A stylistic study of point of view in James Joyce's The dead Basra General Directorate of Education

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine how point of view is signaled in Joyce's " The Dead " and how it is used to exercise control over the attitudes of characters and events in the story. It aims to illustrate who sees and who speaks in the story, whose views or ideas are being expressed as well as how characters and events are represented via the text. It characterizes the predominant stylistic and linguistic capabilities. A unique focus is positioned upon the issue of modality as related to the point of view. Modality expresses the mode within which the propositional content of a sentence is presented as a sure, reliable, or compulsory and it function to order interpersonal relations. Point of view shows a particular manner of conceptualizing and refers to the world view. The present paper used the modal framework of Simpson in doing a stylistic analysis of the story " The Dead " by James Joyce. Since stylistics has always been concerned with how readers interpret the texts by focusing on linguistic choices, the model used based totally on Simpson's modal framework would permit the readers to identify the attitude of the narrator. Key Words: Modality, point of view and stylistics.