CОNTENT

INTRОDUCTIОN…………………………………………………………2
CHAPTER I.
1.1. The notion of style in stylistics ....................................................5
1.2. Transitivity as a system...............................................................10
CHAPTERII. The analysis of style and transitivity
2.1. Developments in the analysis of style and transitivity................17
2.2. Applying Transitivity System on Hughes’s Poems …………....21
CОNCLUSIОN …........…………………………………………… ….....26
THE LIST ОF USED LITERATURE.……………………………….....28
 Introduction
“Each graduate must be fluent in at least two foreign languages” —
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev

In the age of globalization, the demand of studying foreign language has

been rising in Uzbekistan as well as in other developing countries. Prestige of
globally spoken languages such as English, Chinese, etc., is rising and the number
of non- native speakers is expanding. English is being perceived as an International
language that has been spoken by people all over the world for various purposes.
English is no longer spoken only by its native speakers in the UK, North America,
Australia and New Zealand, and by those who learn English in order to
communicate with native speakers. It is also spoken by non-native speakers in
India, the Philippines, and Singapore, as well as worldwide with a population of
roughly 1.5 billion people. Due to the fact that English is a global language, and
people are increasingly eager to learn it and speak it effectively, many efforts have
been made to develop innovative means of learning this language.
The study of text linguistics - a branch of linguistics that describes texts as
communication systems - reveals that analyzing a literary text includes a number
of contentious issues. Such variables detect and categorize the aspects of language
used by the author. Text linguistics reveals hidden meanings in text through a
variety of ways.

Style, as a linguistic term, refers to a variation in language use that can be

identified by particular linguistic traits known as stylistic features. As a result,
what separates style is the selection of pieces and their patterns as stylistic features,
which are influenced in part by genre, form, and theme demands. Crystal [1;440]
defines stylistics as a field of linguistics concerned with the characteristics of
situationally diverse uses of language.

There is a distinction to be made between stylistic analysis and literary

interpretation. The former is characterized as a process that tries to investigate the
linguistic means and devices of a particular text, rather than the message, topic, or
substance. Specifically, the stylistic analysis approach can be applied to the study
of language in both literary and non-literary texts. According to this viewpoint,
literary interpretation is a method used solely to evaluate and explain a literary
text's theme, content, and literary qualities. It also decodes the author's linguistic
cues and creates standards for accounting for the individual's specific choices
[2;17].

Style writers have differed in their conception of the term, and one source of
debate has been the issue, 'To what or whom do we ascribe style?' Style can be
applied to both spoken and written language, both 'literary' and 'everyday' kinds;
nevertheless, in the past, it was mainly connected with written literary writings,
and this is the sense of the term with which this paper is concerned. In terms of
style categories, Leech and Short [3] define rhetorical style as the "craft or skill of
effective communication." Stylistics, which is related to the concept of style, is the
study of the relationship between linguistic form and literary function. They go on
to say that stylistics builds on linguistics, and that stylistics, in turn, challenges our
linguistic frameworks, exposes their flaws, and encourages us to improve them. In
this sense, stylistics is a journey of discovery for both critics and linguists.
Furthermore, Crystal [4] claims that stylistics is the study of variation in texts. He
argues that linguistics is the scientific study of language, and that stylistics is a
subset of this field that analyzes specific features of language diversity.

Transitivity is a property of verbs that determines whether they can take

objects and how many they can take in linguistics. As opposed to a binary
category, transitivity is considered to be a continuum in functional grammar. When
a child is told to put away his books according to their height, he recognizes that he
starts by placing the tallest one on one end of the bookshelf and the shortest one on
the other.

In a clause, syntactic transitivity refers to the number and type of core

arguments that are present in the clause and are determined by the predicate’s
head. In most languages, the predicate is usually headed by a verb, but in some
languages, an intransitive predicate may be headed by a noun or pronoun.

What is Transitivity in Stylistics?

In Halliday’s functional grammar, transitivity, entities and actions are coded

according to the situation in which they are occurring. Transitivity analysis is
especially useful to researchers in the fields of critical discourse analysis and
feminist stylistic analysis due to its last function.

The aim оf my course work is tо make investigatiоn оn developments in

the analysis of style and transitivity, their main definitiоns, features and analyzing
ways.
Оbject оf my course wоrk is tо use оf different analyses during the
classificatiоn prоcess style and transitivity.
Methоds оf investigatiоn were based оn cоmparative analyses, typоlоgical
analyses, descriptive analyses and phоnоlоgical analyses оf English texts.
Doing stylistics broadens one's perspectives on language. Halliday's
Systemic Functional Linguistics can be used to detect the ideology or mind-style
intended behind the text using the whole range of language models. Linguistic
choices in transitivity have a critical role in clarifying and expanding the
underlying dominating ideology developed in clause-drawing processes.

Halliday’s [6] article “Linguistic function and literary style: An inquiry into
the language of William Golding’s The Inheritors” is a very effective one. In this
work Halliday discusses the patterns of transitivity, including what processes,
participants, and circumstances occur in the clause or sentence. He proceeds to
illustrate how they are used by Golding to imply “cognitive limitation,” a
decreased sense of causation and an incomplete recognition of how human beings
can control the world, as experienced by the main character, Lok, a Neanderthal
man whose world is being taken control of by the people of a more “advanced”
world. Also, there is Kennedy’s [7] analysis of a scene from Joseph Conrad’s The
Secret Agent. Kennedy analyzes the verbs used, examining why the sequential
murder scene in the story stylistically gives the impression of distance and
detachment, as if the murderer were not responsible for what she was doing.

CHAPTER I.
1.1.The notion of style in stylistics

The problem of defining the concept of "style" is one of the major in style.
Different scholars have taken different approaches to definition of this concept.
Thus, in the style definition given Academician V.V. Vinogradov in 1955, an
important moment is a reflection of the social nature of styles: “style is socially
conscious and socially conditioned, internally a combined set of methods of use,
selection and reading the means of speech communication in the sphere of a
particular social folk, national language, correlative with other means of expression
that serve for other goals, perform other functions in speech public practice of a
united people. Professor I.R. Galperin offered his definition of style as a system of
interrelated language elements that serve a specific communicative purpose.
Noteworthy is the definition of style given by R.A. Budagov: “Language style is a
kind of national language, established historically and characterized by a well-
known set of linguistic features, some of which are peculiar, in its own way, is
repeated in other language styles, but definitely a lazy combination of which
distinguishes one language style from another." In life, the word "style" is used
quite widely and not always as a philological concept. For example, they talk about
stylish furniture, architecture, home furnishings, etc. In this case, style is
synonymous with fashion. In another sense, "stylish" means "general", even if not
for everyone, but for some social groups. So, the famous dudes were just stylish,
i.e. similar to each other within their subculture. But the word "style" there is also a
higher meaning: a style of thinking, a style of behavior, life style. So, they talk
about styles in painting, music, sports and etc. The breadth of the modern meaning
of the term "style" is evidenced, in particular, by the abundance of definitions that
it is able to accept: style can be good, bad, restrained, dry, flowery, protocol,
emotional, solemn, poetic, old-fashioned, modern, pretentious, high, low, realistic,
romantic, classic, oratory, epistolary, administrative, narrative, descriptive, etc.
This list is far from complete add the style of Shakespeare, Pushkin, Flaubert,
Dickens, etc. In all these heterogeneous uses, a constant core, or semantic
invariant, of the meaning of the word "style": "specific mode of action", i.e.
characteristic of someone (something), different from others.

Therefore, style is primarily a difference, a choice: something can be done

(in particular, said) this way, but it can be done differently; and the subject of the
action chooses some actions.

Like any human activity, speech activity is characterized primarily by

purposefulness. We speak and write in order to communicate something to
someone, to convey some information. This information is called denotative-
designative, or subject-logical. Natural languages are arranged in such a way that
the same denotative information can be communicated in more than one way. Let's
start with an example from the Russian language. Let us assume that in of some
situation, one of the communication partners wants to report to another that "I'm
ready to listen to him." One can imagine several options for expressing this idea:

1. I am all attention. 2. I listen to you. 3. I am ready to listen to your

speeches.

4. Well, what do you have there? 5. Come on, lay it out, don't pull the
rubber.

The main subject-logical content of all five variants is the same, however,
we clearly feel that between them there is a significant difference that lies in the
field of pragmatic information, i.e. information about the participants in the
conversation. So, the 1st option is the most polite: apparently, the subject of speech
is intellectual (or wants to appear as such) and treats the addressee (at least
outwardly) respectfully.
 The 2nd option is already more formal: the speaker considers the addressee
“as a stranger”, and, rather, everything, feels a certain superiority over him. 3rd
option much more solemnly than all the others: this is how a character invested
with power in some old play, for example, a king, can be expressed; the same
option can also be ironic shade. The 4th and 5th options express the speaker's
irritation or impatience, while in the 5th we even feel rudeness to addressee; it can
be assumed that the speaker is a person of little culture.

So, each option expresses not only the general for all subject-logical content
('willingness to listen'), but also something else; each has more than what is said.
What provides this increment of meaning is the style of the utterance.

One should not think that this happens only in some special, stylistically
marked cases - no, the style has any statement, since any statement is the result of
choosing a way of expressing a thought from among potentially possible. Consider
examples from the English language.

1. The old man is dead... (neutral style).

2. The old bean has kicked the bucket. (substandard lying below standard).

3. The gentleman well advanced in years has attained the termination of his
terrestrial existence... (pompous or official style).

In these synonymous examples, we understand one and the same thought,

i.e. we see the general subject-logical content ('an elderly person passed away') and
at the same time we understand them stylistic difference.

What does style express?

1) the attitude of the subject of speech to the addressee (respectful, rude,

etc.);

2) belonging of the subject of speech to a certain social group (intellectual,

uncultured person, etc.);
 3) the emotional state of the subject of speech;

4) the conditions of communication, including here the so-called "channel

connections”, i.e. First of all, the statement belongs to oral or written language.
Based on the above, we can give the following definition of style as a linguistic
concept.

Style is a meaningful property of an utterance (message, text) that arises as a

result of the choice of ways to convey subject-logical content.

The style of the utterance belongs to the connotation and is perceived, as a

rule, intuitively.

There is no established classification of styles. However, different authors of

works on German, French, English and Russian style (I.V. Arnold, I.R. Galperin,
K.A. Dolinin, M.N. Kozhina, V.A. Kukharenko, E.G. Rizel, Yu.M. Skrebnev,
etc.), published in our country over the past decades, offer more or less the same
style system. It is based on the division of all styles into two main classes: literary
and colloquial, which are further subdivided into variants. (no more than five styles
in total).

Problems of defining the concept of style and distinguishing types of styles

are not the only ones in stylistics. This science also deals with the following issues:

1) expressive means of the language;

2) synonymous ways of expressing the same thought;

3) emotional coloring of words and expressions in the language;

4) a system of stylistic devices;

5) the individual manner of the author in using the language and etc.

Thus, speaking of stylistics as a science, we must keep in mind that the

object of its study is quite multifaceted and multidimensional.
 Systemic Functional Linguistics

In his An Introduction to Functional Grammar [6], Halliday purveys the idea

that language achieves two major functions: ideational and interpersonal.
Ideational function is utilized to express oneís perceptions and experiences of the
world. Interpersonal one is exploited by individuals to indulge themselves in the
communicative events. Both events depend on a third one: textual function by
which one can construct his meaning socially and culturally [18;2]. After
propounding the main functions of language, it is noteworthy that the states of the
major systems of the clause are known as mood (deriving from interpersonal),
transitivity (deriving from ideational) and theme (deriving from textual). These
systems reflect the semantic levels of analysis, being linked to the reality of
context in any situation [9; XIX].

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a potent framework for describing

and modeling language as a resource for making meaning and choices. This
framework treats language beyond its formal structures and takes the context of
culture and the context of situation in language use [6], [10] SFL is identified with
the linguists of the London School, specifically Halliday, whose immediate goal in
stylistic analysis is “to show why and how the text means what it does” [6] [10] [8]
To show how the text means what it does, meaning in texts is determined by (1)
context of culture, (2) context of situation, and (3) metafunctions.

Context of situation according to Halliday [7] can be realized by (a) mode,

which is the organization of the message; (b) field, the expression of world view;
and (c) tenor, the relationship between the interlocutors, while field is experiential,
tenor is interpersonal, and mode is textual. Among the three metafunctions, field
determines the transitivity pattern [6], [11].

Metafunctions, to Halliday [6], are (a) textual, which provides links between
language and the features of the situation in which it is used; (b) ideational, serves
for the expression of “content” or the speaker’s experience of the real world,
including the inner world of his own consciousness’, and (c) interpersonal,
establishes and maintain social relations. Fowler [13]. adds that the ideational
metafunction interprets, organizes, and classifies the subjects of discourse by
representing how the world is perceived. Further, the ideational function consists
of processes, participants, and circumstances.
 1.2. Transitivity as a System

Transitivity is defined as the manner in which a verb is related to the noun

phrases in the clause structure. Traditional grammarians adopt purely syntactic
description, in that whether the subject takes one or more objects [12;305]. Within
Systemic Functional Linguistics, the notion of transitivity has been greatly
extended and generalized. Here, the term is understood as denoting the kind of
activity or process expressed by a sentence, the number of participants involved
and the manner in which they are involved. Again, according to Trask, transitivity
clarifies how the semantic description as well as syntactic one is involved too
(306). By putting transitivity into action, one can encode her/his experience of
processing as being important in the transmission of information (ideational).

Part of the ideational function, which concerns with the transmission of

ideas is transitivity. Its function is that of representing processes or experiences
like actions, events, processes of consciousness, and relations that covers “all
phenomena and anything that can be expressed by a verb: event, whether physical
or not, state, or relations” [6;159]. Halliday furthers that the processes expressed
through language represent our conception of the world.

Transitivity specifies the different types of processes that are recognized in

the language and the structures by which they are expressed. In the transitivity
system, the central participant roles are actor and goal, and the interest is on
whether or not the process is directed by the actor towards a goal. Transitivity
structure can be characterized as agent + process + goal configuration that
represents the function of language expressing the speaker’s experience of the
external world or his own internal world. Furthermore, these three components are
specified through choices in the transitivity system, which construes the world of
experience into a manageable set of process types. Each process type provides its
own model or schema for construing a particular domain of experience [8].
 The importance of the analysis of sentence meanings lies in the fact that
agency, state, and process seem to be basic categories in terms of which human
beings present the world to themselves through language [13;74]. One thinks of
the world firstly and then speaks and writes about it. Halliday [5;101] furthers: Our
most power conception of reality is that consists of “going-on”. of doing,
happening, feeling, being these goings-on are sorted out in the semantic system of
the language, and expressed through the grammar of the clause . . . the clause
evolved simultaneously in another grammatical function expressing the reflective,
experiential aspects of meaning. This . . . is the system of TRANSITIVITY.
Transitivity specifies the different types of process that are recognized in the
language, and the structures by which they are expressed. In other words,
transitivity of clauses reflects a particular world-view or ideology implied in the
text adopting the effect of the situation on linguistic behavior. Along with this
trend, Fowler [13;27]. mentions that linguistic codes do not reflect reality
neutrally; they interpret, organize, and classify the subjects of discourse. They also
embody theories of how the world is arranged: world-views or ideologies.

Through writing about narratives, Henry James (1843-1916) once posed a

pair of rhetorical questions: “what is character but the determination of incident?”
“What is incident but the illustration of the character?” Consequently, the
integration of the “character” and “incident” as a formula serves as a template for
analysis of transitivity in the narrative as being concerned with transaction of
events and actions. This mode refers to the way character is developed through and
by semantic processes and participants embodied in narrative discourse. Character
may, for instance, be determined by degree of influence on narrative incidents, by
degree of active involvement in the momentum of the plot [14;74]. In Simpson’s
opinion, Halliday argues that the developments in the incidents are reflected in the
character and they are mirrored in transitivity choices as transition of information
required in decoding producer’s mind-style (75).
 In essence, the process is realized by the verb of the clause whereas the
participants by the noun phrases of the same clause; adjectival and prepositional
phrases realize the circumstances providing information about “how, when, where”
the action or process is done. The participants are necessarily humans or even
animate; therefore, Halliday [6;160] propounds the term “participant entities” to be
more accurate.

Halliday (1994) proposes seven types of processes according to which the

participants are labelled as cited below:

a) Material Processes

They are those in which something is done, expressed by action verbs, e.g.
eat, go, give etc. This type requires two participants (except for the transferring
process that requires three participants): Actor (the subject) and Goal (logical
direct object) [15;70]. Such processes also include four kinds: “doing”,
“happening”, “causing” and “transferring”. According to Downing and Lock
[16;128] in the processes of “doing”, the action either extends to another
participant or does not depend on the verb. The animate actor is called Agent,
while the inanimate one is called Force. To Downing and Lock too, in the process
of “transferring”, an Agent transfers an Affected participant to either a Recipient or
Beneficiary. They also add that in the processes of “happening” the Affected
undergoes the happening.

b) Mental Processes

They are processes of feeling, thinking and perceiving, viewed as

internalized process in contrast to externalized ones of doing. This type requires:
subject as a Sensor or Experiencer and object as a Phenomenon [8;117]. Mental
processes, per se, can be classified into three kinds: of cognition (e.g. verbs of
thinking, knowing, to name but few), of affection (verbs of liking, loving, and
others), and perception (verbs of seeing, smelling, etc.). Grammatically, the Sensor
can be recognized according to the voice: it is agent-sensor if the sentence is active
voice and affected-sensor if it is passive one (118).

c) Relational Processes

They are concerned with the processes of being in the world of abstract
relations, being in two categories: A. Attributive Process: y is an attribute of X B.
Identifying Process: y is identity of X in the attributive one, the logical subject is
called “Carrier” and the object is “Attributive” whereas in identifying processes the
subject is “Identified” and the object is “Identifying” [7;115]. More specifically,
Downing and Lock [16;144] assert that the Attributive processes are of three-kind
relations: Attributive, Circumstantial, and Possessive. In possessive structures the
participants are known as the Possessor and the Possessed. In Identifying process
the Identified is also called the Token and the Identifying is also called Identifier or
Value or vice-versa.

d) Behavioral Processes.

They refer to physiological and psychological like breathing, coughing,

smiling . . . etc. They represent outer manifestations of inner workings, the acting
out of processes of consciousness and psychological states [6;55]. Covertly, the
one participant is called Behaver. According to the context in which they occur, the
verbs also include two kinds of processes: involuntary (if they are followed by
adverbs) and volitional (if they are not).

e) Verbal Processes

They are of saying as being concerned with expressing the relationship

between ideas constructed human consciousness and the ideas enacted in a form of
language [8;107]. According to Halliday [9;140], this type of process includes the
subject “Sayer”, Verb- age- the message directed to the object, and the object
“Target” which is also called the Said, (a reported statement, a reported questioner
a reported directive (order, request, etc.) If the clause includes the verb “tell” a
Recipient, the Addressee, should be added to the structure [16;151].
 f) Existential Processes

They are related to the existence of entities. The participant which is

expressed to exist is called Existent, being any kind of entity like human, thing
abstraction, (countable and uncountable), or event. To Downing and Lock, the
structures used tend to specify the quantification and/or the location of something.
In most cases, the existential there is employed in the structures (153).

g) Meteorological Processes

They are limited to the weather, starting with empty (it) [17;3].

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) hold that the grammar sets up a discontinuity
between the outer and inner experiences: it distinguishes rather clearly between
outer experience, the processes of the external world, and inner experience, the
processes of consciousness. The grammatical categories are those of material
process clauses and mental process clauses, as illustrated by I’m having a shower
and I don’t want a shower. For instance, you produce so much money is a
‘material’ clause, construing the outer experience of the creation of a commodity,
but I was fascinated by it is a ‘mental’ one, construing the inner experience of an
emotion. Or, to construct a contrastive pair, the machine is producing (sorting,
destroying) money is ‘material’, whereas people love (hate, want) money is
‘mental’. In addition to material and mental processes — the outer and inner
aspects of our experience, a third component has to be supplied, before this can
become a coherent theory of experience [8;199].

We learn to generalize — to relate one fragment of experience to another:

this is the same as that, this is a kind of the other. Here, the grammar recognizes
processes of a third type, those of identifying and classifying; we call these
relational process clauses, as in usually means mostly. For instance, every fourth
African is a Nigerian is a classifying ‘relational’ clause and the three major groups
in the nation are the Yoruba in the southwest, the Ibo in the southeast, and the
Hausa, finally, in the north is an identifying one.
 Material, mental and relational processes are the main types of process in the
English transitivity system. But we also find further categories located at the three
boundaries; not so clearly set apart, but nevertheless recognizable in the grammar
as intermediate between the different pairs — sharing some features of each, and
thus acquiring a character of their own. On the borderline between ‘material’ and
‘mental’ are the behavioral processes: those that represent the outer manifestations
of inner workings, the acting out of processes of consciousness (e.g. people are
laughing) and physiological states (e.g. they were sleeping). On the borderline of
‘mental’ and ‘relational’ is the category of verbal processes: symbolic relationships
constructed in human consciousness and enacted in the form of language, like
saying and meaning (e.g. the ‘verbal’ clause we say, introducing a report of what
was said: that every fourth African is a Nigerian). And on the borderline between
the ‘relational’ and the ‘material’ are the processes concerned with existence, the
existential, by which phenomena of all kinds are simply recognized to ‘be’ — to
exist, or to happen (e.g. today there’s Christianity in the south).
 CHAPTERII. The analysis of style and transitivity
2.1. Developments in the analysis of style and transitivity
Stylists have frequently resorted to the transitivity paradigm in their
examinations of language, particularly narrative text, over the years. M. A. K.
Halliday (1971), the inventor of the very paradigm of transitivity that drives this
strand, undertook one particular study, which is recognized as one of the essential
early essays in modern stylistics. Halliday applies the paradigm to William
Golding's novel The Inheritors in that now-classic study, exploring, among other
things, the linguistic patterns that encode the different Neanderthal peoples who
occupy the story. While the majority of the work is told from the perspective of
Lok, one of a primitive group of Neanderthals, Lok and his people are eventually
replaced by a more advanced tribe. Halliday contends that transitivity choices
reflect this change. Lok's tribe's behavior is represented as discontinuous and
relatively aimless, with physical action rarely affecting items in the surrounding
area. In more concrete terms, 'Lok language' is distinguished by material processes
that realize an Actor element but no Goal element, as in clauses such as 'A stick
rose upright' or 'The bushes twitched.' Significantly, these Goal-less processes
make the specified action appear self-generated, even though it is evident from the
narrative context that it is brought about by the external agency of Lok's foes.
Lok's failure to see a 'joined up' world of actions and events is thus conveyed
through systematic transitivity choices, whereas no such failure in understanding is
embodied by the transitivity patterns of the more advanced tribe, whose way of
configuring the world is, according to Halliday, more similar to our own.

Halliday's research is significant in several ways. It demonstrates the utility

of stylistic analysis as a method of investigating both literature and language by
employing narrative discourse as a test site for a certain model of language. It also
demonstrates how stylisticians' intuitions and hunches about a text can be studied
methodically and rigorously utilizing a retrievable analytical procedure. That is not
to suggest that Halliday's groundbreaking analysis was without flaws or that it was
without controversy in terms of scholarly reception. By claiming that the text's
linguistic structure reflects its meaning as discourse, Halliday makes a
very'mimetic' assumption about the transitivity model's explanatory ability. For
example, he claims that the 'Lok language' is a "good account of the life of the
Neanderthal man" [6;350]. Stanley Fish's well-known critique of stylistics,
facetiously titled 'What is stylistics and why are they saying such nasty things
about it?', which followed Halliday's analysis, was prompted by the methodologies
used in his study, and this feeling in particular. Although this is not the place to go
into depth about that discussion, Fish's critique continues to elicit rebuttals from
stylisticians to this day, and the polemic has been influential in shaping how
stylisticians think about the relationships between analysis and interpretation.

Kennedy utilized the transitivity model to investigate a significant passage

from Joseph Conrad's work The Secret Agent several years after Halliday's
investigation [7;15]. Mrs Verloc, who has just learnt that her husband was
implicated in the death of her brother Stevie, kills a sitting Mr Verloc with a
carving knife in the story's climax moment. The manner in which Mr Verloc's
death is depicted is of particular importance to Kennedy. For example, it is notable
that no mental processes are given to Mrs Verloc in almost 400 words of narrative
description, providing little if any indication of what this character feels, thinks, or
experiences. Furthermore, while one would expect Mrs Verloc to be involved in
some material processes – after all, she is the 'doer' of the killing – very few of the
activities that are realized are Goal-directed. Instead, goal-less patterns such as'she
started forward...','she had passed on towards the sofa...' are popular. Mrs Verloc is
thus portrayed as a character whose activities appear to be done without thought
and without directly affecting the entities (including her husband) around her.

Mr Verloc's transitivity pattern is somewhat different. He takes part in a few

non-Goal directed material operations, such as "He waited..." or "He was resting
on his back..." In fact, some of these sequences, such as 'He stared at the ceiling,'
would be categorized as behavioral processes in the latter version of the transitivity
model since they tend to straddle the interface between material and mental
processes. However, the vast majority of the processes attributed to Verloc are full-
fledged mental processes in which he plays the position of Sensor and usually
includes a Phenomenon element. The following patterns are common: 'Mr Verloc
heard the creaky board in the floor.' 'He saw the moving shadow of an arm partially
on the ceiling and partly on the wall.' 'Mr Verloc [identified] the limb and the
weapon.' Thus, Verloc is portrayed as someone who is acutely aware of everything
going on around him, but who, despite his mental acuity, is unable to initiate the
action required to avoid his own death. His wife, on the other hand, is portrayed as
an insensate person whose bodily activities rarely influence any external things un
her environment.

So the question that these two different characterisations-in-transitivity raise

is, how does Mr Verloc come to be dead? Conrad's one strategy is to simply move
the tale ahead by employing material processes with non-human actors. The phrase
'the carving knife had vanished' is extremely telling in this regard. A comparable
strategy is the use of the passive, which allows the removal of any human Actor
who may be responsible for a process: 'The knife was already embedded in his
breast,' for example. So, while Mrs Verloc may be the murderer of Mr Verloc in
the strictest sense, it is not what Conrad's text urges us to see.

Conrad also adopts a style method known as meronymic agency, which

merges the interests of both Kennedy and Halliday. Meronymic agency, a rather
misleading phrase in that it is informed by the idea of'metonymy' (A11), entails the
part'standing for' the whole in such a way that a human body part, rather than a
whole person, is placed in the role of an Actor, Sensor, Sayer, and so on. This
technique differs from the default position, known as holonymic agency, in which
the participant role is taken by an entire person. Although not expressly stated in
either publication, much of what Mrs. Verloc and most of what Lok do is carried
out through the intercession of their body parts. For example, in the text, it is Mrs
Verloc's hand, never 'Mrs Verloc,' that acts in important Goal-directed actions such
as 'her right hand brushed lightly the end of the table' and 'a clenched fist [was]
gripping a cutting knife.' Lok's nose and ears, on the other hand, appear to do the
most of the work for him: 'his nose scented this item,' 'his ears twitched,' and so on.
Despite the fact that various meronyms perform diverse stylistic functions in their
separate narrative settings, this type of agency is a repeating trait in the transitivity
profile of many types of prose fiction. A character's (literal) disembodiment
frequently makes what they do, say, or think appear automatic, cut off from
conscious intervention. It can also be used to distinguish the character from other
characters who are portrayed in holonymic words. Importantly, the approach
occasionally associates a writing style with a specific literary genre.
 2.2. Applying Transitivity System on Hughes’s Poems

Transitivity has been a reliable tool in stylistics in the sense that it discovers
how the producer encodes linguistic choices non-neutrally. Such choices will be so
obvious through analyzing Hughes’s early poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

An Advocate of Negritude Langston Hughes (1902-1967) has been

appreciated by the critics as the brilliant figure who called for the rights of the
blacks in America. He intends to severely criticize the whites as being oppressive
and inequitable toward the Negroes. His writings, whether novels or poems, reflect
the harsh experience of the Negroes who lived in the white American society. He
also depicts them as the victims of discrimination who are deprived from the
simplest rights of living. Thus, he is the advocate of “the ideology of blackness” as
Raymond F. Betts states [6;9]. The experience of the blacks began when the white
slaveholders realized that the Africans were brought to America in order to set off
the huge mission of the constrained work of people, relying on the difference
among races as the essence of their realization. They considered the bondage as a
solution for the Negroes who were given inferiority. [18;2]. Moreover, the fact that
the scientific progress which was initiated during the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries relegated the blacks’ status. To Hussein, Charles Darwin’s
theory of evolution showed that the blacks were unable to take part in the
biological, social and cultural evolution. Thus, the anthropologists proved, on this
basis, that the Negroes were inferior race since their physical shape was similar to
the man-ape (3). Hughes’s unique experience was the reason of the success of his
literary career. He devoted his life to call for the rights of the blacks whose utmost
ambitions were self-realization and freedom. Through his memorable poems, he
images their longing for proving their culture as a highbred and immemorial Afro-
American people not inferior slaves. The emergence of such a daring voice, the
history of the Negroes witnessed a watershed toward attaining freedom and
independence. Furthermore, Hughes has been carefully selected for his notable
poetic voice through which he conveys his issue to the world. In many of his
poems, he depicts peoples’ lives vividly as impaired by the racial discrimination.
The main function of his poems is to attract the reader’s attention to the Afro-
American wretched state in America. They reveal his awareness “of the strong
thematic philosophical, and stylistic links between his poetry and Negritude
literary canons” [19;88]. Hughes’s early poetry is written with spontaneous mood
and simple Wordsworthian poetic diction to be read and understood by the public.
He believes that lofty poetic diction should be eschewed because it does not suit to
embody the poet’s real experience to be felt and coexisted. Indeed, his early poetry
mirrors such a pure experience he got through and makes his voice the
representative of the Negroes to the world. Besides, Charles believes that Hughes’s
poetic process has been evolved through two steps: the rejection of the negative
image of the blacks in western societies, and the assumption of a positive image.
This Negritude motif of racial and cultural identity is one of the underpinnings of
Langston Hughes’s poetry which he establishes at the very start of his career.

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is one of the early poems written by

Langston Hughes in 1921. In this poem, Hughes employs various processes to
describe his connection to his African roots, identity, and freedom through the
poetic voice. Before delving into the poem analysis according to the
aforementioned processes, it is essential to shed light on the title itself. The title is
applicable to the Mental Processes because of the verb “Speaks” which is written
in the present tense to signify a current event or a revolutionary moment. The
Sayer is “Negro” and the Target is “Rivers”. The word “Negro” is also a reference
to the black community. Altogether, the title shows the close-fitting relationship
between the Negro’s soul and the rivers expressed by the verbiage. It is also a
reference to the Negro’s knowledge of these rivers and what they represent for
him. Therefore, Hughes’s ideology will be explored in various processes.

2.2.1 Material Processes

 Line five, “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young”, (5) shows
“bathed” as an action verb. The Actor is “I” and there is no Goal because the verb
is intransitive here. In addition, “in the Euphrates when dawns were young”, is
regarded as Circumstance: place and time. Moreover, the speaker refers timelessly
to his black history being transferred to the Middle East. The indication to
Euphrates as one of the two great rivers beside Tigris in Mesopotamia is a source
of pride to the speaker who at least lived nearby such a fertile soil [that] allowed its
people not merely to survive, but to flourish, and western civilization began here
along with western writing. Besides, according to Muslims, Jews, and Christians,
the Garden of Eden existed nearby [20;204]. The first clause of line six, “I built my
hut near the Congo” (6) includes three participants linked by the action verb,
“built”. “I” is Actor, “my hut” is Goal, while “near the Congo” is Circumstance.
The speaker then moves to another river in the heart of Africa being, like all rivers,
a sign for human existence and the cradle of civilization. The second clause in line
seven, “and raised the pyramids above it”, (7) has the implicit Actor “I” to the verb
“raised”. The Goal is “the pyramids” and the Circumstance is “above it”. Although
the reference to the Nile has the same significance as the previous rivers, it is also a
hint to Negroes’ slavery as being exploited in building the pyramids. Altogether,
the clauses express “doing” process.

2.2.2. Mental Processes

Line one, “I’ve known rivers” (1) conveys the cognition process. This is due
to the verb “known”. So, the Sensor, or rather, the agent-sensor is “I” and the
Phenomenon is the “rivers”. By employing “I”, Hughes incarnates not only the
black race, but also the whole human one. Besides, he shows that the Sensor has a
knowledge of rivers. In line two, “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older
than the flow of human blood in human veins” (2) the same initial clause is
repeated for emphasis, and further description and comparison are annexed to the
same line and the following one. In this case, “I” is the Sensor, and the
Phenomenon is “rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human
blood in human veins”. They are expressed by the verbiage, “I’ve known”. The
speaker states that rivers are as ancient as the creation of the world. Perceptively,
he makes a comparison between the flow of water in rivers and the flow of blood
in human veins. The speaker not only senses the rivers as a natural phenomenon,
but also an integral part of his life. The first clause in line seven, “I looked upon
the Nile”, (7) shows the perception process in which the verb “looked” links the
Sensor, “I” to the Phenomenon, “upon the Nile”.

Line eight and nine, “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe
Lincoln/went down to New Orleans”, are expressed in the perception process too
because of the verb “heard”. The Sensor is “I” and the Phenomenon is “the singing
of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln/went down to New Orleans” (8-9). Similarly,
“The magical transformation of the Mississippi from mud to gold by the sun’s
radiance is mirrored in the transformation of slaves into free men by Lincoln’s
Proclamation” [20;199].

The second part of line ten which continues to line eleven, “and I’ve seen its
muddy/bosom turn all golden in the sunset” (10-11) include “perception” process
because of the verb “ve seen”. The Sensor is “I” and the Phenomenon is “its
muddy/bosom turn all golden in the sunset”. As a result, it is believed that the
more the rivers deepen with time and their water flow, the more the black soul
endure the hardships. As an eyewitness to different civilizations in their good and
bad conditions, the black man will survive even in America.

2.2.3. Relational Processes

In line four, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”, (4) one may notice
the clear indication to such a process through the use of the dynamic verb of
transition, “grown”. The Carrier in this case is “My soul” and the Attribute is
“deep like the rivers”. To be more specific, the Attribute “exists” as the result of
the process and can be called the “Resulting Attribute” [20;145]. The speaker
wants to say that he is deep-rooted in this land just like the deep rivers, and not
being a marginalized one. The relationship between the soul and the rivers appears
to be timeless, pre-existing, and longer than human memory. Likewise, the rivers
are part of God’s body, and participate in his immortality. They are the earthly
analogues of eternity: deep, continuous, mysterious. They are named in the order
of their association with black history. The black man has drunk of their life-giving
essences, and thereby borrowed their immortality. He and the rivers have become
one (Jemie1976, Modern).

2.2.4. Behavioral Processes

There is no reference to such a process within the poem.

2.2.5. Verbal Processes

The second clause of line six, “and it lulled me to sleep”, (6) shows such a
process through the verb “lulled”. The Sayer in this case is “it” - a reference to the
Congo River and at the same time it is a personification of the mother’s figure the
Recipient is “me”, and to sleep” is the Said. However, the Sayer should be animate
while in this case it is inanimate. The poet deliberately employs such a technique
to equate the river with the mother being a source of origin, compassion, and
belongingness.

2.2.6. Existential Processes

There is no reference to such a process in the poem. Besides, line eleven is

the same as line one, and the last line is the same as line four. Such repetitions are
so important that they show the poem’s cyclical and musical tones. It is noteworthy
that Hughes employs a “performative language” hence, “The Negro Speaks of
Rivers” not only echoes the incantatory orality of pre-literate African cultures, but
it also mirrors the incantatory orality of contemporary African American worship
services, prayers, and songs [21;207].

2.2.7. Metrological Processes

There is no reference to such processes in the poem.

 Conclusion
When discussing narrative, American novelist Henry James once presented
two rhetorical questions: 'What is character but the determination of incident?'
What is an occurrence but a manifestation of character?' The integration of
'character' and 'event' may appear to be an odd alignment at first view, but deeper
examination reveals that James' formula serves as a pattern for the investigation of
transitivity in narrative. It is proposed that the transmission of 'actions and
happenings' is a primary mechanism of narrative characterisation. This mode
relates to the development of character through and through the semantic processes
and participation roles embodied in narrative discourse. Character can be assessed,
for example, by the degree of effect on narrative incidents or the degree of active
involvement in the plot's forward momentum. Character may also be determined
by detachment from narrative incident, such as presenting an individual as a
passive witness of the events unfolding around them. As previously stated, the
linguistic framework that incorporates this feature of narrative organization is
transitivity, and this unit will examine two of the different uses of this model in
narrative stylistics.

With the purpose of exploring the relationship between linguistic structures

and socially constructed meaning in a literary text, a lexico - grammatical analysis
has been performed on the short novel, the Animal Farm, in line with Halliday’s
Systemic Functional Grammar. The ideational analysis relates to “who initiates,
what kinds of actions” and “who responds to those actions, and how”. It follows
from the ideational analysis that the writer predominantly made use of material
processes, which was quite revealing in terms of the power relations in the text.
Most of the characters were identified as the least powerful characters by
positioning themselves as Actor more frequently; while the most power was in the
hands of the characters who were not supposed to be Actor. Indeed, the voice of
these participants was heard by means of verbal processes in discourse. The high
frequency of the material process types revealed that they certainly did what they
were told to; in other words, their persuasion was expressed through acting upon
what they were asked to. In our everyday lives, the language we encounter can
influence our perceptions and attitudes with regards to “people, places and events
and therefore becomes a potentially powerful site for the dominance of mind”.
With persuasive stories it is found that writers manipulate the reader to interpret
information in certain ways. Texts are not simply there but are infused with
ideologies and agendas. The choices writers make while writing stories can help
covertly promote meanings related to their own agendas. The above analysis shows
that Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics is a potent tool for uncovering the
stratagems that writers draw on to convince us of their points of view. An
emphasis on the material and verbal process types alone can uncover, among other
things, how the audience is positioned to take a positive or negative view of the
participants in a story. According to Goatly, “the linguistic analysis will reveal
latent patterns which escape an ordinary meaning”, and “critical reading can
benefit greatly from such analyses, precisely because it brings to light what is
ordinarily latent or hidden”.

Now that “dealing with and understanding the persuasive and manipulative
use of language is a major need in the contemporary world”, it is a must for both
students and teachers as efficient readers to be able to undertake a critical discourse
analysis effectively. It is also advocated that materials writers need detailed
analyses of the rhetorical and linguistic organization of the tasks (that need to be
taught) if they are not to be over-reliant on their own intuition. Therefore,
functional text analysis can help them identify a range of different and suitable
types of texts for language instruction as “there has been a misguided

overemphasis” on the teaching of specific genres.

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