Representing Processes in Toni Morrison's "Sula": A Critical Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

Ideology is not confined to news articles, political debates and speeches, or even promotional advertisements, it can be found in all types of texts, including literary texts. Literary language has become one of the most effective techniques used by writers to convey a sublime rhetorically-oriented message or an idea to readers. Although Toni Morrison is one of the most renowned authors of fiction in today's world, yet only a small number of studies have addressed her novels from a linguistic perspective. Hence, the study in hand aims to examine how the exploitation of linguistic resources—verbs, in particular—helps to construct certain ideologies. The study applies one of Jeffries' (2010) tools of analysis, namely 'Representing Actions/Events/States', informed by Simpson's (2004) framework of the transitivity system. The type and frequency of the verbal process and the linguistic context in which those processes are produced construct different identities for the character in question.