Transitivity: An Application of Halliday’s Systemic-functional Grammar to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea

(Samah Abdel-Karim Ibrahim Mohammed)

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Abstract

This study aims to investigate the functional significance of transitivity in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, depending upon Halliday’s Systemic-functional Grammar (SFG). Transitivity is a set of grammatical choices made by language users to express their experiences. These goings-on are realised by the verb type in the clause. The study investigates the process types: material, mental, relational, behavioural and existential, with a particular focus on the presentation of the protagonist's inner thoughts and his conscious practices. It examines the percentage of the frequent pattern of five process types in the novel and investigates the role of transitivity model through the actions and the complex mental states of the persona. Data are analysed qualitatively using the proportion method to make up the percentage of each process type. The findings reveal that the material process is the most dominant. Second to this is the relational process. The mental process type is also significant, whereas behavioural and existential process types represent only a slight portion of the texture of the novel. The dominance of material processes can justify the critics’ arguments on the novel’s dynamism and the old man’s heroism represented in his struggle with the giant marlin. So, the study can be an attempt to explore how the theme of the novel is expressed by the author’s linguistic choices.

KEYWORDS
behavioural, existential, material, mental, process type

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References

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