An Interpersonal Analysis Of A Rose For Emily

This dissertation is an application of Systemic Functional Linguistics to literary genre, namely A Rose for Emily– a short story from William Faulkner, mainly by examining the resourceful interpersonal meanings within the discourse. It concerns not only the interpersonal exchange among characters in A Rose for Emily, but also the potential interaction between the narrator and the audience. Therefore, three systems of choices in terms of interpersonal metafunction have been employed as the methods for analyses, specifically the systems of attitude, negotiation and source. In so doing, the study aims at: on one hand, exemplifying how a literary text can be interpreted properly and systematically with the assistance of linguistic theories; and on the other hand, testifying the applicability of interpersonal metafunction to literary writings. The former objective is supposed to be contributive to literature beginners, who may temporarily not know how to command the massive and random criteria stated in theories of literary criticism. Some of the study findings are as follows:Although both negative and positive comments on Miss Emily are given by the narrator, by examining the resources of attitude and negotiation in the discourse, it can be inferred that the overall image of Miss Emily is a negative one, that is, a traditional and perverse lady in solitude who values pride and dignity of her declining family more than anything else. There are mainly two reasons: one is the general trend of negative-positive-negative evaluation upon Miss Emily as the narrating develops; the other is the unreal authoritative status Miss Emily has established while having dialogues with others.Another observation is concerned with the relationship between the narrator and the audience, i.e. how the narrator establishes the credibility through the source system for convincing the audience. It turns out that the three aspects of source achieve different effects: resources of projection keep the balance between objectiveness and intimacy; the means of modality opens up space for the audience to negotiate with the narrator but in a manageable way; as for concessive conjunctions and continuatives, they frequently counter the audience's expectancy and thus serve as the intermediate for the narrator and the audience to negotiate their interpersonal relationship.