An Analysis On The Theme Of The Short Story In Light Of Transitivity And Attitude

Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) has proven to be theoretically well-grounded and practically more applicable and operable linguistic study theory. Transitivity theory in Ideational Function and its application attracted more and more attention of linguists both at home and abroad. SFG theoretically defines that the Transitivity is an important semantic system to realize experience function and represents what happens in the real world via the processes of Transitivity.Appraisal Theory is the new development of the Interpersonal Meaning in SFG. The theory centers on the lexico-grammatical study in the text and utterance and evaluates stances, opinions and attitudes of language users. The research establishes a systematic theoretical framework for the study on attitudinal resources in the English language. Attitude system is the main part of the Appraisal Theory. According to Martin, Attitude concerns the values by which speakers/writers evaluate human behavior and objects and associate emotional/affective responses with participants and processes.The thesis employs Transitivity and Attitude to analyze the short story-The Story of an Hour by exploring the semantic structure and attitudinal meaning of this short story and revealing the psychological changes and interpersonal relationship of the characters to analyze the theme of the short story.In terms of the perspective of language function and by adopting descriptive-explanatory research method, the thesis analyzes the types of process, participants and circumstances of Transitivity, and analyzes Affect, Judgement and Appreciation resources in Attitude, and tries to explore the dynamic embodiment and functional meaning of processes as well as interaction between Affect, Judgement and Appreciation, revealing how Transitivity and Attitude interpret the theme.By analyzing the short story, the thesis finds that the six Transitivity Processes proposed by Halliday in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar not only represent their own forms and meanings but also carry the meanings of the other processes, which means the verbs of processes can embody dynamically one or more meanings of process in the context and by the metaphorical mechanism, by analyzing which the writer's writing intention is revealed. Attitude system explores the emotion, position, viewpoint and attitude on the lexis level within the text, and Affect, Judgement and Appreciation sub-systems of which interact with each other to represent the psychology and attitudinal meaning of characters. Transitivity analysis combines Attitude analysis to reveal the theme of the short story The Story of an Hour. This thesis makes a tentative analysis on the theme of the literary work by using the Transitivity and Attitude systems, which provides us a new perspective both on analyzing the theme of short story by employing linguistic theories and on appreciating and understanding the literary work.