3. A comparison in phraseology7

3.1 Use of formal English7

3.1.1 Addressing...8

3.1.2 Grammar..8

3.2 Use of informal English.....9

3.2.1 Addressing...9

3.2.2 Grammar....10

3.3 Grammatical comparison.....10

3.4 Metaphorical comparison.....10

3.5 Lexical comparison......12

4. Effects of formality.....13

5. Conclusion..13

5.1 significant finding of the research...13

5.2 application of the research to the study of literary works14

5.3 limitations of the research15

5.4 expectations on the future research..15

6. Reference....16

1. Introduction

1.1 Research background

According to Marin Joos’ The Five Clocks, phraseology can be pided into five levels, frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate on the basis of degree in formality. Formal English is used for public addresses such as lectures or speeches, and marked by its formal wording and syntactic complexity. Much attention is paid to its form, such as sentence structure, and phonological, syntactical, lexical coherence. While casual English is used between friends, acquaintances and intimates, and is usually marked by ellipsis, colloquialism. This paper will focus on studying the choice of words by people in the English upper class, middle class and lower class in the early 20th century based on Downton Abbey, a famous, masterpiece teleplay produced by BBC. It sets scenes in an imaginary abbey owned by Lord Grantham in Yorkshire during the early 1900s. This grand abbey witnesses many moving and beautiful stories, as well as the sad, hideous tragedies happening between the lords, the ladies and the helps. When I was watching the TV series, I was always intrigued by the masterly wording by the characters, different pronunciation and an interesting comparison of phraseology between the people in the upper class including lords, countesses, ladies, and the people in the lower class including the maids, the footmen and the butler. The language is a good manifestation of the hierarchy system in Britain. Therefore, I am greatly motivated to further my study and extend my reach in the area of stylistics and pragmatics by analyzing phraseology by characters in Downton Abbey. This paper will vastly quote the words from three characters, Lord Grantham, Mathew Crawley, and the butler Mr. Carson who are from different classes and analyze the difference of wording by them in the perspective of job, class, and education, as well as the effect of words use.

1.2 Research significance

The previous researches that study on formality and formality in English is very limited. The available researches only cover some inexplicit grammatical mistakes in informal English and features of informal English, as well as conclude the formal words and their informal symphonies. Also, the precious studies study on English to a general level without clarifying which period of English they refer to and which groups of English users they study on. Therefore, to extend the research area in formal English and informal English, this research is designed to compare the characteristics of phraseology with different formality in specialization of grammatical, lexicological, addressing, metaphorical differences and summarize what factors causing the effects of formality degrees. The language is a good manifestation of the hierarchy system in Britain. Therefore, this research is also designed to analyze the features of choice of words by people of difference social classes. People from different social background have distinct features of phrasing.