The Study of discourse topics on William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

Nugraha, Meedy (1997) The Study of discourse topics on William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.

Abstract

This thesis is about how some linguistic theories can be helpful in understanding a literary work. Although a literary criticism is still called for, the theories are able to make the literary work be easier to comprehend. The narrative order of A Rose for Emily - a short story written by William Faulkner is hard to follow since it is not in time sequence. The writer of this thesis intends to arrange them chronologically, but first, she would like to find out the " topics " of the literary work. Using a discourse analysis theory, in this case the notion of discourse topics, the content of short story is represented into propositions. Being treated as a discourse or language in use, aspects of context of the short story must be considered. Thus, besides identifying the propositions, the activated feature of context, in this case the time aspect should also be determined. Based on the context, the writer divides the propositions into fragments and searches for the most important part or the discourse topic within each fragment. By finding out the correct topics and providing them with the setting of the time when each event happens, it is possible for the writer to arrange the events based on a common narrative order.

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