Connectives ‘but’ and ‘for’ in viewpoint shifting in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Abstract

The narrative world of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1992 [1927]) is primarily composed of its characters’ thought and speech presentation. One character’s flow of thoughts is connected with another character’s thoughts, and viewpoint shifts occur very quickly and frequently. This article analyses how the two connectives ‘but’ and ‘for’ contribute to viewpoint shifting by comparing their stylistic, pragmatic functions in contexts where similar types of viewpoint shifting occur. Adopting a corpus-assisted approach, sentences and clauses before and after ‘but’ and ‘for’ are compared when these sentences and clauses are identified as being in similar discourse presentation categories such as free direct thought and direct speech. ‘But’ emphasizes the distinction between the narration and a character’s discourse or between two characters’ discourse, whereas ‘for’ helps viewpoint shifting to take place more implicitly, as a result of which the boundary between the different voices tends to be blurred.