On The Anaphoric Features Of The Stream Of Consciousness Novel

As an important means to establish coherence, anaphora has always been a hot topic in discourse analysis. However, little data-based study of anaphora has ever been carried out in the stream of consciousness novel so far. It is well known that stream of consciousness novels aim to expose the innermost thoughts of the characters. Complete plot fades away from these novels and each story becomes an open-ended spiritual journey. But with its complexity and incoherence, this kind of novels causes a lot of troubles or even confusion on the part of the readers in one way or another. Although there seems to be no direct connection between the stylistic features of a text and its anaphoric expressions, the writer's endeavor to manipulate certain stylistic effects will naturally lead to some distinctive textual features, which will then indirectly reflect on the writer's choices of anaphoric forms. Therefore the cohesive function and coherent effects anaphora acquires make it possible to be utilized as a tool to reveal the textual features of stream of consciousness stories underlying the stylistic effects.The Mark on the Wall, a representative work of the stream of consciousness novels, is chosen to be the main material for this research. It consists of no more than 3400 words, which facilitates and ensures the thesis to make an exhaustive data collection and an in-depth interpretation as well. To figure out the anaphoric features of the story and the interaction between these features and its stylistic effects, with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, two major steps are taken. The first is to make a comprehensive collection of anaphora cases, both direct and indirect anaphora, with or without antecedent, having clear or ambiguous reference, based on three parameters: NP2(anaphor)'s form, textual distance and stereotypic or non-stereotypic relations. Then a detailed analysis and interpretation are carried out partly aided by the accessibility theory. The research shows that the distribution of this text's anaphora, generally speaking, is far from being peculiar but quite conventional. Yet there do exist some distinctive features in the stereotypic relations of the I(ndirect)A(naphora) instances, the most popular textual distance between NP1(antecedent) and NP2 of the story and the unclear anaphora instances. These features coming into being on account of the stylistic requirements contribute back to the stylistic effects.In one word, by focusing on the linguistic forms of Virginia Woolf's short story The Mark on the Wall, this thesis takes anaphora as a research topic, attempting to offer a new perspective for the explanation of the novel's obscurity by analyzing the anaphoric features of the story.