| Katherine Mansfield was one of the gifted short stories writers in the20thcentury, andwas the first in the history of English literature to establish a reputation entirely through thisgenre. With the emotional sensitivity, plot originality, and formal innovation, she perfectlyestablished her own style. Haunted by isolation, illness, she was obsessed with isolation,insecurity, fear and always concerned with the darkness and ugliness in life. Characters in herstories, especially the less disadvantaged characters: women，children and the psychopathsare always portrayed as victims and the existential crisis, spiritual plight and loneliness areconspicuous in her stories. While the research shows that most scholars have studiedMansfield s short stories from her unique writing style, the modernism characteristics,feminism theme and other aspects, and studies on the characterization of the roles and thecharacters existential state in the stories are comparatively limited, especially the portrayal ofdisadvantaged or marginalized characters. Furthermore, the studies on Mansfield s storiesfrom the perspective of linguistic theory are even fewer, which leads to problems of lackingobjectiveness or theoretical basement on the analysis. Therefore this thesis attempts toundertake a more detailed analysis on the characterization and existential state of themarginalized characters in Mansfield s short stories in terms of Functional Stylistics. On onehand, the thesis attempts to demonstrate the common applicability, unique effectiveness andadvantages of the functional stylistics in the analysis of marginalized characters and promoteits perfection. And on the other hand, it provides an objective, brand-new perspective forliterary appreciation for Mansfield s short story, and enriches Mansfield s study in China.Functional stylistics, based on systematic functional linguistics, is an exquisiteframework for text analysis, and widely applied in different genres of text analysis. It hasshowed its unique advantages, theoretically and practically, developing itself as a vitalrepresentative in modern stylistics. This thesis begins with the general introduction ofKatherine Mansfield and Halliday s functional stylistics, and next the theoretical frameworkis provided. Then six short stories by Mansfield are chosen as samples for analysis, mainly from the perspective of transitivity system and environmental components, voice,interpersonal aspects, marked/unmarked themes and cohesion system. The approach usedhere is quantitative analysis method. Based on the analysis, the thesis will summarize thecharacterization, existential state and spiritual isolation of the marginalized characters.The findings indicate that Mansfield s short stories have their comparatively distinctivefeatures in language use. In the transitive analysis of Ole and Rosabel, the author uses morematerial processes and behavioral processes to portray the characters. The material processesare of the largest number, among which the goalless patterns take up a large percentage. Aninquiry into the voice system of Ole Underwood finds that the middle voice takes up a largepercentage; and in the non-middle voice analysis, Ole is either the actor with his ownbelongings as the goal or the goal of other participants. In the passive voice analysis of Sunand Moon, the particularly chosen passive voice serves to dig deep into the daily life of thekids, revealing their spiritual loneliness. An investigation into the mood system analysisfinds that the marginalized characters produce fewer clauses, especially the imperativeclauses, which discloses their unequal, deferring position in the conversations. In thethematic analysis, the author uses quite a lot of marked themes concerning with the time,which serves to reveal the daily situation of the characters. In the investigation of thecohesion system, the use of the lexical cohesive devices, especially repetition, meronymyand collocation, not only contributes to the characterization of the marginalized people, butserves to the fluency, cohesion of the whole text.Through the analysis of marginalized characters in Mansfield s short stories from theperspective of functional stylistics, it proves that functional stylistics is very operational andeffective in the text analysis. With its unique advantages in the analysis of the marginalizedcharacters, functional stylistics provides an objective methodology for short story analysisand teaching. |
