CONTENTS

Acknowledgments i

Abstract ii

摘要 iii

1 Introduction 1

2 Past and Present Studies of Speech Presentation in Western Countries 2

2.1 Grammarians’ study 2

2.2 Narratologists’ study 3

2.3 Stylisticians’ study 3

3 Speech Prensentation in Chinese...........5                                             

3.1 Development in the study of speech presentation in China 5

3.2 A general classification of the mode of speech presentation in Chinese 5

4 An Investigation of Speech Presentation in The True Story of Ah Q 9

4.1 The True Story of Ah Q and its English Version 9

4.2 The methods 9

4.3 Mode of speech presentation in The True Story of Ah Q 10

5 Conclusion 19

Bibliography 21 

1 Introduction

Speech presentation has played an important role in novel. Many novelists focus on the speech and thought presentation of characters to shape the characters and move the plot along. 

Compared with movie or drama, we can see that the different modes of speech presentation are unique in art of novel. Audiences hear the dialogues directly in movie or drama, while the author has to report them to readers by the narrator in fiction. Therefore, narrator can use direct speech to report what someone has said, one quotes the words used verbatim. Or in indirect way to report what was said in oneʼs own words. He can use or omit the quotation, or add reporting clause or not. It is unique to novelist that he is able to choose different ways to express the words of different characters.  

In the initial stage of the serious study of speech presentation, grammarians analyzed the mode of speech presentation from the grammatical point of view, focusing on the syntactic features and the conversion from direct speech to indirect speech, and vise visa, which is not so satisfactory. Latter, with the development of literary research, especially the flourishing of study of novel, these modes could not fully meet the needs of literary criticism. Thus narratologists and stylisticians made careful studies of speech presentation and also made considerable achievements. Owing to the concerted efforts of grammarians, narratologists and stylisticians, the study of speech presentation has developed quickly recently in western countries and has attracted Chinese scholars’ attention.

This paper is an attempt to study how the modes of speech presentation are used in Luxun's short novel The True Story of Ah Q, and analyzes the types, structure and functions of speech presentation by way of quoting specific examples for analysis. The careful investigation of the different modes employed in The True Story of Ah Q will be made.

2 Past and Present Studies of Speech Presentation in Western Countries

The study of speech presentation in western countries is introduced from three different aspects, namely, grammarians’ study, narratologists’ study and stylisticians’ study.

2.1 Grammarians’ study 

The earliest study of reporting modes can be dated back to the classical Greek period, although at that time the notion of modes was not proposed. (Shen Dan,1991a，1998b ) Plato, in BookⅢ of The Republic, contrasted two kinds of narrative modes: mimesis and pure narrative, which are approximately equivalent to the later classification of Direct Speech and Indirect Speech. As for mimesis, the poet “himself is the speaker,” but in pure narrative, the poet delivers a speech as if he were someone else. (Genette, 1980). Platoʼs study cannot be called a serious one.