Transitivity Analysis of the Short Story “The Happy Prince” Written by Oscar Wilde

Abstract

The present study investigates how the writer has established different characters in the story with the choice of linguistic features. For this purpose the data were taken from the famous short story titled “The Happy Prince” written by an Irish writer Oscar Wilde. The researcher applied the systemic functional linguistic theory presented by Halliday for transitivity analysis of the text. The text was manually analysed by the researcher. All the processes, participants and circumstances were recognized from the whole text. They were arranged in the form of tables and charts. The results were discussed in the qualitative method of research. The results show that three types of process i.e. material (43.41%), relational (20.26%) and verbal (17.04%) were predominant in the whole text. The highest dominance of the material process shows that the writer has created dynamic and tangible actions in the text. Similarly circumstances of location i.e. place (52%) and time (20%) were dominant in the whole text. The significance of the study was also discussed in the educational perspective.

Transitivity Analysis: A Study of Protagonist’s Identity Shift in Short Story ‘Bingo’ Written in the Perspective of Dhaka Fall 1971

“…(2018) utilized transitivity model to analyze linguistic choices by main characters of 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' by Mohsin Hamid. Similarly, Ahmad (2019) applied transitivity model to investigate the linguistic choices of the characters portrayed in 'The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Some other researchers like Cunanan (2011), Song (2013), Mehmood et al (2014), have also applied transitivity model to their research work and they have declared it a wonderful angle of qualitative linguistic investigation.…”

“…The application of transitivity model has revolutionized the field of qualitative research (Ahmad, 2019;Cunnan, 2011;Mehmood et al 2014;Song, 2013). The model helped elaborate meanings in fiction and non-fiction text.…”

A Transitivity Analysis of the Character's Actions in Joseph Jacobs's Fairy Tales

“…There have been a number of scholars investigating short stories in terms of transitivity processes and the level of language that results in the main characters' characterization (Nurhayati, 2018), the themes of the short story (Halima, 2019), the use of simple and clear language (Hodrmentová, 2008). Through the six types of transitivity process, it can discover the typical actions of various characters in English Fairy Tales (Ahmad, 2019). Song (2013) stated that the technique of process performed well in identifying the themes of a short story.…”

“…The previous studies related to the objective of this study concentrate on the perspective of criticism and the intrinsic aspect purposes of a short story; for example, Halima (2019), who analyzed "He" by Katherine Anne Porter, Song (2013) in his study "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, which uses transitivity in presenting the theme of short stories chosen, and Ahmad (2019) that used the systemic functional linguistics theory to describe the most processed applied in "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde. Hodrmentová (2008) employs the same object, which is "English Fairy Tales" by Joseph Jacobs, yet a concern in a different field with this study.…”

“…There are numerous studies that employed a similar research scope compared to this study, that is, transitivity analysis on characters (Ahmad, 2019;Hassan et al, 2015;Nugraha & Mahdi, 2020;Nurhayati, 2018). Initially, in 2015, research was done by Hassan et al (2015) to examine the characterization of the protagonist of the short story Clay by J. Joyce.…”