Shylock’s Identity Positioning in The Merchant of Venice: A Study Based on Interpersonal Function Theory

Abstract

The Merchant of Venice is one of the most successful works of the great English playwright William Shakespeare, and the character Shylock is one of the most vivid and controversial characters in the play. Scholarly debate surrounding Shylock has remained consistently dynamic. This paper takes Shylock as research object, and employs Halliday’s interpersonal function theory in Systemic Functional Linguistics as framework. Combining a large number of dialogue descriptions with analyzable mood and modality types, this paper counts the frequencies of different mood types and modal auxiliaries. Then by comparing and analyzing the different identity positioning of Shylock, the summary of the changing trends of different characters of Shylock constructed by Shakespeare in the play is carried out. The study finds that Shylock mainly uses declarative mood and medium-value modal auxiliaries, while interrogative, exclamatory mood and high-value modals surge in the climax, constructing his triple identities: a usurer, a cold-blooded father, and a resister. This research provides a new linguistic quantitative approach for literary character analysis and deepens the interpretation of Shylock’s image.