A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of Mood and Modality in One of Metcalfe’s Novels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1405.08Keywords:
systemic functional linguistics, mother’s sacrifice, interpersonal metafunction, Mood system, Modality systemAbstract
The study examined Gemma Metcalfe's novel A Gripping Psychological Thriller: A Mother's Sacrifice from a systemic functional linguistic approach. The interpersonal metafunction, used in this study, can aid in drawing a picture of the mother's sacrifice experience and revealing the appropriate lexicogrammatical choices to spotlight that experience. It is accomplished by detecting Mood and Modality systems in extracts from the novel representing that experience. It aims to show how mother's sacrifice is realised linguistically through the interpersonal metafunction according to Halliday and Matthiessen's framework. The study adopts a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for analysis. The researchers discovered that the interpersonal metafunction through Mood and Modality systems divulges the experience of the mother's sacrifice as an experience of choice, and the most appropriate representative of this experience is the systemic functional linguistic approach. Moreover, the empolyment of the Mood system shows that all kinds of Mood give the full portrait of mother's sacrifice. However, not all Moods are equally effective. Further, the Modality system mirrors how the characters in the novel use various kinds of Modality with different scales, degrees, and modal orientations in order to express their attitudes, (dis) beliefs, fears, doubts, obligations, probabilities, necessities, possibilities, (un)certainties, willing, abilities, and even usualities.
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