodology of Turn-taking Analysis
2.1 The initiation and control of the topics
The topic is the content of the conversation， in a simple word； topic is the theme of what we are talking about. The choice and the leading of the topic play an important role in the development of the whole conversation. If the speaker intends to join the topic， he or she will adopt certain conversational strategies to show his interests on it， the opposite situation is the same， if the speaker is unwilling to continue the conversation， he or she will not initiate the topic actively. The person who is in the higher position tends to get more chance and right to initiate the topic， even to control it. 2.2 Turn length
Some scholars hold that the turn length shall be the extension time of the conversation， however， it is too hard to count accurately how much time a given conversation costs. Time-counting method is lacking of the scientific support. The popular method to measure the length of the turn in the dialogue is to count the number of the word uttered by the speakers. As exemplified， here is a conversation between a strict mother and her son：
Mother： Have you finish your homework？
Son： No.
It is obvious to give the conclusion that the mother has the absolute power from this conversation， because the number of the word of the mother sums up to 11， however， her son only give a one-word reply “No”.
2.3 Turn-type
In Sack’s opinion， the turn-type can be divided into the initiative turns and the responsive turns. However， for the complex situation in the real life， there are so many examples to violate this division. Since sometimes after the speaker gives an utterance， another participant tends to keep silent or talk the things having nothing to the topic of the speaker instead of following some conversational principles. This kind of situation can not be concluded as the initiative turn or the responsive turns. （Li ying 2006：79）
2.4 Interruption and monologue
From the above statement， the interruption and monologue can be considered as the special division of the turn-type. In a given conversation， one initiates a topic， for the reason of unwilling to cooperate with the initiative speaker， another one will interrupt the topic to suddenly change the topic or to speak no word or to talk anything he or she wants but not related to the whole topic. These kinds of situations can be noted as the interruption and monologue. In the literature work， especially， the drama includes a lot of intentional interruption and monologue to display the dramatic effect. This will be proved in the following analysis in details.
2.5Turn-control strategies
According to the turn allocation rule of Sacks， the participant in the conversation will adopt certain strategies to control the topic or choose someone to speak. In this paper， we hold that there are two types of the turn-control strategies： initiation of the next turn and termination of the turn.
3 Analysis on the conversation
Death of a Salesman is the work of a famous American writer Auther Miller. It tells a story that a traveling service salesman tries his best effort to fulfill his American Dream， but fails at last. The salesman experiences every kinds of the unfair treatment in the cruelly real life. This paper will analyze the dialogue between the protagonist Willey and his boss Howard to find the reason causing the death of the salesman. However， the purpose is not only to analyze the reason but also to apply the above the theories. This part of the dialogue happens in the background that Willey wants to ask for a job in the office from his boss， however， he is refused by Howard. This the critical reason of the protagonist who was full of ambition and dreams steps into the desperation leading to his death. How does the conversation play such a strong effect on the heart of him？ How does Howard push the poor man to the fire by using the power to disdain the self-esteem of the salesman？ There are 66 turns in the conversation between Willey and Howard， among the total number of the turns， Willey accounts for 33 turns and Howard also accounts for 33.
Willy says： “Like to have a little talk with you， Howard”， however， his boss Howard just plays his radio but not gives the direct reply for his topic. The following dialogue excerpted from the movie script of the Death of a Salesman.
Willy： I m definitely going to get one （the wire recorder） .Because lots of time I’ m on the road， and I think to myself， what I must be missing on the radio！
Howard： Don’t you have a radio in the car？
Willy： Well， yeah， but who ever think of turning it on？
Howard： Say， aren’t you supposed to be in Boston？
Willy： That s what I want to talk to you about， Howard. You got a minute？
Howard： What happened？ What are you doing here？ （Li donghua 2001：30）
Willey initiate the topic of changing the job from the car to the office， but Willy uses 3 turns in talking about the radio among the whole 4 turns. This can be considered as a kind of turn-taking strategies： using the limitation of the next turn to restrict the topic not to change to the job.
Willey tried to interrupt this topic to express his intention for 4 times， which has been all turned a deaf ear by Howard. Howard was always talking about the matter of radio like no ones watching. Unexpectedly， this topic is irrelevant to subject brought more than 40 turns. After a long time of talking about the radio he finally awakened as if he were just from a dream to pay attention to Willey Howard and asked： “Say， aren’t’ t you supposed to be in Boston？” ， and then 3 more questions consecutively were asked without leaving time for Willey’s answer which stressed Howard’s arrogant attitude.
Conclusion
Turn-taking occurs in every kinds of conversation， the methodology of turn-taking analysis create a novel way to study certain literature work through the conversation analysis.
This present paper not only briefly explains the theory framework of the turn-taking analysis， but also applies this method in analyzing the characters in the movie script of the Death of a Salesman. From the study of the conversation， we find the relationship between the protagonists， especially， the power relation. This quantitative analysis represents how the cold-blood boss Howard turns a blind eye to the difficulty of Willey. His indifference and his arrogant attitude are all the reason that leads to the death of the salesman. The analysis gives us the clear explanation of the reason through the conversation between them. The turn-taking analysis creates the scientific way of doing the literary study， which is the most critical purpose of this paper.
Reference：
[1]姜望琪.《語用学理论及应用》[M].北京：北京大学出版社，2000
[2]刘世生，朱瑞青.《文体学概论》[M].北京：北京大学出版社，2006
[3]杨雪燕.话语分析与戏剧语言文体学[J].外语教学与研究，1991 （2）：45-48.
[4]李颖.从戏剧中的话轮转换看人物性格和人物关系[J].安徽工业大学学报，2006（3）：79-82.
[5]李东华.从话轮转换看权势关系[J].解放军外国语学院学报，2001，（2）：26-30.
关键词：话轮转换；权势；人物性格
Abstract： Turn-taking analysis tends to be considered as a popular method to study the drama and movie dialogue. Death of a Salesman is one of the world famous literary works； it represents the capitalized society in the American. This paper aims at proving the explanatory force of turn-taking in the literary work by giving a scientific and logic analysis to reveal the reason of the protagonist in movie version of Death of a Salesman.
Key words： Turn-taking analysis； power； character
1 Introduction
The previous research on the literary works tends to study the characters and plot by analyzing the background of the story or the whole text， such as close-reading method in European-American Literature Criticism. It is not widely to find the research on the characters in the literary work from the theories in pragmatics， especially， to give the scientific and logic demonstration by listing some analytical data. This paper attempts to analyze the utterance and discourse through some dialogues from the Death of a Salesman. This will certainly find a new way to study the character and give the explanation on the reason of the death of this pity person in the writing of Arthur Miller. Turn-taking analysis focuses on the turn of the dialogue between the speaker and the listener， this analysis could represent the relationship between the two speakers.Who leads the topic in the conversation？ Who utters the most part of the time？ Who puts up a new topic？ Who gets used to keep silent？ All this questions account for the explanation of turn-taking analysis， and this paper will give further study on this theory and analyze the conversation in details. From this point， the dialogue between Willey Norman and his boss Howard can give the readers the answer for the death of the American Dream seeker.
2 The Methodology of Turn-taking Analysis
2.1 The initiation and control of the topics
The topic is the content of the conversation， in a simple word； topic is the theme of what we are talking about. The choice and the leading of the topic play an important role in the development of the whole conversation. If the speaker intends to join the topic， he or she will adopt certain conversational strategies to show his interests on it， the opposite situation is the same， if the speaker is unwilling to continue the conversation， he or she will not initiate the topic actively. The person who is in the higher position tends to get more chance and right to initiate the topic， even to control it. 2.2 Turn length
Some scholars hold that the turn length shall be the extension time of the conversation， however， it is too hard to count accurately how much time a given conversation costs. Time-counting method is lacking of the scientific support. The popular method to measure the length of the turn in the dialogue is to count the number of the word uttered by the speakers. As exemplified， here is a conversation between a strict mother and her son：
Mother： Have you finish your homework？
Son： No.
It is obvious to give the conclusion that the mother has the absolute power from this conversation， because the number of the word of the mother sums up to 11， however， her son only give a one-word reply “No”.
2.3 Turn-type
In Sack’s opinion， the turn-type can be divided into the initiative turns and the responsive turns. However， for the complex situation in the real life， there are so many examples to violate this division. Since sometimes after the speaker gives an utterance， another participant tends to keep silent or talk the things having nothing to the topic of the speaker instead of following some conversational principles. This kind of situation can not be concluded as the initiative turn or the responsive turns. （Li ying 2006：79）
2.4 Interruption and monologue
From the above statement， the interruption and monologue can be considered as the special division of the turn-type. In a given conversation， one initiates a topic， for the reason of unwilling to cooperate with the initiative speaker， another one will interrupt the topic to suddenly change the topic or to speak no word or to talk anything he or she wants but not related to the whole topic. These kinds of situations can be noted as the interruption and monologue. In the literature work， especially， the drama includes a lot of intentional interruption and monologue to display the dramatic effect. This will be proved in the following analysis in details.
2.5Turn-control strategies
According to the turn allocation rule of Sacks， the participant in the conversation will adopt certain strategies to control the topic or choose someone to speak. In this paper， we hold that there are two types of the turn-control strategies： initiation of the next turn and termination of the turn.
3 Analysis on the conversation
Death of a Salesman is the work of a famous American writer Auther Miller. It tells a story that a traveling service salesman tries his best effort to fulfill his American Dream， but fails at last. The salesman experiences every kinds of the unfair treatment in the cruelly real life. This paper will analyze the dialogue between the protagonist Willey and his boss Howard to find the reason causing the death of the salesman. However， the purpose is not only to analyze the reason but also to apply the above the theories. This part of the dialogue happens in the background that Willey wants to ask for a job in the office from his boss， however， he is refused by Howard. This the critical reason of the protagonist who was full of ambition and dreams steps into the desperation leading to his death. How does the conversation play such a strong effect on the heart of him？ How does Howard push the poor man to the fire by using the power to disdain the self-esteem of the salesman？ There are 66 turns in the conversation between Willey and Howard， among the total number of the turns， Willey accounts for 33 turns and Howard also accounts for 33.
Willy says： “Like to have a little talk with you， Howard”， however， his boss Howard just plays his radio but not gives the direct reply for his topic. The following dialogue excerpted from the movie script of the Death of a Salesman.
Willy： I m definitely going to get one （the wire recorder） .Because lots of time I’ m on the road， and I think to myself， what I must be missing on the radio！
Howard： Don’t you have a radio in the car？
Willy： Well， yeah， but who ever think of turning it on？
Howard： Say， aren’t you supposed to be in Boston？
Willy： That s what I want to talk to you about， Howard. You got a minute？
Howard： What happened？ What are you doing here？ （Li donghua 2001：30）
Willey initiate the topic of changing the job from the car to the office， but Willy uses 3 turns in talking about the radio among the whole 4 turns. This can be considered as a kind of turn-taking strategies： using the limitation of the next turn to restrict the topic not to change to the job.
Willey tried to interrupt this topic to express his intention for 4 times， which has been all turned a deaf ear by Howard. Howard was always talking about the matter of radio like no ones watching. Unexpectedly， this topic is irrelevant to subject brought more than 40 turns. After a long time of talking about the radio he finally awakened as if he were just from a dream to pay attention to Willey Howard and asked： “Say， aren’t’ t you supposed to be in Boston？” ， and then 3 more questions consecutively were asked without leaving time for Willey’s answer which stressed Howard’s arrogant attitude.
Conclusion
Turn-taking occurs in every kinds of conversation， the methodology of turn-taking analysis create a novel way to study certain literature work through the conversation analysis.
This present paper not only briefly explains the theory framework of the turn-taking analysis， but also applies this method in analyzing the characters in the movie script of the Death of a Salesman. From the study of the conversation， we find the relationship between the protagonists， especially， the power relation. This quantitative analysis represents how the cold-blood boss Howard turns a blind eye to the difficulty of Willey. His indifference and his arrogant attitude are all the reason that leads to the death of the salesman. The analysis gives us the clear explanation of the reason through the conversation between them. The turn-taking analysis creates the scientific way of doing the literary study， which is the most critical purpose of this paper.
Reference：
[1]姜望琪.《語用学理论及应用》[M].北京：北京大学出版社，2000
[2]刘世生，朱瑞青.《文体学概论》[M].北京：北京大学出版社，2006
[3]杨雪燕.话语分析与戏剧语言文体学[J].外语教学与研究，1991 （2）：45-48.
[4]李颖.从戏剧中的话轮转换看人物性格和人物关系[J].安徽工业大学学报，2006（3）：79-82.
[5]李东华.从话轮转换看权势关系[J].解放军外国语学院学报，2001，（2）：26-30.