Direct Speech Presentation In Stream-of-consciousness Fiction

Speech presentation is an important discursive phenomenon that attracts scholars’ attention from various fields. Studies have mainly been done in philosophy, narrative theory, linguistics and stylistics. While philosophy is concerned with the nature of speech presentation in general, narrative theory is devoted to studies on language in fiction and treats speech presentation in close relation with author’s distance from the narrative and intervention in the original utterance. Linguists are preoccupied with language per se, and approach speech presentation from different perspectives, ranging from categorical classification of presentation structures to theoretical exploration in the nature and function of presentation. Stylistics has a long tradition in studies on speech presentation and is distinguished by its recognition of the compositional and communicative process involved in narrative and its examination of linguistic devices by which the narrator orients the reader and creates a text’s style.There are studies that adopt a linguistic approach to speech presentation in fiction, but they mainly draw a selection of examples as textual support of their theories and do not pay close attention to direct speech presentation’s role in fiction. It turns out that not much systematic and complete study has been done on direct speech presentation in one particular novel, stream-of-consciousness novel in particular. Direct speech presentation usually consists of two parts, the reporting part and the reported part, and our identification is primarily based on the reported part, the utterance by some character. Direct speech presentation is defined as the speech presentation type where the speech is reported in the way that conforms to what will actually be uttered in three aspects:(a) the words and structures used to encode the prepositional content,(b) the prepositional content and (c) the speech act value.The present paper constitutes a tentative attempt at exploring the role of direct speech presentation in stream-of-consciousness fiction and our objective is to find out in what way direct speech presentation can participate in and contribute to the fiction’s characterization. To resolve this research question, we need to address the following questions.1) What are the basic types of direct speech presentation in the stream-of-consciousness novel?2) How are different types of direct speech presentation distributed throughout the novel? In what specific contexts do they occur?3) In what way does direct speech presentation contribute to characterization? Our study is largely based on cognitive linguistic theories. For one thing, whereas stream-of-consciousness writers are concerned with portrayal of characters’ inner reality, conveying life not only in its external aspects but also as it is experienced, cognitive linguists does not deny the reality existing out there in the world but also emphasize the importance of men’s cognition and interpretation in the representation of the world. That’s to say, they both highly value men’s subjective construction in the representation of reality. For another, non-intrusively as stream-of-consciousness writers purport to represent character’s subjectivity in constant switches of perspectives and apparently disjointed and fragmented narration, which poses formidable obstacles for readers more accustomed to writings with a linear structure and clear plot, direct speech presentation in fictions constitutes part of the authorial narrator’s subjective construction and it is possible to trace out the linguistic hints the writer drops for mental representation. In this regard, cognitive linguistic theories may be of avail and thread these hints and formulate a cognitive base that bridges the gap between the writer’s production and reader’s comprehension.To be specific, our study is based on the cognitive linguistic notion of "ground". By "ground", we refer to the speech event, its participants (speaker and hearer, including their shared knowledge) and the immediate circumstances (notably, the time and place of speaking). Usually the actual speech participants constitute the center of the ground and serves as the conceptualizer for the grounded predications. In the case of direct speech presentation, the actual speech participants yield their floor to a third party. The temporally adopted conceptualizer is called surrogate speaker, center of surrogate ground. Speech presentation is thus interpreted in terms of the interaction between "ground"(G) and "surrogate ground"(G’), corresponding to the reporting situation and reported situation respectively.We choose as our case study Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which is arguably her most famous and notable work for its sophisticated use of stream-of-consciousness technique. In spite of the fact that the major part of the narrative is comprised of representation of characters’thoughts, emotions and senses. direct speech presentation constitutes a significant part throughout the novel. With its variegated forms and occurrences in varying contexts, it performs a range of functions in the portrayal of characters.On the basis of cognitive linguistic theories we develop a direct speech presentation model, including the nature, structure, function, classification of direct speech presentation in fiction, and carry out the study in the following ways. Firstly, we classify direct speech presentation types according to two criteria, the form of the reported speech and the way the reported speech is related to the character’s consciousness. In line with the first criterion where the completeness of the direct speech presentation is compared to the form in which it is supposed to occur in actuality, we have complete and partial direct speech (CDS and PDS). With regard to the second criterion whether it is used for actual or non-actual situations, we have immediate and displaced direct speech presentation (IDS and DDS), and we further divide DDS into DDSr and DDSh for remembered and hypothetical situations respectively. Since the actual manifestations of each type are far more complicated, we also introduce their subtypes. Next we investigate the overall distribution of direct speech presentation types among major characters in the novel and have a rough idea about their personality and their relationships with other characters. Finally we explore major characters’ direct speech presentation patterns, and achieve an understanding about the specific way direct speech presentation contributes to the portrayal of each character’s distinctive personality and development of the subtle relationships between characters.Since direct speech represents characters’ words in the way that they will actually utter in the text world, the choice of speech topic, diction, syntactic structure, and tone of voice all facilitate our interpretation of authorial effort in characterization. The juxtaposition of one character’s direct speech presentation with other types of speech presentation not only emphasizes the character’s responsibility for the validity of the reported speech or the conspicuous status direct speech achieves in the listener’s mental representation, but also sheds light upon issues like perspective representation.The findings evolved out of the present paper can provide us with a better understanding of the forms and functions of direct speech presentation in fiction and the way direct speech presentation contributes to characterization in To the Lighthouse. Besides, our analytic model for direct speech presentation can be applied to other similar studies and open up new perspectives in this area. Furthermore, our approach is pedagogically significant in that reading strategies can be developed accordingly to tackle direct speech presentation in fiction.