Power in the Discourse of Queen Characters in the Films Frozen and The Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Chrisdianto Wibowo Kamandoko

 

Abstract

This study is intended to investigate power in the discourse of the queen characters in the films Frozen and The Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs produced by the same discourse maker, Walt Disney. The goal of this study is to expose an unequal power relation between powerful participants in the same queen position in controlling and constraining non-powerful participants. In this case, the queen character in Frozen is Queen Elsa and the other is The Queen. The theories applied in this study are systemic functional linguistics proposed by Halliday (2004) especially in interpersonal function including tenor, interpersonal meaning, and mood. Moreover, critical discourse analysis proposed by Fairclough (1996) along with the theory of discourse and power are also applied in order to find power in face to face spoken discourse between powerful and non-powerful participants in interpersonal meaning. The result of this study shows that Queen Elsa and The Queen are equally powerful in controlling and constraining the non-powerful participants in spite of in the first assumption, The Queen is more powerful than Queen Elsa based on the context of time and characterization, and also based on textual analysis (the micro level). However, the notion of powerful in this study is described by the two queens who are successfully controlling and constraining the non-powerful participants’ action, affection and answer in a conversation. Thus, the equal power relation between the two queens is conveyed by using several expressions which have the hidden meaning as controlling and constraining non-powerful participants pertained to how speech function works on the clauses, and also by the social relationship between the two queens and the other characters as the tenor of the discourse.

Key words: power in discourse, face to face spoken discourse, interpersonal function, critical discourse analysis

 

Related Posts

Leave a Reply