从英语语言学角度分析电影《不一样的爸爸》

The Study of Linguistics of the Movie: I am Sam组长：段梦梦组员：叶思聪、巫安琪、袁倩云、吴洒、吴霞、郑超俊、曹东力、傅玲玲、孙黎君Film is an encyclopedia. It is one of the most influential public communication medium nowadays. It is an art culture form which is full of the beauty. It is a comprehensive application which combines with contemporary science and technology and art. In order to better understand the embodiment of Linguistics in English movies, this article would analyze the features of dialogues in the original English movie I am Sam from the perspective of Linguistics.一. Briefly talk about some scope of linguisticsThere are six aspects of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. When we study different content of the communication, we can learn different branch of linguistics. For example, in the movie, Rita asks Willy to sleep by the sentence “It’s time to get ready for bed.”This refers to the study of pragmatics, which the study of meaning is conducted, not in isolation, but in the context of language use. In other words, the speaker talks through makes people to do something.And when Sam has to separate from Lucy, he says that “and then the words, they got too big”, and he asks the woma n that “Can I hug her bye bye?” Form these sentences, according to the syntax——the study of language rules, we can learn that this person——Sam, he is different from other people. When we want to say “but I can’t to express”, we usuall y not to choose the one Sam says “and then the words, they got too big.”There is another sentence goes like this：“Doesn’t every parent want their kid to be smart?”In this sentence, “parent” refers to not only is Sam himself but of all the world’s parents, which conveys the meaning that Lucy is smarter than Sam himself is just what he wanted. Here, language is used to convey meaning, which refers to the study of semantics——a study of meaning.二. Explore design features and functions of language from I am SamLanguage is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. At the beginning of the movie, when Sam gets into the lift, he says” Hurry up. The first floor is two more floors. Hurry up. The second floor, one more floor.” It performs the productivity of language. Language has many different expressive forms from one to another. Even for one person, he can have a variety of expressions. Usually, we, normal persons, would not count like that. But for Sam, his intellectual capacity is around that of a 7-year-old, so he counts like that. This design feature of language can also be found in the following sentences: “It’s make me happy hearing you read. It’s make me happy when you’re reading.” Andthere two forms of “read”, the first is the present tense, the second is the present continuous tense, it shows the displacement of language , it means language can be used to refer to things which are present or not , real or imagined in the past, present or future.There main functions are often recognized of language: the descriptive function, the expressive function, and the social function. These three functions are mostly reflected in the movie. The descriptive function, conveys the factual information, for example, Lucy says to Randy “Daddy’s coming today”, it conveys an information to Randy that Sam will come to see Lucy today.And the expressive function, supplies information about the user’s feeling, preferences, prejudices, and values, is well reflected in the sentence “Get to the question, Mr. Turner.” It is said by the judge, which expresses an order or a permission to the lawyer.As for the social function, referred to the interpersonal function, serves to establish and maintain social relations between people, also reflected in many parts of the movie, such as the sentence “Sam, can I come in?” , Sam hid es himself at the corner of the room, he doesn’t want to see anyone. Therefore, Rita asks him for allowance to get in and talk with him. This is a way to get close to Sam.However, these three aspects are supposedly distinct from each other but actually overlapping to some degree. Take the following dialogue for example: Lucy: It's ok, daddy. It's ok. Don't be sorry. I'm lucky. Nobody else's daddy ever comes to the park.“It’s ok, daddy, nobody else’s daddy ever comes to the park” performs the descriptive function which conveys information. “I’m lucky” functions expressively which supplying the Lucy’s feeling. What’s more, if we take a look at the sentence at the whole picture, it performs the social function of language because it provides an efficient way for Lucy to maintain the relationship between her father and her.三. Analyze the emotion of the characters in terms of suprasegmental featuresIn addition, suprasegmental features, the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments, including stress, intonation, and tone, are also used in the movie. When Randy sees Lucy is together with Sam, she says “Give me my daughter, give us Lucy.” She puts the stress on “give”. According to this stress, we can learn the mood of her at that moment. Stress likes this sentence such as “and I really don’t want to keep you from him, I really honestly don’t.” The stress is put on “really” to express Randy truly do not want to separate Lucy from her daddy.Also, according to the knowledge of intonation, there are many different ways of saying the same sentence “She said we could go to the park”. When spoken in the falling tone, it states a fact that we could go to the park. When spoken in the rising tone, it means that there is a doubt whether we could go to the park. When spoken in the fall-rise tone, telling the listener that she allowed us to go to the park, but the speaker implies that she doesn’t sure we c ould go to the park.四. Learn and understand the word structures by appreciating I am SamWord, defined to be the smallest free form found in language. The most important component of a word structure is the morpheme. Take the following sentence as an example: “S he had five different mommies, and one of them hit her”, the word “different” has another form “indifferent”,“in” is called derivational morpheme, which change the category, or grammatical class of words. The word “mommies” is the plural form of “mommy”, such bound morpheme is called inflectional morpheme, which is for the most part purely grammatical markers.五. ConclusionIn conclusion, linguistics is widely used in our everyday life. Moreover, film language is various and colorful. There is no doubt that English movies supply us English learners with excellent environment and opportunity to learn English.。