THE SYNTAX OF SENSE: HOW SYNTACTIC FORM AND SEMANTIC FRAMING SHAPE LITERARY STYLE IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which syntax and semantics collaborate together to create a self-reflective formal feature in Virginia Woolf`s stream of consciousness. The article bears on a major problem in stylistics and narrative theory: the specific formal techniques whereby prose fictions can simulate unforced mental life while remaining decipherable and aesthetically organized. Using systemic functional linguistics, cognitive stylistics and narratology I examine excerpts from Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931). Methodologically, the study integrates close reading with a corpus-based descriptive schedule that measures sentence type, clause linkage, deictic anchoring, modality and lexical relations. The results reveal that Woolf’s style relies on three overlapping resources. The recourse to non-finite and paratactic clauses is productive, I argue in (36), because they articulate a weakly disjunctive sequencing that resembles an attention drift. Second, deictic and aspectual semantics situate experience in a pliable now that can sustain free indirect style without quotes. Third, mind style arises out of patterned semantic fields and evaluative lexis not merely syntax making possible character- distinctive textures at the same time as a continuous surface to narrative. The article develops a principled explanation of how sentence form and meaning selection interact in the realization of stream-of-consciousness as a recognizable but variable stylistic system.