A Transitivity Study Of Scarlett’s Value Reconstruction In The Movie Gone With The Wind

Halliday’s Transitivity System in Functional Grammar is an important theory inlinguistics. In the past few years, many scholars have applied Transitivity System tofunctional discourse analysis, most of which have been restricted to language characteristicsof different kinds of discourses, the personality of characters, the relationship betweendifferent social classes, and character’s inner world, etc. However, less attention has been paidto the appreciation of the relation between transitivity patterning and characters’ valuereconstruction. Also, these researches try to apply transitivity system to the analyses of noveldiscourse, business letter discourse, essay discourse, news discourses, advertisementdiscourse, EST discourse, and fairy tale discourse. But there are few researches attempting toapply transitivity system to the analysis of movie discourse. Therefore, this thesis does atentative research in this field, aiming to show how transitivity analysis helps to understandthe deeper meaning implied in the movie discourse and prove the applicability of transitivitysystem in movie discourse analysis.This thesis attempts to apply transitivity system to the study of the heroine Scarlett’svalue reconstruction in the movie Gone with the Wind by analyzing the lines of Scarlett in thismovie. To begin with, the chosen lines are divided into three parts in accordance with theprogression of the civil war: the antebellum years, the civil war period and the postwar time.Then, six types of transitivity processes (material processes, mental processes, relationalprocesses, behavioral processes, verbal processes and existential processes) of the chosenclauses in each part are analyzed by quantitative analysis method as well as qualitative anddescriptive analysis method, with the help of tables of process analysis. Finally, Scarlett’svalue reconstruction in the movie is reflected by the language pattern of these “processes”.The results show that Scarlett’s value reconstruction is revealed in three aspects. For thevalue reconstruction of her life style, Scarlett experiences the change from a spoiled innocentgirl to a brave, indomitable and realistic woman; as for Scarlett’s economy valuereconstruction, she is able to abandon the plantation economy in the old south to beginrunning a business; in regard to her marriage value reconstruction, Scarlett finally goes afterthe marriage based on true love rather than the idealistic love. Based on the transitivity system, this thesis offers a new insight into interpreting Scarlett’s value reconstruction in the movieGone with the Wind by exploring the linguistic choice of the movie discourse.