Investigating Changes Made to the Novel Harry Potter for the Film

Investigating Changes Made to the Novel Harry Potter for the Film

Introduction

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For my language investigation I will be examining the difference

between the film of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the

novel of the same name. These will be analysed in terms of lexis and

semantics, discourse, pragmatics, syntax and phonology. The novel is

similar to the film because both include information on situational

context of the dialogue, where the conversation takes place, what the

speakers are doing etc. However, we can see only in the film how they

are positioned in relation to each other. These factors affect what is

being said, how it is being said and the meanings the speakers are

conveying to each other. In the novel, there are many paralinguistic

features absent which may have contributed significantly to the

meanings in the conversations example gestures, eye contact and other

body language which all play vital part in the language of

conversation. Even if we just consider the verbal aspects of the

conversation, the novel offers few clues about the prosodic features-

the intonation, stress, tempo and dynamics (i.e. volume of the speech)

let alone the accents of the speakers but in the film this can be

clearly seen.

Methodology

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The first step I took was to read the Harry Potter chamber of secrets

novel and watch the film to decide which chapter I would investigate.

I then decided to investigate Chapter two because it was my favourite

scene in the film and novel and it had a lot of dialogue. I then made

a transcript for the film and began my investigation.

Analysis

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... middle of paper ...

...initiation (command) followed by a response.

Throughout the conversation type of turn taking used between Dobby and

Harry is smooth speaker switch because both Harry and Dobby follows

the maxims of HP Grice.

In the film Dobby says “Harry Potter mustn’t be angry with Dobby.

Dobby hoped that if Harry Potter thought his friends had forgotten

him…Harry Potter might not want to go back to school sir” In the novel

the prepositional phrase “…with Dobby” is omitted and instead there

was a pause which indicated Dobby wanted Harry to speak but because

Harry didn’t speak Dobby continued. The use of the negative form of

the deontic modal auxiliary “can’t” was used to strengthen the

command. Also the use of the epistemic modal auxiliary verb “might

not” indicates that Dobby isn’t sure if Harry Potter might go back to

school.