Analysis of Linguistic Choices in Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat

Muhammad Shafqat Ullah, Hafiz Muhammad Qasim, Muhammad Imtiaz Shahid

Abstract

The present study contributes to the growing literature on Pakistani novels in English by exploring transitivity choices in Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat from Halliday’s (2004) systemic functional grammar (SFG) perspective. Data of the study consisted of 1158 clauses that were selected from the novel. The following techniques were used to analyse data: comprehending the selected text of the novel, splitting the text into clauses, identifying processes, participants and circumstance types and drawing the conclusion based on the analysed text. The findings of the study revealed that all types of processes were found in the novel. Among 1158 clauses, the material clauses were computed most frequent with the frequency of (566), making a proportion of (48.87%). The second most frequent projection was of the mental clauses with the frequency of (392) making a proportion of (33.85%). The concentration of verbal processes in the text was (123), having a proportion of (10.62%). In comparison, the lowest projection was found in behavioural processes (50), making a proportion of (4.31%), followed by relational processes (17) making a proportion of (1.46%) and existential processes (10) making a proportion of (0.86%). The study results showed that Sidhwa was interested in the description of physical actions and feelings of different characters. For this purpose, she used material and mental processes more than any other process in An American Brat. The current study proved that systemic functional linguistic theory is a helpful tool for analysing any literary or non-literary text. It has implications for further research in stylistic and narratological studies through the transitivity system of analysis.