Morphosyntactic Analysis and Metaphorization of Functional Shift in James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce is renowned for using functional shifts creatively to add new words and meanings to his novels. Converting words through altering their classes is considered as Joyce’s distinct method of playing with words, which reflects his capability of linguistic creativity. The problem that should be tackled in this study the reader is neither able to determine the grammatical class of the word after converting it nor he is able to perceive its meaning after converting it, which is also wrapped up with metaphor. Accordingly, this study aims to figure out words which underwent functional shifts in the selected novel. It is postulated that converting the class of the word brings about semantic change in that word as it might undergo metaphoric extension which should be examined precisely. Methodologically, (8) converted words were selected randomly from this novel for the purpose of qualitative analysis. Brinton and Brinton’s Model (2010) has been applied as a tool to analyze functional shifts on morphological and syntactic levels. The merit of this approach is that it identifies the morphosyntactic change that occurs to the word when converting it. Lakoff and Johnson’s Approach (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory was adopted to uncover the metaphoric meaning that accompanies any functional shift. The results indicate that the syntactic pattern ‘noun changes into verb’ was the main pattern of functional shift recruited by Joyce in Ulysses. The meanings of converted words are also changed whose meanings cannot be grasped from their individual forms unless they are interpreted within their contexts. Joyce converted words of different fields including body parts, abstract, concrete and physical objects.