The Transitivity System And Its Stylistic Effects

The Middle Eastern Bazaar and The Libido for the Ugly are selected from Advanced English(the second edition)with the former being an objective description and the latter being a subjective description.The transitivity system of them is relatively typical and thus makes them possess the comparability to some extent.However,currently most studies on them are conducted from teaching,genre and other aspects,lacking researches from the perspective of functional-stylistics.Therefore,the thesis comprehensively and systemically studies the transitivity and its concrete function of these two texts from the perspective of transitivity system in Systemic Functional Linguistics,with laying emphasis on comparing the differences between material processes of these two texts,analysing the stylistic effects and revealing language art of texts,which can contribute to understand and appreciate the texts more deeply for readers.At the same time,it has some enlightening significance for the writer to create similar texts and also provide a new approach to the teaching of Advanced English.Transitivity in the traditional grammar is only concerned with whether the verb has an object or not,which can not reflect the semantic difference between various verbs and clauses.Halliday's transitivity system employs the form of clauses to embody the ideational function of language,which consists of participants,process types and circumstance.And process types are divided into six categories: material process,relational procoress,mental process,verbal process,behavioural process and existential process.The results of the study: there are 118 clauses in The Middle Eastern Bazaar.Material processes take up the highest proportion which is 66.9%.Relationalprocesses take up 13.6%.Then mental processes and verbal processes take up 6.8%and 5.9% respectively.Existential processes and behavioural processes share the same proportion which is 3.4%.The massive employment of material processes vividly portrays a vibrant,ancient market and the utilization of objects and people in the bazaar as the subjects can show the objectivity of the author,which thus leads to the lack of other process types.There are totally 157 clauses in The Libido for the Ugly.Relational processes account for the highest proportion which is 36.9%.Following closely are material processes which is 34.4%.Then mental processes and existential processes account for 14.6% and 11.5% respectively.Verbal processes and behavioural processes take up the same proportion which is 1.3%.The increasing of relational processes,mental processes and existential processes fully illustrates the subjectivity of the author and also depicts the extremely hideous and disgusting image of the county,which then attacks the sick mentality of Americans.From verbs in material processes,The Middle Eastern Bazaar mostly employs dynamic,concrete and objective verbs.However,The Libido for the Ugly often utilizes static,abstract verbs with strong subjectivity.Therefore,it can reflect that although both are descriptive texts,the different angles of description can also reflect different styles of the author.The thesis studies the transitivity system and its function as well as the differences in the verbs in terms of material processes of two texts,which analyses their stylistic effects and reveals language art of texts and the theme from functional-stylistics perspective,which aims to help readers to improve their ability of stylistic analysis,discourse appreciation and critical thinking,and also has great enlightening significance in the teaching of texts in Advanced English.