Critical Discourse Analysis of Female Consciousness in the Novel Orlando from Transitivity Perspective

Abstract

This paper adopts transitivity system approach to make a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of female consciousness in the novel Orlando written by Virginia Woolf. The novel depicts the transformation of the protagonist Orlando from a man to a woman. Most previous researches on Orlando have been carried out from a historical perspective by laying stress on feminism and androgynism indicated from the text. While this research integrates transitivity system and CDA together to systematically investigate ideology and social power resided in the text. Thus, two linguistic aspects are taken as the theoretical framework. One is CDA which focuses on social inequality and injustice (Fower, 1981) by revealing ideological dominance and power hidden in the discourse. The other one is transitivity system which comes from M.A.K.Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar. As for the methodology of this research, quantitative analysis as well as qualitative analysis are used. The purpose of the study is to uncover the relationship between language and society by performing a critical analysis on the novel.