Speech and thought Presentation in Soon by Alice Munro: A Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

The different linguistic styles used by the authors in their novels and short stories have made them interesting and challenging to study. Those styles are able to create certain effects on the readers; they might be emphatic, amused, persuaded, or even perplexed. Stylistics aims to examine the relationship between language and artistic function in literature. This research focuses on "Soon," the second and middle story of the Juliet trilogy ("Chance," "Soon" and "Silence") included in Runaway written by Alice Munro. This study used stylistics as an approach to analyze how the speeches and thoughts of the characters in the story are presented and to find out which of the categories of speech presentation are most frequently used in the short story. As a result, the current study discovers 373 presentations in Soon, including 304 speech presentations and 69 thought presentations. The analysis shows that the most commonly used speech presentation modes are FDS and DS which enable the author to make the characters seem independent of the narrator. The FDS technique suggests that the context of speech in the story is clear enough, referring to who the speakers are. The choice of forms of speech presentation as well as the choice of speech act verbs has significant consequences for the degree of importance that is attributed to different utterances, for the projection of viewpoint, and for the creation of a contrast between the characters.