An Analysis Of The Feminist Features In A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Perspective Of Transitivity

The systemic functional grammar believes that language is the product of human social activities.As the tool of human communication,it undertakes various kinds of functions.Halliday(1970/1973/1985/1994/2004)proposes that there are mainly three meta-functions of language,namely t he ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function.Ideational function mainly reflects what have happened in the objective world and subjective world,the people and the objects involved in it,and the circumstantial elements related to it such as the time,location and the cause.In systemic functional grammar,transitivity is one of the expressions of ideational function,which mainly aims at analyzing different patterns of clause.Transitivity is further divided into six types:material process,which is a process of doing;mental process,which is a process of sensing;relational process,which is a process of being;behavioral process,which is a process of behaving;verbal process,which is a process of saying and existential process,which is a process of existing.Transitivity analysis is very useful and effective in discourse analysis.Thus on the theoretical basis of transitivity system,this paper intends to take the Afghan American writer Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns as the research object and to explore the feminist features embodied in the selected clauses.And three questions are to be investigated in this study:1.How do the six transitivity processes distribute in the selected excerpts?2.How do the feminist features manifested among the various selected transitivity clauses in different life stages of Mariam and Laila?3.How does the transitivity analysis of clauses indicate the two main characters Mariam's and Laila's characteristics and their transformation in the later time?Quantitative and qualitative methods are combined to analyze the selected clauses.The selected clauses are all prominent clauses which can represent characters'characteristics and personality.After dividing these clauses into six transitivity types,qualitative and descriptive analysis will be presented.Firstly,the study finds that 202 selected clauses in the novel have covered all the six transitivity processes,in which Material processes(101)rank first,Mental processes(36)rank second,and the verbal processes third with number at 35.Thus it is obvious that these three transitivity processes are the three main and important process types in reflecting the feminist features in this novel.Then the study finds that transitivity analysis is effective in revealing the feminist features in the selected clauses,and feminism is manifested in the material,mental,verbal and behavioral processes,etc.Furthermore,it is also embodied in the specific vocabulary;the result of transitivity analysis indicates that feminism is embodied in father-daughter,mother-daughter,husband-wife relationship and the interaction between friends as well;At last,the result of transitivity analysis also reflects the transformation of the two heroines.Being suffering too much oppression and abuse,the feminist consciousness in Mariam and Laila finally awakens.They fight back and win freedom at last.The significance and value of this study are as follows:1.The transitivity analysis of the feminist features in A Thousand Splendid Suns proves that it is effective and useful to investigate the feminism by applying transitivity into practice,which further demonstrates that SFG is effective in discourse analysis.2.So far,no researchers have probed the feminist features in the novel from the perspective of transitivity,thus this paper enables to broaden the research scope of Hosseini and his novel.