Analysis Of Personality And Power Relation In Emma:an Approach Of Functional Stylistics

Functional stylistics based on Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar, plays a more and more important role in modern stylistic analysis. Functional stylistics studies language from the perspective of three metafunctions, namely, ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction. Ideational metafunction has two components:experiential function and logical function. Experiential function refers to how we perceive and experience what is going on; logical function refers to logical meaning between clauses in clause complex. Interpersonal function is concerned with the two-way communication between people with the main purposes of interacting with others and establishing social bond with one another. Textual meta-function relates to the creation of text, how the speakers or writers construct their message logically into the cohesive text.Emma is a famous work of Jane Austen, and gains abundant attention home and abroad. In Emma, the massive dialogues as well as different characters draw great attention from critics. Many literary critical analyses have been made on the novel from different perspectives, such as feminism, characterization, and narrative techniques and so on. However, there is little analysis on this novel from functional stylistics. This paper employs theories of functional stylistics, mianly focusing on ideational function and interpersonal function. The ideational function is used to analyze personality of characters, and interpersonal function is used to analyze their power relation. Ideational function is realized by transitivity system which includes six process types, namely, material process, mental process, relational process, behavioural process, verbal process and existential process; thereby the personality of characters is studied through the six process types, aiming to reveal the hierarchy in the novel. As for interpersonal function, it is mainly realized by mood system and modality system, so the power relation will be revealed by the two systems, aiming to recognize that people’s social rank plays an important role in deciding their power in conversation.By empolying the transitivity system, mood system, and modality system, the analysis of personality and power relation in Emma can be more effective. Through the analysis of personality and power relation in Emma, this paper attempts to shed some new light on the analysis of the novel, yet it still has some limitation. There is a broad research space in functional stylistics, and this paper only employs part of the theory. In addition, only some sections are picked up as material for analysis, which will weaken the depth and profoundness of the study more or less.