英语课程论文

青岛农业大学

本科生课程论文

论文题目从文化语境解读《实习医生格蕾》

中的文化语境

学生专业班级英语2011级1班

学生姓名（学号）伏栩叶20115754

指导教师王竹青

完成时间2014. 12. 6

二O一四年十二月六日

From the Cultural context to Analyse the Conversational Implicature

in Grey’s Anato my

Fu Xuye

Class 1, 2011, Foreign Languages School, Qingdao Agricultural University

Abstract: For understanding the conversational implicature, social cultural context has play an important role. Nowadays the medical TV drama has been one of the most popular genres. As a representative work, Grey’s Anatomy has provided rich language materials but few pragmatic studies have been conducted on it.Social cultural context is very important to understand the conversational implicature. This thesis will try to analyses the conversation from the cultural context, in order to help the reader better to understand Grey’s Anatomy. Key words:cultural context; conversational implicature; Grey’s Anatomy

从文化语境解读“实习医生格蕾”中的文化语境

摘要：社会文化语境对解读会话含义有着非常重要的作用。在当今社会中，医务电视剧受到了广大观众的欢迎，而“实习医生格蕾”是这些作品中的成功代表。它剧本中的人物对话为语言研究提供了丰富的语料。文章试从理解会话含义的重要因素：文学文化语境，艺术文化语境，政治文化语境，经济文化语境，宗教文化语境，社会风俗文化语境等方面对《实习医生格蕾》的会话含义进行解读，旨在为观众更好地理解《实习医生格蕾》提供借鉴。

关键词：文化语境；会话含义；《实习医生格蕾》

1. Introduction

1.1 Background: A Brief introduction of Grey's Anatomy

Grey’s Anatomy is a very popular medical TV drama in the United States. This play became the Thursday primetime ratings champion when it premiered in March 27, 2005 at the American Broadcasting Company. It also obtained 11 nominations in 2006 on "the 58th US TV Emmy Awards." It describes five young interns’ work, life and touching love story which rolled artistic, entertainment and medical professionals into one, not only has been praised by critics, but also increasing the number of viewers. And it has become a wonderful work of the medical drama in recent years.

Grey’s Anatomy takes place in a large comprehensive teaching hospital. In the hospital, everybody coming and going, where has the birth and died; where has one-night stand,

triangle, homosexuality, extramarital affairs and other emotional entanglements; where has Chest Medicine, Orthopedics, Surgery and various medical department; where has mergers, layoffs, and other economic management issues; where has love and betrayal; where has romantic and friendship. The story is about Grey and other interns who just graduated from medical school, came to Seattle Grace Hospital, and embarked on a path to become official doctors. On this way, what accompanied them are doctors who have different personalities but equally demanding doctor, and cases which from extraordinary to those cases even no name, as well as tangled love life between them. The Grey’s narration brings the audience into the story, and into the characters’ rich inner world.

1.2 Research Significance

With the development of professional drama, comes the growth of medical TV drama as a representative type of programming. Medical TV drama influences the audience deeply on their feelings, ways of thinking and manners of performances which are close to that they imagine the lives of medical staff may be. However, linguistic researches on medical TV drama are quite limited and those done in decades of years ago have also been out of date. The conversational implicature in Grey’s Anatomy is illustrated with cultural context. Through analyzing how the six cultural context influence the conversational implicature, this thesis made contribution to the interpretation of the real intention of the main characters and the implicit information carried by those dialogues. Thus it shed some light on the new approach of Medical TV Drama.

The research is both of profound theoretical and practical significance. As for theoretical significance, this thesis aims to analyze medical care discourses in the famous medical drama Grey’s Anatomy from a pragmatic approach based on the conversational implicature. As for practical significance, the thesis fills the gap of traditional drama studies by discussing the conversational implicature of a new type of drama—medical TV drama. This research also gives some practical implications for improving communication skills in daily. Besides,the author of this thesis finds that the dialogues of this drama contribute a lot to the creation of character image and help move the plot. These conversations help present the story vividly in front of audiences.

2. Literature Review

Scholars from different research fields have showed great interest in studying medical discourses and medical dramas. This chapter is aimed at going over the existing research results from the following.

In western academia, Fowler (1986) stresses the importance of analyzing conversation implicatures for appreciating dramatic language and making literary critisicm. He shows a

new way to understand the illocutionary acts of the characters in dramatic dialogues through either following or violating the maxims of cooperative principles. Chinese linguists have also contributed a lot to the researches on dramatic discourses. Shao(1990) is Chinese forerunner in pragmatic researches of dramatic discourses. He studies the drama Hamlet and King Lear written by Shakespeare through exploiting the cooperative principle and politeness principle. Yao (2009) adopts a pragmatic approach to analyze the text in drama Death of a Salesman under the theoretical framework of cooperative principles, politeness principles as well as conversational implicatures.

3.Theoretical Backgrounds

Cultural context is the important factor in understanding the meaning of the conversational implicature. Language and culture are complementary, language is one of the carriers of culture, and culture is expressed in the forms of language. Many scholars have paid great attention to the function of language, the linguists Halliday divided context into linguistic context and non-linguistic context, the latter includes situational context and cultural context.(2)Hu Zhuanglin divides context into linguistic context, cultural context, situational context. And cultural context refers to the language of social groups, history, culture and customs and habits.(3)

Based on this, the social cultural context of the speaker should refer to the use of their physical environment, historical and cultural traditions, ways of thinking, aesthetic concepts values, social consciousness and select all backgrounds to reflect the contents of their discourse system. "Cultural context is the product of social structure, is the discourse system of the situation.. Specific situational context comes from the cultural context." [3]

4. Analysis of Conversational Implicature in Grey’s Anatomy

Therefore, in order to understand the semantics of the speaker properly, we should not only pay attention to the language factor, but also pay attention to the speaker's cultural context, because it is an indirect non-linguistic factor to affect the semantics. So, to understand the meaning of the conversational inplicature should consider on the macro-social and cultural background but not only understand from literally, otherwise it may cause misunderstanding. In what follows the author of this thesis shall analyze the conversational implicature of Grey’s Anatomy from six aspects.

4.1 Literature cultural context

Literature is an important manifestation of culture, and an important part of social cultural context, it also has important extrinsic utility value and spiritual values. In daily life, the literature form people exposed, such as movies, television, novels, etc., help people achieve a constantly better themselves; in everyday conversation, people will cite the

literature words and sentences to express their feelings.(4)

The following dialogue takes place in a corridor. The four tired interns are sitting on the spare beds after a day of hard work. George repeats his question over and over to confirm that someo ne called him 007. If we don’t know about 007, we could not understand the conversational implicature. 007 refers to James Bond, is a fiction character created by British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. The Bond character is a Secret Service agent, code number 007, residing in London but active internationally, is the man licensed to kill.

George: Murphy whispered 007 and everyone laughed.

Izzie: He wasn't talking about you.

George: You sure?

Cristina: 007 is a state of mind.

George: So says the girl who finished top of her class at Stanford.

Before this scene, George has failed to finish his first surgery under great pressure. He hardly kills the patient because he does not how to deal with over-bleeding. Everybody laughs at him and someone eve n gives him the nickname “007”, George really mined it, so he asked them again and again.

4.2 Art Cultural context

Art is a kind of cultural context, which can consummated people’s inner desire or emotion and satisfy people’s subjective and emotional needs. And art is also a particular way of entertainment in people's everyday life. In daily life, people often use a sort of form of art to express their thoughts or emotions.

The following paragraph is Grey’s narration, it use the aphorism of Benjamin Franklin to express we have to be brave, have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.

A couple hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. "Never leave that till tomorrow," he said, "which you can do today.” This is the man who discovered electricity. You'd think more of us would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of rejection. Sometimes, the fear is just of making a decision. Because, what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo?

4.3 Political cultural context

Politics is an important social phenomenon that produced when the human society developed to a certain period, which has a significant impact on a country's social development and economic prosperity. Although the general public can not participate in politics, but sometimes would influence the citizen’s life.

The dialogue below takes place out of hospital. Ms Lu is a Chinese woman, and her daughter get some kind of cut but she can not go to hospital because she is a stowaway.

Izzie: It's okay. It's okay. I'll help. It's deep. I need to clean it out…

Girl: Machine, it broke in the factory, it fall.

Izzie: You speak English. Just, if you could come inside...

Girl: No, no, no, no inside, no, no, jail.

Izzie: Jail? She came inside...

Girl: She green card! Me, no.

Izzie: You're illegal. That's okay, we don't have to tell them that, I just need to get you inside, I have to sew that up.

Girl: No, no inside. No inside.

4.4 Economy cultural context

Economy is crucial for a country, a country's level of economic development directly affects the overall national strength and people's living standards.

The next dialogue happens in Dr. Sloan’s office, an earless boy want Dr. Sloan help him to get ears. And Dr. Sloan mentioned “pro bono surgery” could help this boy.

Meredith: What's all this?

The earless boy: It's letters from the kids in my class.

Dr. Sloan: Letters to me. He has the internal structure to hear, he just doesn't have a canal or external structure.

The earless boy: So I thought if I came in with my letters, Dr. Sloan might feel sorry for me and do the surgery for free.

Dr. Sloan: Uh, look, I'd like to help, I would if I could, but pro bono surgery you should probably know that on my way here this morning, three different people thought I was in a costume.

The United States is an economically advanced countries。Under normal circumstances, there are three ways for citizens to participate in the civic health insurance: First, there is the working staff can buy health insurance through their employer; the second is the federal government provides Medicare to people who over 65-year-old or disabled; the third is three is to assist the Federal government and individual states government provide Medicaid to the poorest Americans.

USA health insurance has extended coverage, but there are still nearly 20% of Americans have no money to pay the insurance [7], so the patient living in poverty will seek help from pro bono surgery. There is a investigation into 135 American and Canadian dental hospital doctors and 586 members of American Dental Association indicate that 45.4% of the dental doctor and 33.4% of hospital doctors are willing to provide assistance to patients.(8).

In the play, finally in the multi-help, the doctors and nurses had plastic surgery to this earless boy for free.

4.5 Religious beliefs cultural context

Religious beliefs constitute a special ideology and culture phenomenon which is one of the paramount part of culture context. It refers to the religious ideology convinced by people, which generated by adoring identity, stalwart belief and devoted dependence.

There is another dialogue between a male intern named Alex and a patient named Devo. The background is Devo who Believe in Judaism, is suffering from mitral regurgitation and need to replace a heart valve immediately, the intern Alex suggest her use a porcine valve.

Devo: You know how important this is to me.

Mother: This is about saving your life, sweetie.

Devo: And you’re not respecting it, or me. You’re letting them put a pig, a freaking non-kosher, traif mammal, into my chest, into my heart! The very essence og my being!

Alex: It’s a porcine valve, actually.

Devo: I don’t care what the hell it is. If you give me a pig part, I might as well be dead.

Father: I told you this whole Orthodox thing was a mistake. What was so wrong with being plain old Reform like everyone else we know?

Devo: You guys don’t even light candles Friday nights. You don’t even know all the Passover plagues.

This is a typical example of the importance of the religious belief cultural context in analyses conversational implicature. Intern Alex just pays attention to the disease itself, while ignoring the social, spiritual, cultural factors of the patient. Devo's religious beliefs are not included in the disease treatment regimen, and this is why Devo is extremely dissatisfied and refused surgery.

Orthodox Judaism a branch of Judaism which is one of the five major religions of the world, has a very detailed and complex food taboos law in Judaism is called “Kashrut”. Kashrut divided food into clean and unclean, pigs, rabbits, horses, camels, turtles, snakes, shrimp, shellfish and some other foods are considered unclean food, no eating, no touching.

This is the reason for Devo give a stern rebuff to surgery, and finally the doctors use bovine valve replacement scheme for Devo’s surgery. The doctor ask the priest to do rabbi (a kind of prayer)for Devo, because it is an important part of Judaism.

4.6 Social custom and cultural context

Social custom and cultural context is the behavior patterns or norms people abide within particular social cultural area. In the context of a particular culture, social customs will affect people's behavior language habits.

The following discourse is chosen from the dialogue between the emergency medical technician (EMT) and ER Doctors when they handover the patient.

EMT: Erin Shanley, 34, massive head trauma when a brick came through her windshield. G.C.S. Of 3 in the field.

Dr. Bailey: A brick came through her windshield?

EMT: Damn kids were screwing around on a bridge, Halloween crap.

Izzie: I'm looking at brain matter here.

EMT: I checked. She's a donor.

In the above dialogue, the EMT said: “I checked. She's a donor.” While, how the EMT knows the patient is a donor? Actually, the EMT checked the patient’s Driving License, it shows the patient is a donor.

In the American system of values, to help others and return to the community can constantly improve themselves and realize their self-worth. In the US, the organ donation of whole brain death had voluntarily agreed during his lifetime, and is free. In most US states have adopted the system that registration for organ donation wishes when obtaining a driving license. The front side is driver's name, sex, height, date of birth, address and other information, the back is an organ donation consent form [9].

5. Conclusion

This thesis analyzed the conversational implicature in Grey’s Anatomy from the context of culture. are intended to illustrate to really understand the conversational implicature in Grey’s Anatomy can not only be understood in the literal meaning of the words, but from social cultural context to understand the true meaning of the speaker wants to say, so as to help the audience better understand and appreciate this medical drama, and to help the English learners learn the etiquette and culture of Western.

（参考文献和上文之间空一行）

References （Times New Roman四号）

[2] Halliday ,M.A.K, &https://www.360docs.net/doc/4b12354575.html,nguage,Context and Text: Aspect of Language in a Social-semiotic perspective[M].Victoria: Deakin University Press,1985:65.

[3] 胡壮麟.语篇的衔接与连贯[M].上海:上海外语教育出版社,1994.

[4] 唐丽君.从文化语境解读《老友记》中的会话含义[J].电影文学,2013(06):139-140.

[8] Brown BR, Inglehart MR. Orthodontists' and orthodontic residents' education in treating underserved patients: effects on professional attitudes and behavior. Journal of Dental Education,2009,73(5): 550-562.

[9] Breitkopf Cr.Attitudes beliefs and behaviors surrounding organ donation among hispanic women. Curr Opin Organ Transplant.2009,14(2):191-195.

[7] 夏炀.从美国联邦医疗卫生体系联想到的.现代医院,2009,9(7):95-99.

7.胡壮麟,2001’《语言学教程》,北京:北京大学出版社。

包括: 作者姓名、出版年月、文献题目/书名/文集名、期刊名、出版单位、文献编号等。

1. Brown, P. & S. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage[M]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.（英文书名用Times New Roman斜体5号）

2. Goffman, E. 1967. International Ritual [M]. New York: Pantheon.

3. Li, Charles N. & Sandra A. Thompson 197

4. An Explanation on Word Order Change[J], Foundations of Language 12.（英文刊物用Times New Roman斜体5号）

4.蔡金亭，2002，英语过度语中的动词屈折变化——对情状体优先假设的检验[J]，《外语教学与研究》第2期。（中文刊物用宋体五号）

5.吕叔湘、朱德熙，1952，《语法修辞讲话》[M]。北京：中国青年出版社。（汉语书名用宋体五号）

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发出任务书日期 2013.6.25 完成论文日期 2013.12.6

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