Dialogue and Expression of Thoughts in the Characters of The Joy Luck Club

Author: Dai Fan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: This book studies the discourse and thought expression of four complete, short stories' characters in the novella The Joy Luck Club by the American-Chinese writer Amy Tan from the perspectives of narratology and stylistics, specifically functional stylistics. The author uses the three pure functions of functional linguistics (especially the psychological process in the transitivity system) and the Appraisal Theory as the basis for stylistic analysis, combining the study of concepts such as focalizer, narrator, and narrative voice in narratology. The research results show that the combined framework of narratology and stylistics plays a complementary role in analyzing the selected corpus and fully expresses the three themes of the novella. Meanwhile, the emphasis on situational context in Systemic Functional Linguistics and the psychological processes in the transitivity system provide strong explanatory power for the various discourse/ideational expressions of the personal narrator in the narration.