A Functional Stylistic Analysis Of The Mark On The Wall

The Mark on the Wall is a short story of Virginia Woolf written with the technique of interior monologue. With the mark on the wall as a clue, the thoughts of'I'flip from the past to the present and to the future. Owning to the ambiguity and uncertainty of the tense and the absence of traditional characters and plots, it is difficult to appreciate the novel in a traditional way from lexical, grammatical and syntactical aspects. This thesis aims to appreciate it from the aspect of functional stylistics in order to prove that functional stylistics is practicable in analyzing stream-of-consciousness novels and to get the functional stylistic characteristics of this short story. Meanwhile through the analysis it is supposed to offer a way of literature appreciation.The thesis is composed of five chapters except the introduction and the conclusion. Chapter 1 is the introduction of stylistics including the introduction of notions of style and stylistics, the purpose and procedure of stylistic analysis, the development and trends of modern stylistics and the notions of monism, dualism and pluralism which are the essential issue in the field of stylistics. This section is a general theoretical introduction of this thesis ready for the second section which is about the specific theory of functional stylistics.In chapter 2, the relative theories used in this thesis concerning about functional stylistics is presented within three parts: the ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function.And chapter 3, chapter 4 and chapter 5 as the body of the thesis are the specific stylistic analysis of the novel. Chapter 3 is the contextual analysis of the novel. First the author introduces Virginia Woolf and her technique interior monologue used in The Mark on the Wall. And after this the register theory and register analysis from field, tenor and mode aspects are to be discussed in detail respectively. In Chapter 4 the analysis moves onto the ideational and interpersonal function analyses which are demonstrated respectively by transitivity system including six process and mood and modality system. Then in chapter 5 the textual function analysis is demonstrated by Theme-Rheme structure, thematic progression pattern and cohesive devices.And the last section is the conclusion. Through the previous sections the author draws a conclusion of the characteristics of this novel from the perspective of functional stylistics and makes a conclusion of what have been done in this thesis.