A Study Of Projection In Charlotte’s Web

As a complex language phenomenon, projection has attracted more and more attentionfrom scholars. Previous studies on projection mainly focus on fictions, academic papers andnews report, but seldom touch upon children’s literature. Projection plays an important role inchildren’s literature and can make the story more vivid and simple. Charlotte’s Web, as aclassic work of children’s literature written by Elwyn Brooks White in1952, has receivedsustained attention since its publication.Projection theory was first put forward by Halliday in the early1990s. According toHalliday (1994), projection is concerned with the logical-semantic relationship betweenclauses in a clause complex, in which a clause comes to function not as a direct representationof a (non-linguistic) experience but as a representation of a (linguistic) representation.Projection involves three basic sub-types: paratactic projection, hypotactic projection andembedded projection. The author makes an analysis of projection clause complexes inCharlotte’s Web from the perspectives of the three metafunctions of language within theframework of Systemic Functional Grammar. It aims to find out the distribution of projectionin Charlotte’s Web and illustrate how the ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings arerealized through the means of projection. Through qualitative and quantitative approaches, thepresent research reveals the following findings:(1) By analyzing the distribution of three basic types of projection in Charlotte’s Web, itcan be found that paratactic projection (86.20%) takes up the largest proportion andhypotactic projection (10.58%) occupies the second largest proportion. Embedded projection(3.22%) takes up an extremely low proportion in the total projection clause complexes.Paratactic projection can make the story easy to understand.(2) By analyzing projection clause complexes from the perspective of the ideationalmetafunction, it can be found that verbal projections (86.20%) are favored over mentalprojections (13.80%) in Charlotte’s Web, which corresponds to the features of children’sliterature. Verbal projections can keep the speaker’s original words and make the story more vivid as if the characters in Charlotte’s Web can talk with readers directly. Mental projectionsare applied to show characters’ feelings and thoughts.(3) By analyzing projection clause complexes from the perspective of the interpersonalmetafunction, the author finds that proposition projections (64.46%) occupy a largerproportion than proposal projections (35.54%). Mood and modality are mainly used to realizeinterpersonal meaning.(4) By analyzing projection clause complexes from the perspective of the textualmetafunction, the author finds that the simple theme projection (77.38%) in Charlotte’s Weboccupies a larger proportion. Simple theme projection is used to make the story much easierto understand. Constant thematic progression pattern (61.8%) is favored than derived (30.10%)and simple liner (8.10%) thematic progression, which is characterized by a series ofstatements with one theme but different rhemes. Constant thematic progression pattern ismuch more common in Charlotte’s Web because Children prefer the story going around onesingle subject rather than constantly changing subjects.