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LITTLE WOMEN, THE NOVEL AND THE FILMS,
A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
Index
Introduction ... 3
I. Little Women, from the Novel to the Films ... 5
1.1. Louisa May Alcott ... 5
1.2. Little Women ... 7
1.3. Intersemiotic translation ... 8
1.3.1. Various film versions of Little Women ...10
1.4. Conclusion ...17
II. Conversational Analysis...18
2.1. Spontaneous speech ...18
2.2. Conversational analysis ...21
2.2.1. Turn-taking structure ...24
2.2.2. Terms of address ...26
2.2.3. Routinary formulae ...29
2.2.4. Interjections, exclamatory words and hesitators ...32
2.2.5. Discourse markers ...33
2.2.6. Dysfluencies, hesitations, false starts, reformulation and multifunctional connectives ...35
2.2.7. Ellipsis...37
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2.3. Conclusion ...39
III. An analysis of conversation in Little Women ...41
3.1. An analysis of the conversations between Jo and Aunt March ...41
3.2. An analysis of the conversation between Jo and Mrs. March ...56
3.3. An analysis of the conversations between man and women ...63
3.3.1. An analysis of the conversations between Mrs. March and an old man and an assistant of hers ...63
3.3.2. Analysis of the conversations between Jo and Laurie ...68
3.3.3. An analysis of the conversation between Meg and Mr. Brooke ... 115
3.3.4. An analysis of the conversations between Jo and professor Bhaer .... 130
Conclusion ... 140 Appendix A ... 145 Appendix B ... 179 Appendix C ... 212 Bibliography ... 241 Filmography ... 243
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Introduction
The purpose of this study is to observe how the features of conversation provide the reader of a novel or the audience of a film with information about the speakers and their relationship with each other.
I will apply the tools of conversational analysis to the conversations in three different films based on the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I have chosen to examine these films, because conversation in the novel and, consequently, in the films, plays a critical role. Actually, most of the plot is composed of the conversations between the characters, while action plays a minor part.
I have decided to concentrate on different film scripts, because I want to examine how the portrait of the characters changes through the years in relations to the features of conversation. Besides, I am also interested in analysing the way in which the characters relate to each other by means of conversation in the different film adaptations.
In fact, the films were shot in very different periods and, at first sight, it is easy to perceive a difference in the characters’ behaviour and in their relationships with each other. Thus, I hypothesise that the characteristics of conversation are consistent with this first impression and they will vary according to the portraits of the characters.
In order to carry out my analysis, I will focus on the conversations between speakers who have a particular relationship, such as those between peers (i.e. Laurie and Jo), or asymmetrical ones (i.e. Jo and aunt March), including those between men and women (i.e. Meg and John Brooke, Jo and professor Bhaer).
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Thus, I hope I will be able to demonstrate how these relationships have changed in films and how it is possible to deduce it from the study of the conversations between the characters, even though, in all versions, conversational features contribute to a definition of the characters.
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I. Little Women, from the Novel to the Films
1.1. Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott occupies a particular place in the hearts of all girls and women. Her charm lies not so much in her plot or in thrill, but in the natural, healthy, everyday life she shows to her readers. In fact, when she wrote Little
Women, she drew some incidents from her own and her sisters’ life to create the novel’s framework.
Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832, the second daughter of Amos Bronson and Abigail “Abba” May Alcott. She was raised in Concord, Massachusetts, a small town to the north of Boston that was home to many great writers. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau were neighbours to the Alcott girls. All these writers were part of the transcendentalist movement during the New England Renaissance.
Transcendentalists believed that one could find spirituality through nature and reason. They were an optimist group who believed humans were capable of great thoughts, and they promoted nonconformity and being true to one’s inner self. Amos Bronson Alcott was not a particularly responsible father or husband, although he was an enthusiastic transcendentalist philosopher, abolitionist and teacher. He failed to provide enough money to support his family, and their poverty was so awful that in twenty years, they moved twenty times. Louisa’s mother acted as head of the household, and when Louisa grew older, she also took on much of the burden.
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Louisa May Alcott had an older sister, Anna, and two younger sisters, Lizzie and Abba May. These names are noticeably similar to the names Alcott gives her characters in Little Women (Meg, Beth, and Amy). Her sister Lizzie died at the age of twenty-two after a bout of scarlet fever. Alcott also had a brother, Dapper, who died in infancy.
Alcott was educated at home by her father. She loved to read and write and enjoyed borrowing books from Emerson’s large library. As a child, she struggled with the ladylike behaviour that was expected of girls in the nineteenth century. Though she was required to be calm and stay at home, Alcott was a tomboy whose favourite childhood activity was running wild through the fields of Concord. She had an unladylike temper that she struggled to control.
Like Jo March in Little Women, Alcott could not get over her disappointment in not being a boy, since opportunities for women were much more limited. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Alcott wished to go and fight in it. Like most transcendentalists, she supported the Northern side of the conflict because she was against slavery. But since she was a female and thus could not join the military, she signed up to be a Union nurse and was stationed in Washington.
Later in life, Alcott became active in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, whose supporters sought to extend the right to vote to women. Alcott’s feminist sympathies are expressed through the character of Jo March in
Little Women.
Though she never married or had a family of her own, Alcott was devoted to her parents and her sisters. She understood that for women, having a family meant professional loss, and having a profession meant personal loss. Little Women dramatizes this struggle between the desire to help one’s family and the desire to help oneself.
Alcott is most famous for her domestic tales for children, which brought her fame and fortune during her lifetime. Alcott also wrote sensationalist gothic novels (as Jo does to earn money in order to support her family), such as A Long Fatal Love
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Chase, and serious adult novels, such as Moods and Work, which received mediocre reviews. Little Women and Alcott’s other domestic novels have enjoyed more popularity than her novels of other genres, though Alcott did not particularly like Little Women and she wrote it at the request of her publisher (Anthony, 1938).
1.2. Little Women
Little Women possesses many qualities of the didactic genre, a class of works that have a moral lesson. Little Women does not preach directly to the reader, however, as did much didactic fiction of its time. The narrator avoids too much explicit moralizing, allowing the reader to draw his/her own lessons from the outcome of the story.
Since Jo learns to behave herself and becomes a lady at the end of the novel, it is possible to assume that Alcott wants to teach her readers that conformity is good. Interestingly, however, Little Women has been championed by feminists for more than a century because untamed Jo is so persuasively portrayed. Moreover, in the novel’s characterization of the March sisters, rebellion is often valued over conformity. So while Little Women can be called a didactic novel, the question of what it teaches remains open.
While on the surface Little Women is a simple story about the journey of the four March girls from childhood to adulthood, it centres on the conflict between two emphases in a young woman’s life, that is to say the one she places on herself, and the one she places on her family. In the novel, the emphasis on domestic duties and family prevents the March girls from developing various women’s abilities but not from attending to their own personal growth. For Jo and, in some cases, Amy, the problem of being both a professional artist and a dutiful woman creates conflict and pushes the boundaries set by nineteenth-century American society.
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At the time when Alcott composed the novel, women’s status in society was slowly improving. As with any change in social norms, however, progress toward gender equality was made slowly. Through the four different sisters, Alcott explores four possible ways of deal with being a woman bound by the constraints of nineteenth-century social expectations: marry young and create a new family, as Meg does; be subservient and dutiful to one’s parents and immediate family, as Beth is; focus on one’s art, pleasure, and person, as Amy does at first; or struggle to live both a dutiful family life and a meaningful professional life, as Jo does. While Meg and Beth conform to society’s expectations of the role that women should play, Amy and Jo initially attempt to break free from these constraints and nurture their individuality. Eventually, however, both Amy and Jo marry and settle into a more customary life. While Alcott does not suggest that one model of womanhood is more desirable than the other, she does recognize that one is more realistic than the other (Saxton, 1995).
1.3. Intersemiotic translation
This novel has inspired many cinematographic adaptations, some of them more truthful to the original, some other less, but they all add something to the story. As a matter of fact, Jacobson considers the passage from a literary work to a film as a particular kind of translation, which he calls intersemiotic (1959: 232). In intersemiotic translation, like in any kind of translation in general, it is advisable to take the loss of material belonging to the original text into account from the start and, consequently, to work out a translation strategy that rationally builds up the most distinctive components of the text and those that can instead be sacrificed.
Before approaching a text, a translator must make a series of decisions aimed at finding the dominant aspects of the text, not only in itself but also in relation to the cultural context in which the original is located, within the culture where it was originated and the cultural context into which the original is projected, i.e. the
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receiving culture. If the translation is intersemiotic, the choice between the parts to be translated and those that must be sacrificed is far more difficult, since the two medias work in a different way and are not able to convey the same features.
The main difference between films and literary works lies in the fact that literature is fixed in a written form, while in a film the image is supported by the sound, in form of music or words. An audiovisual text can be divided into different elements: the dialogue between characters, the physical setting, the possible voice-overs, the musical score, the editing, the framing, lighting, coloration, perspective, the composition of the frame and, in the case of human voice, also timbre and intonation. In order to carry on the filmic translation of a verbal text, a rational subdivision of the original is inevitable to decide what elements of the text to translate.
Textual translation follows the principle according to which an original can possibly have many different translations, all of them potentially accurate; such potentiality is even more developed in intersemiotic translation, to such an extent that any attempt to retranslate a text into its original language - hoping to recreate, as a result, the original text - is unconceivable (Rutelli, 2004).
Consequently, there is a close and mutual relationship between a novel and a film. In other words, the film owes a lot to the novel, because it draws inspiration from it, but the novel itself is in debt to the film.
The attitude towards cinematographic adaptation varies depending on the audience’s relationship with the work of art. This means that literary people may adopt an attitude from defensiveness to superiority, when they evaluate a film made from a literary work, whereas, film supporters tend to see adaptations differently. Directors consider dramatic scripts as instructions to put on a play and literary translators regard the original work as a starting point for their own efforts, whereas, film artists usually see the art of making a film from literature as a creative process itself. However, the creative process is different, because the writer works on his own, while the film artist works together with dozens of other
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people to realize their creation. As a consequence, a film is a collaborative medium, whose result depends on cooperation and joint vision.
As already hinted above, the passage from literature to film is a translation from one medium to another and, as happens with other translations, something is lost and something is gained. Film supporters usually claim that the final film product has the same status as the translation of a poem from one language to another: the words will never be the same as in the original, but a careful and imaginative translation can show the text under a new perspective.
On the contrary, traditionalists are uncomfortable with this concept and assert that no film can reproduce the subtleties and complexities of a novel, because screenwriters are compelled to reduce the text to a manageable size, and consequently they simplify the original.
1.3.1. Various film versions of Little Women
The various film versions of Little Women have brought Alcott’s novel a wider audience, because some viewers experience the film and then turn to the book for a deeper and richer reading experience. Contemporary interest in this novel is also justified by modern attention to gender issues, since its film version allows screenwriters to use the novel to deal with topics related to the changing of women’s role in society.
Since each translation is an interpretation, and in each period a novel is read in a different way, there have been different film adaptations of the same novel. This also explains how a novel written in 1868, such as Little Women, can be the source of many successful films, produced from the thirties to the nineties. Each film shares the same original text, but each of them interprets differently the story and the topics treated by Alcott.
There are five different cinematographic adaptations of Little Women: the first one dates back to 1933 and is directed by George Cukor; the second was shot in 1949
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and directed by Mervyn LeRoy; the third one was released in 1978 and its director was David Lowell Rich and the last one was directed in 1994 by Gillian Armstrong.
I will concentrate on the 1933 version and on the 1994 film version, because they were produced under different conditions and in different cultural context. I also chose to analyse the 1949 version, since at first sight is may seem very similar to the 1933 version, but on a close view, some meaningful differences can be noticed.
The 1933 version is a monochrome version with sound produced by RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum). The film stars Katherine Hepburn as Jo, Joan Bennet as Amy, Jean Parker as Beth, Frances Dee as Meg, Douglass Montgomery as Theodore 'Laurie' Laurence and Spring Byington as Mrs. March. The film was nominated for the “Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay” and the “Academy Award for Best Picture”.
In the 1949, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presented a version of Little Women produced and directed by Mervin LeRoy. This version stars many famous actors, i.e. June Allyson stars as Jo, Peter Lawford as Laurie, Janet Leigh as Meg, Elizabeth Taylor as Amy, Margaret O’Brian as Beth and Mary Astor as Mrs. March. The film won the “Academy Awards for Best Art Direction” and was nominated for the “Academy Awards for Best Cinematography”.
The 1994 film version (produced by Columbia Pictures Corporation) stars Susan Sarandon as Mrs. March, Winona Ryder as Jo, Claire Danes as Beth, Kirsten Dunst as younger Amy, and Christian Bale as Theodore 'Laurie' Laurence. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards including “Best Actress in a Leading Role” for Winona Ryder, “Best Costume Design”, and “Best Music, Original Score” for composer Thomas Newman.
All adaptations are rather truthful to the original text, as far as plot is concerned. This is quite obvious, because, as said above, what is interesting in Alcott’s novel is not the story, but the everyday life ordinary events and the relationships
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between the characters. As a consequence, scriptwriters have concentrated on the most important topics present in the text, rather than on the events, which are quite ordinary.
Context is very important for all works of art, because they mirror the society where they are conceived. Thus each film focuses on a different topic. In the case of the 1933 and 1949 versions the focus is on the family, while in the most recent version it is centred on Jo as the main character. Thus the differences between the two versions are due not only to the different cinematographic techniques, but also to the different purposes of the film’s directors.
1.3.1.1. The 1933 film version
The 1933 version of Little Women was shot during the Great Depression. Beginning in 1929, the United States saw one of the most dramatic turmoil in its history: in just a few years the nation crashed precipitously from the prosperity and glamour of the “Roaring Twenties” to the desperate hardship and poverty of the Great Depression. In an American culture that measured self-worth by success, many breadwinners from the Roaring Twenties felt deep humiliation when they found themselves unable even to put food on their families’ tables. Even today, nearly every survivor of the Great Depression can still recall the feelings of hunger and desperation.
Hollywood produced movie after movie to entertain its Depression audience and the 30's are often referred to as Hollywood's "Golden Age". The 30’s was also the decade of the sound and colour revolutions and the advance of the 'talkies', and the further development of film genres (gangster films, musicals, newspaper-reporting films, social-realism films, light-hearted comedies, westerns and horror to name a few). It was the period in which the silent epoch ended, with many silent film stars not making the transition to sound.
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Movie goers mainly wanted to forget their everyday troubles for a few hours, however, Hollywood, while upholding American institutions such as government and family, also created characters and plot lines that stayed within the realm of possibilities.
Actually, the purpose of director George Cukor was to create an easy-going, full of live and naïve comedy to entertain his audience, trying to help them to hope that they would surmount all the problems and sufferings due to the Great Depression, as the March family got through the problems due to the Civil War. In fact, since the beginning, the reference to the Civil War is evident, for the first scene takes place in the United States Christian Commission (which was an important agency of the Union during the American Civil War. It was religious in nature, but provided as well numerous social services and recreation to the soldiers of the U.S. Army), where Mrs. March is doing her best to help the army. As a consequence, a close relation between the condition of the population during the Civil War and during the Great Depression is established.
It is not to be forgotten that the Civil War, as well as the Great Depression, was one of the most catastrophic event in American history, since nearly every American lost someone in the war. As disastrous as the war was, however, it also brought the state closer together. After the war, the United States truly was united in every sense of the word. Most obvious, the war ended the debate over slavery that had divided North and South since the drafting of the Constitution in 1787. The Civil War was also a significant event in world history because the North’s victory proved that democracy worked. Thus, the comparison between the Civil War and the Great Depression is not a negative one, since it demonstrates that the country already showed to be able to get over a really dreadful period, then it would be able to get over the Great Depression after all.
The director’s idea was not to merely amuse his spectators, but also to convey a positive message during a hard period for the American population. The simple and genuine story told by Alcott in her novel is perfect for this purpose. Actually,
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what Cukor sought to underline in his version was is the homely atmosphere of the story along with the freshness, liveliness and positive attitude of the four girls notwithstanding the war.
In order to achieve his aim, the director foregrounded the episode in which all four girls are working hard to help their family, and enjoy working rather than those in which they complain.
If, on the one hand, this aspect is prioritized, on the other there are features which are neglected. Jo’ s wish to become a writer is, in fact, rather underestimated. Actually, when she is in New York, she seems to dedicate more time to her governess’s duties than to her writing, and the role of Professor Bhaer as an advisor for her writing is reduced to some hints.
Moreover, in the novel, Jo’s greatest wish is to go to Europe with her aunt, and she is very upset on discovering that it is Amy who will accompany Aunt March, whereas, in the film, she is not so disappointed, because she is more concentrated on her duties towards her family (such as earning money) than on her personal interests.
1.3.1.2. The 1949 film version
It is interesting to compare the 1949 film version with the 1933 and the 1994 versions, since, although it may seem very similar to the previous film, it has many features in common with the most recent version.
Actually, the most of the scenes, of the dialogues and of the settings are the same as in the 1933 film, however, there are some relevant differences which make them different and, at the same time they associates the 1949 version with the 1994 version.
In fact, in the 1949 film, there are some scenes, such as the one in which Jo asks her mother about her plans for her daughters, which is very similar to a scene in
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the 1994 version, where Mrs. March and her older daughters discuss the role of women in society. Thus, in the 1949 version the focus is not exclusively on the family, as in the 1933 film, but also on the position of the woman, not only as a member of a family, but also as an individual. As a consequence, Jo is the real central character of the film, while her family is in the background.
This features is evident since the beginning, which is completely focused on Jo (i.e. we see her coming home after skating and jumping the fence, which underlines her characterisation as a tomboy), while in the 1933 version the focus is on all the March women and their occupations.
In the 1949 film the attention is more on Jo’s writing than on the fact the every member of the family works. Moreover, the script writer tends to underline the fact that writing is not only a mere pastime or a whim, but it is a real mean to earn Jo’s living. Actually, in this version, it is implied that Jo earns regularly form her writing, even before going to New York (Laurie offers to give her his money instead of letting her work), while in the previous version she gets a dollar only once for one of her stories.
This feature is due to the historical context, since, in the Forties, as most men were sent off to war, single women were recruited to the workforce and married women were allowed to work. As a consequence, people, at that time, were more familiar with the idea of a woman earning her living, independently from a man, and this is mirrored in the film (not only by Jo, but also by the fact that Meg hints at her wage when she speaks of her job as a governess).
1.3.1.3. The 1994 film version
Jo’s characterization in all films is influenced by women’s role in society. In the 1994 version, Jo is portrayed rather differently. Women’s role in society has greatly changed since 1933 and now they are more independent. Thus the focus of this version of the story, which is based on a family of women (in fact, Mr. March
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never appears), is not on the family itself, but on what these women are able to achieve by themselves. As a matter of fact, the beginning of the film is particularly meaningful since we hear Jo’s off-stage narrating voice, who tells her family’s story, emphasising not only the fact that she is the main character, but also her desire to become a writer.
Actually, Jo’s and Amy’s artistic aspirations are widely emphasized. Since the beginning, all the family is really keen on everything Jo writes and, when she goes to New York, it is not only to part from Laurie, but also to improve her writing with new ideas. In this case, professor Bhaer is very helpful and concerned about Jo’s writing.
The relationship between professor Bhaer and Jo mirrors the way men and women relate to each other in the Nineties. Actually, their relationship is far closer than in the previous version, where professor Bhaer shows his interest in Jo only by asking her leave to write to her father, and spectators guess that he wants to ask her hand. This difference is due to the changing relationship between women and men, which is becoming more intimate and more spontaneous. Actually, the same evolution can be noticed in the way Jo and Laurie relates to each other: in the 1994 version they are more natural and closer and their relationship is significantly less formal.
Jo’s passion for writing is underlined also by means of a cinematographic technique, i.e. the off-stage narrating voice. It is Jo who tells the March girls’ history, underlining the analogy between her and Alcott. The title of the book written by Jo is actually Little Women.
Undoubtedly, this version has a decided feminist outlook, characterized not only by Jo’s portrayal, but also by Mrs. March. As a matter of fact, she discusses with her eldest daughter the role of women in society and compares it with men’s, and above all with their freedom. Her idea of female up-bringing is rather new, since she thinks that girls need just what boys need. This is a trait which is totally different in the previous versions of Little Women, where Amy is told off by Mr
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Davis, her teacher, and his behaviour is considered to be right and nobody complains about it. On the contrary, in the latest version, the episode of Amy’s education is very different, and Mrs. Mach withdraws her from school because Mr. Davis stroke her in punishment for her behaviour and he does not believe in women’s education.
1.4. Conclusion
In conclusion, the analysis of three film adaptations of the same novel, realised in different periods allows us to perceive that film adaptations of literary works offer many possibilities to scriptwriters, who are free to emphasize some aspects and to shift others to the background. Even more importantly they tend to rewrite the original text adapting it to the context where they live, which This is undoubtedly a way of enriching the original text and making it more accessible and interesting for a larger audience.
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II. Conversational Analysis
I have chosen to analyse three film scripts based on the novel Little Women, since film dialogues are written to be spoken as is not written and consequently share most features of oral language but also some of written language. In fact, they have two modes of existence: as texts and as performances (Fabb, 1997: 221), because they are written to be performed.
2.1. Spontaneous speech
The contrast between spoken and written language has almost always interested linguists. In dealing with the relationship between language and society, linguists have to take into account both spoken and written language. As a matter of fact, we live in what is called a “literate society”, which means that the majority of the population in the community uses language both in a written and in a spoken form.
Writing and speaking can be defined as two different modes of communication as they are two different ways of expressing linguistic meanings. We may imagine a tripartite model of language: there is a network of meanings which are encoded by means of a network of expressions. These expressions can be expressed through two different mediums, the medium of sound and the visual medium, as a consequence speaking and writing look like just two alternative outputs.
However, this is not completely true, as writing and speaking are not just alternative ways of doing the same thing, rather, they are ways of doing different things in order to achieve different goals. It is rather like the principle that what is said in one human language can also be said in any other, but it is also true that
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each language has evolved in its own culture, so not all languages are equipped to serve the needs of every culture. Likewise, there is an analogy with speech and writing, that is to say that the former is not always able to express the same meaning that the latter is able to express, and vice versa. This is due to the substantial differences between the written and the spoken language (Halliday, 1985).
As Biber points out, there is no single boundary dividing all spoken text from all written texts, so we must recognize different genres, such as conversation, news broadcasts and academic texts. That is to say that the differences between spoken and written text are not a matter of mode, because, for example, we may have an informal letter, which is a written text with oral features, or an academic lecture, which is a spoken text with literate features. This means that the difference between the oral and the written language lies in the concept of “planned” or “unplanned” production of speech and writing (Biber, 1999).
Planned production includes speech based on writing, such as lecturing, giving a sermon or uttering a prepared speech. Unplanned production includes conversation, extempore narration and impromptu discussion, but also writing activities such as composing personal emails or personal letters. Some speech production can be defined as “semi-planned”, for example, speakers narrating events which they have described previously and for which they remember ready-made phrases and clauses.
What is coming out of research is that spontaneous language is far more different from written language than expected and any area of language is affected by this difference (morphology, phrase and clause syntax and organization of discourse).
However, in the case of film scripts, the situation is ambivalent, because they are text written to be performed, so they are a sort of planned production, but which try to imitate unplanned production.
Linguists have identified a series of differences between spontaneous speech and written language. First of all, oral language is context dependent: this means that
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it is closely linked to the context where the oral exchange takes place. Meaning , in this case, depends on context, because it entails what speakers know about what they can see about them (situational meaning), their background knowledge, i.e. what they know about each other and the world, and what they know about what they have been saying (context).
Thus, in the analysis of the three film versions, it is important to take the context into account, and not only the narrative context, but also the context in which the film was shot, because it influences the features of the conversation.
However, it is not always possible to make conversation in films exactly similar to real spontaneous conversation. For instance, spontaneous speech is additive or “rhapsodic”, i.e. speakers stitch together elements drawn from previous discourse or add language as they go on. Besides, speakers are usually never sure whether their listener is paying attention and understanding what they are saying, so they tend to repeat the content of their message several times, by means of repetitions, paraphrases and restatements. This makes speech redundant and rich. Thus speakers show the conversational cooperation in the construction of their turns, but without organizing their speech hierarchically.
On the contrary, in the script that I analysed, I have not noticed that, in fact, speakers do not tend to repeat what has been previously said. This feature underlines the fact that film scripts share some characteristics with oral language and others with written language. As a matter of fact, scriptwriters tend to avoid repetitions, which would be natural in spontaneous speech, in order to make conversations more fluent and more agreeable for the audience (in fact, the scriptwriter is rather sure that his/her hearer, i.e. the audience, is listening, so he/she does not need to repeat, as the real speaker does).
An oral exchange is made up not only of spoken language, but also by body language and prosodic features. Body language is an important part of the oral exchange, because part of the meaning is conveyed by the speaker’s behaviour. For example, if we are saying something embarrassing, we are likely to blush, or
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if we are telling a lie, we will not look our listener directly in the eyes. Therefore, to operate efficiently in conversation, speakers’ knowledge has to stretch far beyond awareness of individual sounds or words. Instinctively, it seems, and usually without any formal training in the rules of conversation, speakers are capable of structuring and building conversation to fit the situation in which they find themselves. It seems that our early years of language acquisition and our subsequent years of talk have taught us all we need to know.
Moreover, the study of body language can reveal some information about the speaker and his/her relationship with the hearer. For instance, in the 1994 film version of Little Women, this features is more evident, since the characters are more spontaneous and less concerned with formality and social rules, so they act more freely and, consequently, their body language is more meaningful. For example, in the scene, where Laurie proposes to Jo, he kisses her, while in the previous versions he simply stands close to her. Thus, this tiny detail testifies to be the fact that relationships between men and women have changed a great deal in time.
2.2. Conversational analysis
There are different types of oral exchanges and the major types are: face-to-face exchanges, which can be private or public, in the latter case, more ritualized, non-face-to-face exchanges, such as telephone calls, and broadcast materials, for example TV chat shows or radio programmes. As I analyse film scripts, whose plots are set at the end of the nineteenth century, the only oral exchange that I will take into account is face-to-face conversation, which will serve as reference model.
A conversation is communication between two or more people, often on a particular topic. Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views of a topic to learn from each other. Conversation is no to be mistaken with speech, which is an oral
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presentation by one person directed to a group, thus the level of interaction, in this case, is less significant.
Conversers naturally relate the other speaker’s statements to themselves and insert themselves into their replies. For a successful conversation, partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions, since a successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections between the speakers or things that the speaker know. Conversers must find a topic on which they both can relate in some sense. Conversation has both communicative goals and social function. Its primary function, the interactional one, is to establish and maintain social cohesion through the sharing of experience, while its secondary function consists of entertaining, giving information and direct other people’s behaviour, a function which is called transactional.
The first function is the most interesting for my analysis, since I am interested in how it is possible to infer information about the speaker and about his/her relationship with the hearer, from the linguistic texture of their utterances. As a consequence, I will concentrate on the features which build, reinforce or maintain a relationship.
Despite of the fact that conversation is unplanned speech, linguists claim the possibility of studying conversation. Conversation may seem impossible to study, due to its spontaneous and unplanned nature, but, by means of a closer analysis is it possible to identify some regularities, but also some interdicts. Actually, conversation is considered on the basis of its suitability to the context. Speakers are bound to adapt their speeches to the situation and to the their partners in the exchange. This means, for example, that Jo does not speak in the same way when she is at home with her sisters and when she is with her aunt. The difference can be seen, for instance, in the use of terms of address, in the politeness formulae and in the proxemic features which are used. Consequently, Jo addresses her aunt with more formal terms of address, she uses more formal expressions and she is more composed.
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As Grice points out conversation is the result of combined efforts, which imply a minimum level of cooperation between the speakers (1967). By observing regularities in conversation, Grice postulate a cooperative principle, which states: “Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”. The principle is composed of four maxims, which are the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner.
However, speakers can respect the cooperative principle and be cooperative with each other, but, at the same time, they can violate one or more maxims, and consequently they exploit some implicature. Implicatures do not affect the conversation negatively, because, in these cases, speakers still cooperate with each other interpreting the implicatures. For instance, when aunt March addresses Jo as “Miss”, while she normally uses her niece’s first name, Jo understands that her aunt is using the title as a reproach.
Consequently, we can affirm that conversation is not completely spontaneous and unplanned, thus, it is possible to study it. One of the approaches to the study of conversation, derived from Ethnomethodology (a sociological discipline which examines how people make sense of their world, display this understanding to others, and produce the mutually shared social order in which they live. The term was initially coined by Harold Garfinkel in the 1960s) is conversational analysis. It generally attempts to describe the orderliness, structure and sequential patterns of interaction, whether this is institutional or casual conversation. In fact, the expression “conversation” may be misleading, if read in a colloquial sense, therefore Emanuel Schegloff, one of the most important conversational analysts, prefers to use the expression “talk–in-interaction”. Some other linguists, who use the methodology of conversational analysis, identify themselves as discourse analysts (though that term was first used to identify researchers using methods different from conversational analysis (Levinson, 1983), and still identifies a group of scholars larger than those who use only conversational analysis methods.
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Conversational analysis was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, principally by the sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Nowadays, conversational analysis has become an established methodology in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology. It is particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive psychology. Recently, techniques of sequential analysis have been employed by phoneticians to explore the fine phonetic details of speech.
2.2.1. Turn-taking structure
Linguists have indentified turn-taking organization as a basic rule of conversation. This means that people have to know when to talk and how to gain a turn, when engaged in a conversation. This consideration has lead scholars to the conclusion that conversation has a rather rigid structure.
Although conversational analysis does not explicitly claim that turn-taking organization is universal, since research has been carried out on more languages, it is quite likely that certain regularities are to be observed almost universally. According to conversational analysis, the turn-taking system consists of two components: the turn constructional component and the turn allocation component.
The turn constructional component describes the basic units out of which turns are fashioned. These basic units are known as turn constructional units and they are grammatically and pragmatically complete units, meaning that in a particular context, they accomplish recognizable social actions.
The turn allocational component describes how turns are allocated among participants in a conversation. There are three possible options: current speaker selects next speaker, next speaker self-select as next, current speaker continues.
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Therefore interlocutors co-construct dynamically the conversation adapting their talk to the ongoing exchange, thus, to operate efficiently in conversation, our knowledge has to stretch far beyond an awareness of single sounds or words (Pridham, 2001).
To analyse conversation, therefore, we have to examine how and where we take turns and how these turns are built onto each other to structure the conversation as a whole. In fact, it is possible to infer information about the speakers form the analysis of the turn-taking structure of a conversation. It is possible, for instance, to observe how power dynamics works. Thus, the speaker, whose turns consist of speech acts like questioning or commanding, is probably the most powerful character, while the speaker who answers or apologises, is usually the powerless one.
As a consequence, from these details of a conversation, we deduce much information about the participants’ relationship. Moreover, we can also infer some aspects of the speaker’s personality. Actually, the speaker, who utters the longest turns or has most turns, is probably the most talkative, whereas, a shy person is more likely to utter short turns and to listen rather than to speak.
As hinted at above, the turn-taking organization is based on the minimal pair, called adjacency pair. An adjacency pair is a unit of conversation that contains an exchange of one turn each by two speakers. A turn is a time during which a single participant speaks, within a typical, orderly arrangement in which participants speak with minimal overlap and gap between them. The turns are functionally related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.
A question, for example, requires an answer, a statement invites a response (such as agreement, modification, disagreement), a command or request expects compliance. Exclamations are odd because they are non-interactive: if someone calls out 'Help', it is action not language that is required.
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The adjacency pair can be symmetric, for example “greeting-greeting”, or asymmetric in case of “question-answer” pairs and responses can be minimal (such as monosyllables like yeah, no, mm), since the context is provided in the preceding turn.
Adjacency pairs are organized in first and second part. For any particular first part speech act (proposal, request), conversationalists show a preference for particular second parts in response (acceptance, grant). We can distinguish between preferred second parts and dispreferred second parts (rejection, refusal). If the rules are ignored and these patterns are broken (even by choosing the dispreferred second part), this immediately creates a response (Pridham, 2001).
The choice of the second part is interesting, because on the basis of the type of response, we may infer something about the character’s attitude towards the other participant.
For example, when Jo asks professor Bhaer his opinion about her novel, he does not give her his opinion, but only states that he is not the right person to judge:
JO: [...] What's your honest opinion?
PROF BHAER: I'm a professor of philosophy, Jo.(Little Women, 1994)1 Consequently, we deduce that professor Bhaer does not have a positive opinion about Jo’s novel, but, at the same time, he does not want to tell her in order not to hurt her feelings.
2.2.2. Terms of address
Terms of address are one of the most meaningful elements of conversation for what concerns the relationship between the participants, even if they are
1
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peripheral elements. Actually, the way people address each other is important in the interpersonal dynamic, since vocatives are not only used to single out one or more addresses, but they always imply the speaker’s evaluation of the addressee.
They are particularly important in the English language, which does not distinguish between a polite and a familiar form, as happens in Italian (as a matter of fact, it is interesting to compare the original form of terms of address and their Italian translation, in the film I am going to analyse, since the difference is often significant), but is uses only one pronoun, “you”. As a consequence, the choice of the pronoun is important to show the speaker’s attitude towards the hearer.
For instance, first names in their full form show familiarity between the speakers, i.e. Meg calls Mr. Brooke “John” and he calls her “Margaret” only when their relationship becomes closer. However, the most frequent terms of address in all the three versions of Little Women are familiar forms, which is not surprising as long as the majority of conversations are held between people which share a great degree of intimacy, such as the March sisters, which are called Meg, Amy and Beth. On the contrary Jo is not a diminutive, but it is a shortened form (from Josephine), which is interesting because it shows not only familiarity between the speakers, but emphasizes her tomboy temper, as “Jo” is also a masculine name.
It is interesting to notice that Jo addresses Laurie as “Teddy” only in the 1994 version (and in the novel), because “Teddy” is a diminutive like “Laurie”, but since it is derived from his first name (Theodore) and not from his surname (Laurence), it shows a higher degree of intimacy, which is significant of the change in the relationship between them and between man and woman in general.
As long as the relationships between the characters are rather close, the use of terms of endearment is quite frequent, and the most common is “dear”, above all in the 1933 and in the 1949 version, where it used by Mrs. March to address her daughters. In the 1994 version, there is a greater variety of terms of endearment used by Mrs. March, such as “cricket” or “my child”. This difference demonstrates not only that the use of terms of address has changed during the
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years, but also that the relationship between mother and daughter has evolved towards more open expressions of love.
Other common terms of address are kinship terms, which are used in different ways and show different degrees of intimacy. In fact, the March sisters call their mother both “mother” and “marmee”. The second term is a diminutive, showing closeness and tenderness and it is used in particularly intimate situations.
Besides, the other kinship term which is rather common is “aunt”. It is usually used as a title before the surname, i.e. “aunt March”, which demonstrates that the March girls do not share a great intimacy with their aunt. However, both Jo and Mrs. March, in the 1933 and in the 1994 version, call aunt March with the diminutive “auntie” to try so soothe her when she is disappointed.
The use of titles is interesting not only in ordinary use, i.e. before last names between people whose relationship is formal (Mr. Laurence and Mrs. March always use the form title plus last name to address each other), but also as when it is used as a reproach. It is usually uttered from an elder person to a younger one to underline incorrect behaviour, such as when aunt March scolds Jo for being impertinent (“aunt March: Hoity Toity. Don't you be impertinent, miss!”).
However, in the 1994 version, Mrs. March uses title plus name to address Amy (“miss Amy”), to underline affectionately that Amy, although she is still a little girl, tries to behave like a little woman. Thus, in this case, the use of title is meant to show affection and not to reprimand.
As hinted above, the use of terms of address can be reciprocal, i.e. both speakers use the same term to address each other (such as the March sisters or Jo and Laurie), or they can be non-reciprocal and they indicate a difference in age (for instance between Mrs. March and her daughters) or an imbalance in power (Mrs. March calls her servant Hannah with her first name, while Hannah calls her “Mrs. March” to show respect) (Gramley and Patzold, 1992: 288).
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Finally, it is important to take into account the position of terms of address. They can be placed in different positions within the utterance and this has bearings on their function. For example, if a vocative is in the middle of the turn, it is used to try to keep contact with the listener. This type of vocative is called “address”, whereas, if the vocative is placed at the beginning of the turn, it is labelled as “call” and it is used to attract the listener’s attention (Zwicky, 1974).
JO: Amy, don't be such a ninny-pinny. (Little Women, 1994)
JO: Oh, I'm sorry, Aunt March. Merry Christmas. (Little Women, 1933)2 In the preceding examples, the first term of address is meant to attract Amy’s attention on the reprimand that Jo is going to utter, whereas, the second term is in the middle of the turn and it is uttered because Jo wants to maintain the contact with the speaker, and in this particular case, it is meaningful since Jo is apologising, so probably aunt March is disappointed and Jo is trying mend the situation.
2.2.3. Routinary formulae
Terms of address, usually accompany polite speech act formulae, such as requests, thanking and apologizing, even if they can also stand alone, as in the following examples:
JO: Friedric ! Thank you for my book. (Little Women, 1994)
HANNAH: Well, she's out. But I'm expecting her back any minute. Would you come in? (Little Women, 1933)
Some speech acts such as thanking and requesting, can be realised by means of routinary formulae. However these formulae are not completely fixed, on the
2
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contrary, they can vary according to the context, the speakers’ purpose and the relationship between the interactants. Consequently, there are different strategies by means of which this type of speech acts are performed.
The use of these formulae is due to the need to be polite, since, as Brown and Levinson (1987) point out, conversation is not only meant to convey information, but also to maintain social relationships. Actually, Brown and Levinson state that speakers exploit language to reach their goals, but that they also have two important characteristics: 1) rationality, consisting of a set of goals that they want to reach and 2) face, which is the desire to gain the hearers’ approval (positive face) and the wish to avoid imposition from others (negative face).
As a consequence, during a conversation, people are caught between the wants to achieve their own goals and the desire to avoid infringing their partners' face. So, speakers usually try to plan their utterances in order to redress their partners' face wants. In particular, in the case of conventional indirect speech acts, such as requests and thanks, the relevant redress is focused on the imposition itself. Thus, speakers tend to use standardized formulae, which are commonly accepted, to be sure to protect both their own and the hearers’ face.
As a matter of fact, the most common thanking strategy that I found in the three script is the simplest, which consists of thanking the hearer directly, by means of the expression “thank you”. This feature is quite obvious, since the conversations in the films always involve people who know each other very well (i.e. the member of the March family and their acquaintances), so they are not excessively concerned about formality. In addition, the majority of the exchanges occur in ordinary-life like situations, where the most common thanking expression is “thank you”.
However, there is another thanking strategy that occurs in the films, in which the performative verb is reinforced by stressing the speaker’s desire to express his or her gratitude, as in:
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JO: […] I wanted to thank you. We did have such a good time over your nice Christmas present. […] (Little Women, 1933)
This formula is used in more formal contexts to emphasise the speaker’s wish to thank his/her hearer (Ajimer 1996: 38).
Concern for formality is still more evident in offers. Actually, a large number of requests have the form of yes-no questions containing one of the auxiliaries can/could or will/would. It is often possible to infer the degree of formality of the request from the choice of auxiliary. This means that if the hearer uses the auxiliary “will” instead of “would”, his request will sound more informal, such as in:
JO: Will you tell him that we don’t like anyone in our house […] (Little
Women, 1949)3
In fact, this request is made by Jo to Laurie when they still do not know each other very well. On the contrary, when Mrs. March addresses her daughters, she is inclined to use less formal strategies, as in:
MRS. MARCH: [...] Can you get my boots, Amy, please [...](Little Women, 1949)
As a matter of fact, she chooses the auxiliary “can”, which shows a minor concern for formality and a major degree of intimacy. Notwithstanding, Mrs. March adds a mitigating device,
please"4, as it often happens in the case of requests, since they can create a conflict (Aijmer, 1996: 160).
3
For 1949 film script see appendix B.
4 Mitigating devices belong to the interpersonal rather than to the referential component of the
language and they facilitate the cooperation between the speakers, especially in the case of speech acts that can potentially create a conflict (Aimer, 1996).
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2.2.4. Interjections, exclamatory words and hesitators
Along with these features of conversation, which are very standardized and consequently not very spontaneous, there are some elements which are utterly unplanned and quite unconscious, i.e. inserts, interjections, exclamatory words and hesitators.
These elements are meaningful, although they are peripheral both in the language and in the lexicon of the language. They may appear on their own or attached to longer structures and they rarely occur in the middle of the utterance. Inserts have no denotative meaning, but their use is defined by their pragmatic function, for example, one of the most frequent interjection, oh, generally introduces or responds to utterances expressing surprise, unexpectedness or emotive arousal, as in the following example, where Mrs. March is very positively surprised and pleased by her daughters’ unexpected Christmas presents:
MRS. MARCH: Merry Christmas, my... Oh darlings! Oh, Meg, dear! Oh, thank you. Oh, and handkerchiefs from Bethy. Thank you dar... Oh, Hannah, did you see? Oh, Amy, my precious. Thank you. (Little Women, 1933)
Similar in both frequency and function are also exclamatory words, which express speakers’ feelings. Jo, for instance, uses one such expression to express surprise or bewilderment as in the following example. Jo is astonished by the Christmas dinner sent over to their by Mr. Laurence:
JO: Christopher Columbus! What's this? (Little Women, 1933)
This interjection is very significant, because it is part of Jo’s idiolect, as she utters it very frequently (only in the 1933 and in the 1994 version). Besides, she is the only one who utters this particular interjection, which is considered very rude by her sisters, who always scold when she utters it.
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2.2.5. Discourse markers
Other elements, discourse markers, serve a function that is independent from their literal meaning, like exclamatory words. Actually, discourse markers are words or phrases that function primarily as a structuring unit of spoken language. They signal a transition in the ongoing conversation or an interactive relationship between speaker and hearer and message. Discourse markers are active contributions to the discourse and signal such activities as change in speaker, taking or holding control of the floor, relinquishing control of the floor, or the beginning of a new topic.
It is nearly impossible to establish an exhaustive list of discourse markers for a given language, due to their wide range of functions and the difficulty of defining them precisely; moreover, discourse markers are subject to dialectal and individual variation, and novel formations always arise. Many words and phrases, that are used as discourse markers, also have other literal meanings, but discourse markers are only those instances that function to structure the discourse and do not carry separate meaning (Blakemore, 2004).
However, one of the most common discourse markers, such as “well”, which is particularly versatile, occur with a certain frequency in the scripts. It is a common turn initiator with a variety of functions, but it usually indicates the speaker’s need to consider the point at issue. It can also indicate self-correction in the middle of an utterance. If it is uttered by the addressee it indicates some contrast and disagreement. Consider the following examples:
MR BROOK: Young Laurence says you are an aficionado of the theatre, miss March.
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In this case, Meg utters the discourse marker at the beginning of the turn, because she is slightly embarrassed (she does not go very often to the theatre due to her family’s economic problems), and needs some time to think about what to say.
On the contrary, in the following example, professor Bhaer’s “well” expresses his disagreement, since he does not approve of Jo’s sensational stories:
JO: Ah, yes. Thank you. Did you like them?
PROF. BHAER: Well, Miss March, I must be honest. I was disappointed. (Little Women, 1933)
Another common discourse marker is “I mean”, which is used as an editing term, i.e. that the speaker utters it while he/she is trying to correct what he/she is saying or trying to render it more clear, as in the following example, where Jo corrects herself, since she says “Beth”, but she means the character she is playing:
JO: Yes, you are a princess but you don’t know it, you think you are a servant and you are working for Beth, I mean, Edgarda, the witch. (Little Women, 1949)
One common discourse markers that has other functions is “you know”. “You know” is sometimes employed as an utterance-final generalizer, allowing the speaker to extend their specific examples to a more general observation:
MR. LAURENCE: Oh, it wasn't that I wanted to hear her, but that piano down there is simply going to ruin for want of use. I was hoping one you young ladies would come and practice on it. Just... Just to keep it in tune, you know. Well, if you don't care to come, never mind. (Little Women, 1933)
Moreover, “you know” can also be a filler as in:
Mrs. March: I couldn't bear it without them. Meg and Jo are working, you know? (Little Women, 1933)
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As a matter of fact, Mrs. March utters this discourse marker because she needs time to recover form the strong emotion she feels.
Another function of “you know” is to secure the listener’s comprehension in the case of a difficult topic, as when Meg inquire abouts Jo’s feelings towards Laurie:
Meg: [...] Forgive me, Jo, it’s just, you know, you seem so alone and I thought that if Laure came back, you might… (Little
Women, 1949)
Finally, “you know” can be used to emphasise the importance of the subject for the speaker, especially when it is placed at the end of the turn as in:
JO: Europe! I’m going to Europe, you know! (Little Women, 1949)
“You see” is another discourse marker which is very frequent in the scripts that I analysed, and is meant to introduce an explanation, but, at the same time, it can function as a filler and it gives the speaker time to organise his/her speech. Consider the following example:
Laurie: Grandfather mightn’t approve, you see, he doesn’t believe in being neighbourly.[...] (Little Women, 1949)
2.2.6. Dysfluencies, hesitations, false starts, reformulation and multifunctional connectives
Linguists have noticed some performance phenomena, which can be compared with the element discussed above, since they are meaningful despite the fact that they do not carry any literal meaning: among them there are dysfluencies, hesitations, repairs, false starts and reformulation. These phenomena are due to the pressure of real-time production, because speakers are subject to the limitations of short-term memory and they have little time to plan their speech.
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Dysfluencies are minor performance problems that do not interfere with understanding, while hesitations are pauses (which can be filled with a vowel sound or not) and signal that the speaker has not finished his/her turn and discourages another speaker from taking the floor.
Hesitation also shows the speaker’s attitude, such as embarrassment, thoughtfulness, insecurity, as when Meg answers Mr. Brooke’s proposal:
MEG: Oh, thank you, John. But .... I agree with Mother. It's … It's too soon. (Little Women, 1933)
It can also happen that the speaker uses the same bit of language until he/she is able to move on. If the repeated element is smaller than one word, it produces a stutter effect. Repetition may be voluntary or involuntary. Consider the example below:
JO: As though I'd change you, Laurie. Darling, you should marry … you should marry some lovely accomplished girl who adores you. (Little Women, 1933)
In this case, the repetition is due to Jo’s difficulty in dealing with such a delicate topic as Laurie’s proposal, above all since she is refusing him but she does not want to hurt him. For the same reason, the speaker can decide to make a change in his/her turn, as professor Bhaer does in:
PROF BHAER: I… I do not want to be your teacher. No, understand me . . .I am saying only that you should please yourself. [...] (Little Women, 1994)
Reformulation means that the speaker retraces what he/she has just said and starts again, this time with a different word or sequence of words, but in a more explicit way than using a discourse marker such as “I mean”. This detail is due to the fact that conversation happens in real time, and, sometimes the speaker feels the need to correct himself on the basis of the hearer’s reactions.
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Likewise, the use of connectives in conversation is influenced by real-time production, thus speakers tend to use multifunctional connectives, such as “and” or “then”. For example, the multifunctional connective “and” can be used to express opposition rather than to simply add other elements, as in the following example where the multifunctional connective “and” is very significant, since it is used to express the incompatibilities between Jo and Laurie:
JO: I loathe elegant society, and you like it. And you hate my scribbling, and I can’t get on without it. I know we will quarrel.
(Little Women, 1933)
2.2.7. Ellipsis
In the scene where Laurie proposes to Jo, another important feature of conversation, and more generally of spoken language, emerges, that is to say ellipsis. Especially in face-to-face conversation, speakers do not bother to encode all the information, because it can be understood from the linguistic or situational context.
Ellipsis is a form of syntactic reduction, that implies the omission or deletion of some items of the surface text, which are however recoverable in terms of relation with the text itself (the constraint of recoverability is very important). The variety of extra-linguistic factors may contribute to our understanding of a language event, for example the setting, the knowledge shared by the conversers and paralanguage (gestures, facial expressions, eye-contact).The recovery of omitted items is based on non-verbal context and cognitive processes.
On the basis of the Economy Principle (‘Be quick and easy’), the use of ellipsis reduces the amount of time and effort in both encoding and decoding, avoiding redundancy and repetition, but only when it does not lead to ambiguity. As a matter of fact, ellipsis is considered a major cohesive device, contributing to the efficiency and compactness of a text.
