An Analysis Of The Personalities Of Three Female Characters In Moment In Peking From The Perspective Of Functional Stylistics

Functional stylistics is a branch of modern stylistics with Halliday’s Systemic-FunctionalGrammar (SFG) as its theoretical foundation. It goes beyond language itself, considerslanguage system as a meaning potential and deals with the social environment of language.The functional stylistics analyzes language on the basis of Halliday’s three metafunctions,namely, ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. As one of the mostinfluential schools of modern stylistics theory, functional stylistics provides stylistic analysiswith a new view and approach.Moment in Peking is one of the most outstanding English novels written by Lin Yutang.It is regarded as a classical one in describing modern Chinese society with the purpose ofintroducing the Chinese culture and value system to the Western society. Since its publication,many scholars have made critical analyses on it from various angles. Nevertheless, there isalmost no complete analysis of its characters from functional stylistics. Therefore, it isnecessary to analyze characters’ personalities from the perspective of functional stylistics.There are a great number of images in the novel, while this thesis pays much attention to threedaughters-in-law of the Tseng family: Sun Mannia, New Suyun and Yao Mulan.This thesis firstly presents Lin Yutang and his works, especially the previous study of thechosen text. Then it generally introduces the basic theories of stylistics and functionalstylistics. In the analyzing part, the thesis analyzes the three female characters’ personalitiesby employing two of the three metafunctions: ideational function and interpersonal function.From the transitivity analysis of Sun Mannia’s personality, it’s easy to find that she rarely usesmental process and verbal process, which indicates her passiveness and submission. Herinclination to employ declarative clauses and median value modals demonstrates that she is conservative and obedient, having no idea of her own. As for New Suyun, the predominantuse of material process demonstrates her arrogance and rudeness; in addition, she seldom usesmodal operators, which can also show her arrogance. With regard to Yao Mulan who is theideal woman of man’s desire, her strong competence is shown from the frequent use ofmaterial process; besides that, her inclination to use median value modals shows that Mulan isvery modest, gentle and considerate to everyone, although she is in a high position.Meanwhile, in the process of analyzing the characters’ personalities, it’s easy for us to have abetter understanding of how they adjust themselves to the circumstances in this earthly life.This thesis applies Halliday’s Systemic-Functional theory to the analysis of threefemale characters’ personalities. Through the great number of analyses in the thesis,functional stylistics is proved to be a useful tool of explaining literary works. What’s more,this thesis aims to provide a new way to better understand and appreciate this outstandingnovel and other literary works. However, it still has some limitations. This thesis onlyemploys part of the theory, and only some texts are chosen as material for analysis, so thedepth and profoundness of the study is more or less weaken.