A Functional Stylistic Analysis Of The Interpersonal Meaning In The Great Gatsby

F.Scott Fitzgerald,the farnous American novelist in the 20^th century,is known as the spokesman and laureate of the "Jazz Age" America,whose works give us an accurate picture of the aura of the American twenties:the prosperity of economy and the moral absence.His masterpiece The Great Gatsby,referred to as "The Great American Novel",stands as the supreme achievement of his career.Through well-organized structure and new narrative perspective,the theme of "the decline of the American Dream" is expressed vividly in this novel.It is the best work of Fitzgerald not only because of its thought in depth but also its artistic expression.Meanwhile,it establishes his position in American literature history.Drawing on FS(Functional Stylistics),this thesis attempts to study The Great Gatsby from a functional perspective.Its aim is to explore how interpersonal function affects the theme of the novel,how the linguistic features display their stylistic values,and to shed light on literature teaching.FS,based on SFG,has gained widely popularity since 1970s.It not only broadens the vision and range of stylistic studies,but also foregrounds the relationship between language,text and context of situation.FS considers style as "motivated prominence".In literary works,once a prominent linguistic feature is closely related to the theme as a whole,it can be regarded as "motivated prominence" and can achieve foregrounding.In terms of this theory,many scholars both at home and abroad have made their studies on literary works in the aspect of function;however,there are still some problems in the existing literature:(1) The transitivity system in ideational function has been frequently adopted in the studies on literary works,while the interpersonal function which plays an important role in discourse does not receive enough attention;(2) The studies on The Great Gatsby are only restricted in literary field,which are somewhat too subjective.Thus,by drawing on the theories of foregrounding,criteria of relevance and interpersonal function in FS,the present study takes these problems as points of departure and attempts to make a more objective and comprehensive study on this literary work.The data serving as the research focus in the analysis of the thesis is part of a dialogue between the Buchanans and Gatsby,taken from Chapterâ…¦of the novel.Based on the above-mentioned theories,there will be a detailed analysis of this dialogue.First of all,the number and frequency of mood types,most frequent subject choices,modal operators and modal adjuncts in the dialogue are counted,compared and analyzed.Furthermore,based on the foregrounding theory in Halliday's FS,the thesis presents a description of the theme of the work in association with the analysis of Mood and Modality features in the dialogue,which attempts to explore the stylistic values of these linguistic features and how they are achieved in the work.Some findings are derived from the detailed sample analysis and statistical analysis as follows:(1) By adopting the theories of Mood and Modality,it can be found that the choice of specific lexico-grammatical features,such as mood types,most frequent subject choice, modal operators and modal adjuncts,fully reflect the personalities of and relationship between the Buchanans and Gatsby.Meanwhile,the expression of the theme of the novel-the decline of the American Dream-is strengthened by these linguistic features;(2) Combined with the description of the context of this work,the Mood and Modality features are closely related to the expression of the theme of the novel.It can be concluded that these linguistic features have achieved foregrounding and have obvious stylistic values.Moreover, the analysis presented in the thesis is also helpful for readers to get a better understanding about Fitzgerald's stylistic brilliance.