A Functional Stylistic Approach To Characterization In Ulysses

Among all the masterpieces of James Joyce, Ulysses is considered to be one of the most important novels of the western literature. Due to the experimental language forms used by Joyce in the novel which makes it extremely difficult to adopt traditional linguistic methods, most of the analysis of this stream-of-consciousness masterpiece is confined to literary criticism. Consequently, as a highly explanatory means to the interpretation of various types of discourses, functional stylistics has been singled to provide the linguistic interpretation of the characterization in Ulysses.Theoretically based on Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), functional stylistics is a branch of modern stylistic theories which has been rapidly developing over the recent decades into a highly explanatory approach to the studies on all kinds of discourses including literary works. Among all theories of functional stylistics, transitivity analysis lays its major focus on the objective study of clause structures while Appraisal System is centered on the attitudinal analysis of the writer or speaker as a subjective individual. Therefore, the author preliminarily assumes that the combination of the transitivity and attitude system can propose a better and more systematic interpretation of characterization in Ulysses. Through the qualitative and quantitative analysis this paper finally proves that functional stylistics is an effective approach to the explication of stream-of-consciousness writings.This thesis consists of five chapters. After an introductory chapter, the previous studies on both functional stylistics and the interpretation of Ulysses are reviewed in Chapter Two. The theoretical framework of the thesis is presented in Chapter Three with the focus on the transitivity system and Appraisal System. In Chapter Four, the functional stylistic approach is applied to the characterization of Stephen in Ulysses, Episode3. The episode is firstly divided into two parts:the interior monologues of Stephen which are the depiction of his subjective mental activities, and the real-life event narratives which are the narration of objective events serving as the transitional devices between interior monologues of different topics. Then a transitivity analysis is carried out to investigate real-life event narratives and, compared with other characters in the episode, Stephen the protagonist is found to be less likely to directly take the participant role as the Actor in transitive material clauses. His lack of initiative is therefore inferred, which accords with the image of Stephen that is well recognized by literary critics. Furthermore, by analyzing the distribution of positive and negative attitudinal resources in Stephen’s interior monologues the thesis draws a clear line between his likes of art and past days and dislikes of his daily life, meanwhile unveils his controversial attitudes toward women and himself. The cynical yet complicated attitudes Stephen holds toward different topics are thus illustrated by the Appraisal System analysis. This thesis is concluded by a brief summary of its major findings and implications and the prospects for future research.