A Study On Perceptual Deixis Shift

As a crucial linguistics conception,deixis has been paid attention to all the time.With the development of cognitive science,cognitive deixis enriches the research categorization of the deixis and fully explains the cognitive deictic shift theory.Perceptual deixis,as a new type of classification,belongs to cognitive deixis.It includes personal pronouns,demonstratives,definite articles,definite reference and mental states,but this thesis mainly studies the personal pronouns and definite references.The Sound and the Fury is a classical stream of consciousness novel,so the characters? consciousness changes constantly without the confinements of time and space.Personal pronouns and definite references in subject position can help readers to distinguish the scene shifts so that the reality and consciousness can also be divided.Stable characters in the novel construct a deictic field.A new deictic field can also be constructed as the new characters appear.Therefore,narrators also change from the real world to the state of thinking or pop from the state of thinking to the real world.Deixis shift leads to the change of cognitive viewpoints,thus it produces the different stylistic effects.This thesis integrates the deictic shift theory of Stockwell(2002)and style effects from different narrative perspectives concluded by Leech and Short(2001)to answer two questions:(1)How is the cognitive deictic shift of personal pronouns and definite references presented in The Sound and the Fury?(2)What are the stylistic functions made by personal pronouns and definite references shift in The Sound and the Fury?The research findings show: firstly,the cognitive deictic shifts induced by personal pronouns and definite references can be classified into three types: character to character shift,narrator to character shift and character to implied author shift.The first two is realized under the first person narration and the last one is through the third person narration.Secondly,three deictic shifts hold diverse stylistic effects: in the first person narration part,the shift from character to character models a fool image and the novel presents both the reality and the memory mostly through direct dialogue.It can bring readers into a fool?s mind.The shift from narrator to character enriches character ?s image.A melancholy and nostalgic young man arouses reader ?s sympathy by repeating the definite references.Different from the first two,the third narrator tends to a reflection on the real life rather than an immersion in the past memories.The first personal pronouns appear frequently,but for readers,his rude words and irritable actions create clashes between the sympathy determined by the first person narration and his manner.In the third person narration part,the shift from character to implied author perfects the plot by omniscient description.Moreover,different characters show the implied author?s intentions by presenting truth and making prediction in distinct deictic fields.In conclusion,the study on cognitive deictic shift in The Sound and the Fury by personal pronouns and definite references can help readers to understand novel swiftly and explore its stylistic functions.This thesis not only conforms to the new direction of the interdisciplinary research,but also provides a new research perspective for The Sound and the Fury and the similar literary works.