Transforming the mind style from the book of the film througt mıltimodality in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

Abstract

Since Fowler's coinage, mind style has been a term mainly discussed by theoreticians to correspond to the linguistic peculiarities of characters' cognition and psychological state. As the main focus of stylistics is on written language, mind style emerges as its textual transfiguration and projection. Characters or narrators tend to use a particular fictional language to project specific viewpoints or mental states. On the other hand, while examining a semiotic product like film, in addition to the indicators of language in a stylistic approach, different modes such as gestures, mimics, intonation, use of light, framing, and many other major cinematic components contribute to the construction of a mind style, which is called multimodality. Employing a stylistic approach to the novel and a multimodal stance for the film, the purpose of this study is to explore the mind style of Virginia Woolf's protagonist, Orlando, as it is treated in the novel as well as in the film. Fashioned as a comparative study, it is argued that Orlando has an insecure childish mind style that comes to the fore primarily through actions and emotional outbursts characterized by repetitions and palilaic reiterations with specific predicates. However, in Sally Potter's film adaptation, Orlando's childish mind style is replaced with a more mature Orlando who is capable of handling utterances and physical reactions, which is achieved through the use of direct address and editing techniques. This thesis study concludes that comparative analyses of literary texts with their film adaptations have benefits in addition to the findings related to how the verbal is transposed through images.