A Study On Stylistic Features Of White Noise From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Don DeLillo, as a postmodern writer, published his eighth novel, White Noise. It won the National Book Award in 1985 and received high praise from scholars at home and abroad. In the mean time, the novel also aroused major literary critics'interest in the study on its theme.Halliday argues that the language choice can be regarded as the meaning choice. Systemic Functional Grammar is the theoretic basis of functional stylistics. It puts emphasis on the exploring objective basis of stylistic effect in discourse from the perspective of language structure. The purpose of stylistic analysis is to provide objective analysis model rather than the traditional subjective study.Transitivity system of Systemic Functional Linguistics is an important semantic system, which can reflect experiential metafunction. It is used to describe the experience and events and behavior.Lexical-grammatical Appraisal theory is a new branch of interpersonal meaning of SFL. It is mainly concerned with evaluative resources. It focuses on various negotiable attitudes, the intensity of emotions involved, as well as the value and alliance with readers (Martin,2003). It is a practical theory and explores language users'attitude, standpoints and stances. Within Appraisal theory, Attitude system is the main body and effectively reveals speakers'emotional reaction, value judgement as well evaluation of things.On the one hand, stylistic features can be interpreted as the frequency of certain types of process within Transitivity system. When a certain type of process is associated with context, it can become motivated prominence. On the other hand, stylistic features can be represented as the author's way of thinking, value and ideology, etc in a specific context. Thus, it has something in common with Appraisal theory, which interprets author's attitude toward events or things behind the stylistic features.Combined Functional stylistics with Appraisal theory, the thesis applies quantitative and qualitative methodology. It attempts to interpret the embodiment and function of Transitivity system and attitudinal resources from lexical level to textual level.Through analysis, the thesis finds out that three types of processes within Transitivity system forms a dynamic framework to reveal author's writing ideology. Meanwhile, three domains of Attitude system, like Affect, Judgement and Appreciation are interrelated with each other to reflect author's writing purpose. As a result, covert stylistic features are explored through analysis.At the same time, overt stylistic features, like repetition and disconnection are also discussed in detail. Therefore, both overt and covert stylistic features have been fully interpreted. In addition, this tentative study is expected to offer a new insight for literature appreciation.