Systemic Functional Stylistic Analysis Of Mrs. Dalloway

At present, literary criticism and stylistic analysis are two main means to analyze literary works. Most of the works are analyzed from the perspective of literary criticism, and more and more literary works are also analyzed by means of some linguistic theories and approaches. But few people analyze the stream of consciousness novel by using linguistic theories. This study is intended to provide a systemic functional stylistic approach to a typical stream of consciousness novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925). The main theoretical base of the study is Systemic Functional Linguistics, especially Martin's Appraisal theory. Narratologic theory, critical stylistics and feminist stylistics are combined as complements to perfect the interpretation of the novel. The present study aims to adopt these linguistic principles to describe and analyze linguistic properties of Mrs. Dalloway, trying to find the connections between these properties and literary meanings, which are usually already suggested by traditional literary critics. The study is descriptive and qualitative. The findings of the research are listed as follows.The first finding of this study is that Mrs. Dalloway belongs to the third person limited narrative. Its mainly narrative mode is free indirect thought. The narrative voice is from the narrator. The point of view is from the character and changes constantly, often moving from one character's consciousness to another's. The narrator objectively reveals internal, subjective thoughts of various characters. However, the narrator's voice is often fused with the character's, it is difficult to tell whether they are the character's thoughts or the narrator's comments. Therefore, the dual voice or even polyphonic effects are conveyed. The free indirect thought immerses the reader in the mind of the character, thus making us sympathetic to the character's life. The free indirect thought also preserves the emotive force of the original thoughts of characters, especially the high frequent occurrences of exclamations and some choices of words expressing strong feelings. In addition, many ironic effects are also conveyed by free indirect thought.The second finding is that the judgments of characters can be made through others'comments and thoughts or their self-judgments. Characters'self-assessments can verify the validity of others'evaluation. The evaluative analysis of characters and their relations show their negative judgments of each other. Besides negative lexical expressions, many mental, relational and verbal processes are adopted to convey negative judgments and affects of characters. Despite the failed marriage, Clarissa and Peter have lingering feelings to each other. The conjunctions,"but"and"yet", are often taken to signal the counterexpectancy. Many rhetorical devices such as metaphor, allusion and image are used to express Clarissa's abnormal passion for Sally. Some mental processes expressing positive emotions are employed to describe Clarissa's love for Sally. Many material processes are used to describe Sally's ill-behaviors and negative judgments by Clarissa's relatives. Clarissa's extreme feelings of isolation and lack of intimacy in marriage are described to show negative appreciation of her marriage by means of the image and metaphorical language. The mood operator, mood Adjuncts, and intensifiers are not only employed to express the attitudes of the speakers to the propositions, but also the strength of the feelings involved.The third finding is that many language choices are made to convey the author and characters'negative attitude towards the social system and its representative characters. The symbolic characters are used to represent evil, cruelty, selfishness and corruption. The dominant ideology and some images are repeated many times to help the construct of the theme. Woolf employs many material processes with the verbs full of exercise of power. The modulation"must"is used to convey great pressure on the weakly. The turn-taking analysis of the consultation between the doctor and the patient is made to show the asymmetrical power relations. As for the judgments of characters, many attributive relational processes are used, expressing the negative evaluation. The judgments of characters foreground social sanction over social esteem. At last, the device"irony"is used to convey his implicit critique of characters and social system.Fourth, the investigation of Woolf's female sentence shows that the emotional changes of characters are revealed through the water/sea imagery. Many sentences that are wavelike pervade the text. The repetitive uses of Big Ben and wave imagery evoke many feelings. Thus, the wave imagery implicitly conveys the characters'waves of emotion: now positive or now negative.The last finding is that the relational processes are used to convey characters'positive appreciation of life directly. The use of"metaphor"and"sea imagery"to show their anxieties of hatred, loneliness, aging, danger and even the horror of death in their life. The repetitive allusion serves as their comfort of the horror of death. As for the War, negative attitude is revealed by characters'comments. Some lexical items with negative connotation are foregrounded qualitatively and quantitatively to express characters'negative appreciation of the War and meanwhile convey the author's voice against the War.To sum up, the study is significant in two aspects: theory and practice. On the one hand, a systemic functional stylistic approach to stream of consciousness writing can demonstrate its strong interpretative power of the literary meanings of the novel. The interdisciplinary research of narratology and stylistics can perfect the explanations of literary meanings of the novel. On the other hand, the study contributes to teaching of such courses as linguistics, literature, stylistics. Students can better understand and evaluate the literary text through linguistic clues and evidences.