Characteristics of Stream of Consciousness from the Anaphoric Perspective

Abstract

: This paper, founded on the Accessibility Theory and the Mental Space Theory, aims to explore how anaphora contributes to reinforcing the features of the stream of consciousness narration by studying the short story Dill Pickle by Katherine Mansfield, mainly from the perspectives of dynamic fluidity of consciousness and psychology-orientedness. To begin with, the linear distribution of successive anaphoric expressions indicates not only different levels of accessibility, more importantly, is a static presentation of the dynamic flow of a mental entity in the mental passage of the speaker. However, Mansfield typically employs mental space shift to display the fluidity of consciousness. The shift takes place either between the consciousness of two or more characters or between the different levels of consciousness in one character. Generally, the anaphoric expressions function mainly in the following three situations: a. situations where the antecedent remains salient albeit amid the frequent shift of mental spaces; b. situations where the antecedent becomes ambiguous as two or more elements from a bunch of mental spaces bear similar salience; c. situations where the antecedent, usually in the form of definite noun phrases, is not accessible to the addressee. Given that Mansfield’s chief concern is the inner world of the characters, in the latter part of the paper, further exploration is given on the psychological analysis of definite anaphoric descriptions and anaphoric demonstratives. It is found that anaphora does help to enhance the fluidity and vividness of the narration and the use of anaphoric expressions does have weighty implications. Hopefully, this paper could provide an alternative of appreciating the stream of consciousness fictions.