A Systemic Functional Grammar-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

Abstract

The present paper investigates the grammatical choices made by Jamaica Kincaid in her work Lucy. It analyzes how the selected structure contributes to the realization of particular beliefs such as gender inequality, using the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) approach (Halliday 1973, 1985, 1994; Halliday and Hasan 1989; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). In particular, the study examines the participants’ roles and the processes types assigned to them with reference to the transitivity system. The data of the present study are collected from the first three chapters of Lucy. The corpus belongs to seven males and eleven female characters who were directly involved in all the actions in the text. A total of 325 sentences were extracted. They were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The results of the study revealed the writer’s subvert of traditional gender stereotypes through displaying women as effectual dynamic actors and assertive sayers. In addition, all female characters were shown as the main participants of the other minor processes, in the sense that they were the behavers and sensers in both behavioral and mental clauses. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, gender inequality, systemic functional grammar, transitivity system.