Construing Literary Discourse: Exploring the point of view through the experiential world in the Homeboy

Author(s) : Huma Nayyar

Abstract:

This paper explores the function of linguistic choices in literary text “Homeboy” (2010) that express the underlying ideology and point of view of the writer H.M. Naqvi. Halliday’s model of transitivity: a lexico-grammatical theory (Halliday, 1985) has been employed for investigation and analysis of these linguistic choices in this literary piece of art. This analysis has proved that patterns of linguistic choices that are used inside and across the texts build the ideological foundation of this selected text under investigation. The model of transitivity (Halliday, 1985) which demonstrates the participants, processes and circumstances with cline of dynamism as 6- band scale (Thompson, 2009) helps the researcher to find the ideologies behind the linguistic choices. Thompson’s (2009) Transitivity ‘Concordance’ or the tabulation of all the participants for the purpose of analysis with reference to the cline of dynamism has been incorporated in the analysis of this research work. The data is taken from the literary text-book Homeboy (2010) that is based on the theme of phobia prevalent in Muslim’s mind. The Pakistani writer assigned lesser transitivity roles but more dynamic roles to the Americans, while the more transitivity roles and lesser dynamic roles are assigned to the Muslims, the crux of the findings. It gives the ideology that Americans are the most influential and strong population in the American surrounding, while Muslims is the affected in America.
Key words: Systemic Functional Linguistics; Ideology; Transitivity; Concordances; Cline of Dynamism