Literary Figure’s Life Outlook Evolution From The Perspective Of Transitivity System

Transitivity system is a semantic system, which categorizes experience through grammar. Its role is to divide what we saw, heard and did in the real world into several processes, and to explain the participant and circumstantial element which are closely interrelated to these processes. Transitivity system reflects the ideational function of language intensively, and it is an important theory of Halliday’s Functional Grammar.Since the 1970 s, many scholars have attempted to use transitivity system in literary discourse analysis. Their studies focused on the analysis of figures’ character, image creation and mode of thinking, theme of works, relationships between different social classes, etc. This thesis tried to use the six processes of transitivity system to analyze the life outlook and its evolution of Scarlett, who is the heroine of Gone with the Wind. And this thesis centered on the following three research questions: firstly, how effective and feasible is transitivity system in analyzing literary figure’s life outlook evolution? Secondly,how is transitivity system used to reveal literary figure’s life outlook evolution? Thirdly,what is the distribution feature of the six transitivity processes in revealing literary figure’s life outlook evolution?This study is launched according to the following steps. First of all, the author searched research data which are related to Scarlett from Beijing Language and Culture University Chinese Corpus(BCC), and deleted the repeated data. Then, according to the development of the plot, the data were divided into three parts: before the Civil War, during the Civil War and after the Civil War. Next, the author used the six processes of transitivity system to analyze the data, and presented analysis processes and results by tables respectively. Finally, the author explained Scarlett’s life outlook and its evolution process in terms of the analysis results.The results of this study indicated that transitivity system can be used to analyze Scarlett’s life outlook evolution and its evolution process: her attitude to love has shifted from idealism and optimism to unreality and uncertainty, and then to awareness of the true meaning of love. As for attitude to marriage, Scarlett’s three marriages are based onrevenge, money and satisfy her vanity respectively, rather than love-based. In terms of attitude to war, Scarlett’s attitude has experienced processes from hating the war to caring about the war, then to facing the war bravely and struggling to survive in the difficult circumstances after the war. Experiencing the American Civil War, Scarlett has shifted from enjoying life and taking things as they are to great evolution in life outlook; she grows mature gradually, and grows up to be a strong, brave and unyielding woman.This study proved that transitivity system contributes to revealing literary figure’s life outlook evolution. It is a powerful tool for analyzing literary figure’s life outlook evolution,and it is effective and feasible in literary discourse analysis.