Functional Stylistic Analysis Of Alice Walker's The Color Purple

Modern stylistics,is a discipline to study literature by the application of different linguistic models.Functional stylistics,taking the functional linguistics represented by Halliday as its theoretical basis,is an influential school of modern stylistics.It,on the basis of three meta-functions,not only focuses on the analysis of the language but also the content related to the social context which makes the linguistic analysis more comprehensive.Alice Walker(1944-),an African-American woman writer,plays an important role in the history of American literature.Her masterpiece The Color Purple,a novel written in form of letters,depicts how a southern black girl Celie grows from an obedient girl into a mature woman of independence and confidence.The novel became a bestseller at that time,which aroused great attention of literary criticism and also consolidated Alice Walker's status in American literature.A great number of scholars at home and abroad have done different studies on the novel from the angle of Eco-feminism and womanism.Seldom do they pay attention to the analysis of it from the perspective of linguistics.This study tries to make a functional analysis of The Color Purple,demonstrates the transformation process of Celie and reveals the theme of growth.This study is conducted to dig into the theme of the novel from three aspects in terms of the three meta-functions.For the convenience of the analysis,the growing process of Celie is divided into three periods:oppression and obedience;awakening and rebellion;and independence and maturity.First,important extracts in different periods are picked out for the transitivity analysis,which reveals Celie's awakening and growth.Second,interpersonal comment and modality are adopted to portray the different states of Celie and her psychological development Moreover,the micro repetition as well as macro repetition are analyzed to explore how repetition contributes to the realization of textual coherence and the theme.The study,through a comprehensive analysis of chosen samples,succeeds in illustrating the progressive process of the protagonist Celie,and revealing how she gets rid of the patriarchal oppression and grows into a brave,independent and confident woman.The study on the famous novel The Color Purple in terms of functional linguistics is of great significance.First,it provides a brand-new perspective for the interpretation and comprehension of this novel In addition,this study enriches functional stylistic analysis and further verifies its applicability and effectiveness in literature analysis.