The Analysis Of Three Literary Works-A Functional Stylistic Perspective

A strange phenomenon flourished among Chinese scholars studying languages (both Chinese and foreign languages) from the 1980s till now. English-oriented scholars did not study the Chinese language, and Chinese-Oriented scholars know little about foreign languages. And we may find a striking similar phenomenon in students of English. We cannot deny the fact that there are some historical factors influencing it, for instance: the late introduction of linguistics compared with relatively long one of literature criticism theories. Nevertheless, undergraduates of English literature knowing little about linguistics or seeing no connections between these two branches had become another noteworthy phenomenon, especially in those non-nominal universities.Since Halliday first proposed his theory of "Functional Stylistics" in 1971, the academic circle has begun a heated discussion home and abroad. Even though many linguists hold different ideas towards his theories of functional stylistics, it puts forwards a theoretical model and analysis framework to analyze literary works by means of a linguistic approach compared with traditional stylistic approach, thus expand the horizon and scope of stylistics.With an aim of elevating college students' capability in English, a better understanding of English text could be realized through the functional stylistic approach. This could also be regarded as the requirement of "Quality Education" in modern times.Based upon the introduction of Halliday's functional stylistics theory, mainly three metafunctions: ideational function, interpersonal function, and textural function, three literary works have been chosen as the representatives of three literary styles for analysis. Besides the analysis of these works on the clause rank, "context ofsituation" and "context of culture" which are peculiar to functional stylistic theories have been introduced for a deeper exploration of these three texts. By doing so, we may achieve the twin goals of this thesis at the same time: literary criticism based upon functional stylistic theory, and the discovery of rules in view of different literary styles.During the process of functional stylistic analysis, the distinctive features of these three literary styles have been discovered. Features in view of three metafunctions, context of situation and context of culture have been summarized after the analysis of these works..In order to complement the lack of literary criticism in the process of functional stylistic analysis, the aesthetic value of these literary works will be discussed from a traditional literary criticism theory. As a supplement of the practical literary criticism, psycholinguistics and pragmatics will be introduced to help a better understanding of literary works in some specific situations.