Functional Stylistic Analysis Of The Old Man And The Sea

Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) is deep-going in stylistic study as it goes beyond language itself and deals with the social environment of language and considers language system a meaning potential. SFG is both highly theoretical and highly practical .The three metafunctions defined in it are extremely abstract but can be readily used in actual analysis of language. Discourse analysis and stylistics have been combined and formed a tendency to study discourse stylistics in the application of systemic functional theory.The paper gives a generalization of origin, development, object and definition of stylistics first, and then attempts to demonstrate how Halliday's SFG can inform both the style and the subject of the famous novel The Old Man and the Sea. The study will be explored in the following three areas: the writer applies the transitivity analysis in interpreting the characterization in the novel; then the writer applies the thematic analysis in interpreting the organization of the novel; at last the writer applies the mood and modality analysis in interpreting how interpersonal function works in discourse.This paper is a tentative approach to understanding literary works from systemic functional linguistic perspective. The approach further confirms that systemic functional linguistic analysis is a very powerful tool in analyzing literary stylistics and it can also provide us with a new perspective to appreciate and evaluate literary works.