'The purity of the turf': A discourse analysis and its theoretical implications

The thesis is at once an explication de texte and a consideration of two approaches to the analysis of narrative discourse. The text for analysis is a chapter from P. G. Wodehouse's The Inimitable Jeeves called "The Purity of the Turf" (pp 141-162). While a number of features link it to the rest of the novel, "The Purity of the Turf" is a narratively cohesive unit. It is also characteristic of the author's work: P. G. Wodehouse is perhaps most known for his "Jeeves Stories.";The first component of the thesis will be a discourse analysis using the descriptive framework of communication linguistics, a branch of the systemic-functional tradition in linguistics which is currently being developed by Michael Gregory, Elissa Asp, Glenn Stillar and others at York University. The main construct of the analysis is phase. In phasal description, the synoptic language code is related to dynamic language activity in the discourse. The main resource is the language contained in the text itself and the relevant knowledge it demands.;One area of investigation will be the extent to which phases are related to narrative demand. To facilitate this inquiry the analysis will be discussed in terms of Roland Barthes' Structural Analysis of Narrative with the aim of exploring the compatibility of communication linguistics with Roland Barthes' narratology. The second component of the thesis will examine the text by incorporating the perspective of Barthes' narrative codes. The use of the Proairetic Code as a descriptive compliment to communication linguistics is revealing about the nature of narrative. However, the advantage of analyzing narrative texts grammatically is also asserted, since the communication linguistics model captures meaningful distinctions in the language of the narrative that cannot be made without detailed textual analysis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...