ABSTRACT
Language plays a crucial role in facilitating interpersonal understanding, even as moments of mutual illumination prove fleeting, the connective "thread" always liable to fray. William Faulkner extends the philosophical project by showing how language reflects characters' historical circumstances. The Sound and the Fury testifies to the crucial role that shared language plays in the formation of community. Critical accounts of Faulkner have differed widely over the role of community in his work, and these divergences are themselves revelatory of the vexed vision of community his fiction offers. Faulkner's fiction registers a moment of shifting historical conditions, wherein more traditional notions of community are breaking down. Faulkner's fiction explores what community looks like in a Southern, rural world that remains deeply steeped in traditional belief systems, even as it experiences rapid economic modernisation. Language plays a crucial role in facilitating interpersonal understanding, even as moments of mutual illumination prove fleeting, the connective "thread" always liable to fray.
