On Hypothesizing: A Critical Stylistic Study in Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Abstract

This research focuses on Critical Stylistics to scrutinize how hypothesizing helps constructing ideology in Zora Neale Hurston’s "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937). Critical Stylistics has been developed from stylistics and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It  preserves the text itself as the key evidence for interpretation. The research emphases the “peripheral” textual–conceptual function, hypothesizing.The research utilizes  Jeffries’ (2010a) odel and Halliday’s view of modality. It combines qualitative analysis in terms of description and interpretation with  simple quantitative support using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 and Excel. The selected extracts from the novel are coded for modality types including epistemic, deontic, boulomaic, and conditional as well as speaker patterns. The findings display that Hurston frequently uses epistemic modality  within modal verbs to direct uncertainty and inference, particularly in porch discourse. Deontic forms frequently indicate advice and social control. whereas boulomaic modality expresses desire, care, and intention. Overall, modality in the novel is an important stylistic choice for shaping ideology particularly about community, gender-power, and personal-agency.