A Functional Approach to Transitivity Patterns in Gimba’s “The Herdman’s Gift” and Sekula’s “Mending the Tear”
Keywords:
Systemic Functional, Transitivity, Process TypesAbstract
This paper examines the role of linguistics in textual analysis. It investigates the process types and the configurations of characters as well as their roles in Gimba’s “The Herdsman’s Gift” and Sekula’s “Mending the Tear” with a view to seeing how language resources are handled in the two texts. The linguistic data from the two texts were identified, isolated, and classified in line with the different process types that are enshrined in the transitivity patterns of text analysis. The analysis of the collected data were carried out using the functional grammatical approach and particularly basing it within the transitivity system of text analysis with a view to seeing how meanings are created and implanted in the two texts under review. The analysis revealed that the two texts make extensive use of material, mental, and verbal process types. It is however found out that while Sekula employed relational and existential process types in configuring her characters, Gimba did not overtly employ such process types and this brings out the ideological difference in the two texts. It is therefore concluded that transitivity system is important in text’s configuration for it helps in unravelling the different strands of meanings in a text.
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