A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF POINT OF VIEW IN FICTION

This dissertation analyzes the discourse structure of two literary texts, To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Its purpose is twofold. First, it extends the domain of discourse analysis to include the language of literary texts conveyed from multiple points of view. Secondly, it offers a descriptively adequate account of the relationship between linguistic form and point of view in fiction.; Chapter 1 demonstrates the limitation of previous syntactic accounts of point of view, arguing that reference to discourse properties of these texts is essential to a more satisfactory account.; In Chapter 2, I describe the linguistic framework for textual cohesion, and in Chapters 3 and 4, I show that the interpretation of point of view is related to two discourse conditions on cohesion, referential linking and temporal linking.; In Chapter 5, I demonstrate the relationship between aspectual distinctions and coherence, on the one hand, and the interpretation of point of view on the other.; Within the framework developed in this dissertation, sentences which are cohesive and/or coherent with previous discourse are shown to be interpreted in a similar fashion in terms of point of view. Conversely, sentences which lack cohesion and/or coherence with previous discourse are shown to be interpreted differently with respect to the point of view orienting the previous discourse.; The analysis has implications for recent work in discourse analysis concerned with the temporal organization of narrative texts. Such investigations have attempted to isolate the linguistic features of texts which correlate with foreground and background material (linguistic material which serves to move a narrative through time as opposed to linguistic material which serves to embellish and elaborate on the main story line of a narrative). This thesis demonstrates that the simple binary distinction between foreground and background is not completely adequate for describing texts conveyed from a multiplicity of perspectives. Texts such as these must be viewed as containing foreground and background material conveyed from different points of view. In addition, this thesis has demonstrated the various linguistic means by which the foreground and background come to be interpreted from these different viewpoints.