A Functional Analysis Of The Gothic Styles In F.O’Connor’s Short Stories

Functional stylistics, shorter form of "systemic functional stylistics”，lakessystemic functional grammar as its theoretical basis. Halliday distinguishes languageas three metafunctions: ideational function，interpersonal function and textual function,providing a systemic theoretical basis for stylistic analysis. Functional grammar isapplied to various fields, such as translation, teaching, writing and comparativeanalysis. The theory of linguistic function is a relatively good tool to carry out stylisticstudy on account of its systematicness,Fl’annery OConnor is acknowledged as one of the most outstanding writer in thesouth of America since William Faulkner. Her The Complete Stories which includes31short stories, won the1972U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was namedthe "Best of the National Book Awards" by internet visitors in2009. Her works，otfencategorized as the southern gothic ifction which is characterized by terror, desolation,mystery and decadence, have moved the readers deeply and become the focus in thee’yes of large numbers of critics. The studies of Flannery O’Connors short storiesboth at home and abroad, however, are mainly limited to the discussion from theperspective of traditional literary stylistics and literary criticism. There is few worksapplying functional stylistics to study Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, especiallyabout their gothic styles.The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the gothic styles in Flannery O’Connor’sshort stories from the perspective of functional stylistics, as a result, it falls into ifvechapters. It starts with an introduction of the research background, covering FlanneryO’Connor and her works, southern gothic fiction in America, and functional stylistics,which is followed by the motivation and significance of the thesis with the generalorganization as the third part in order to give readers a relatively comprehensiveoverview of the thesis. The second chapter is about the literature review of studies onFl’annery O’Connors works as well as the current research situation of functionalstylistics both at home and abroad so as to find out problems and draw inspirationfrom the current studies. The third chapter is concerned with the theoretical framework of functional stylistics, including ideational function, interpersonalfunction, textual function, and the general methodology adopted in this thesis,following which is the fourth chapter. Chapter Four, Chapter Five and Chapter Six arethe principal parts of the thesis, analyzing the selected passages of FlanneryO’Connor’s The Complete Stories from the perspective of three metafunctions:ideational, interpersonal and textual function. The detailed analyses involved in thethese chapters consist of the transitivity system，mood and modality, thematicstructure, information structure, and cohesion as well. The last chapter, Chapter Sevenconcludes the major findings together with the limitations of the thesis and makessuggestions for future study.Through the ideational, interpersonal and textual analysis of the selections fromThe Complete Stories, the gothic styles in Flanne’’ry OConnors literary works areinterpreted more systematically and objectively. Through ideational analysis, freakishcharacters, gloomy settings and horirble plots are highlighted by different processes inthe transitivity system; through interpersonal analysis, freaks and violent eventsbecome the focus of attention which conifrms that freaks are characteristic of gothicstyle; through textual analysis, the gothic writing styles of Flannery O’Connor isfurther illustrated: mysterious settings, deliberate suspending and also twisted freaks.Moreover, the thesis provides a new point of view to study O’Connor, thus makingher short stories read and appreciated more widely. It proves that applying functionalstylistic analysis to the interpretation of literary works is practical and operative.Additi’onally, its application to analyzing O’Connors works will further help widenits scope of application and simultaneously testify its systemic, objective andscientific advantages to analyze literary works over other approaches.