Transitivity and the Construction of Characters in the Narrative Discourse of The English Patient

Abstract

Transitivity, which belongs to the experiential metafunction of language, is one of the grammatical systems that writers employ to convey different types of experiences. The options offered by the transitivity aspect and the choices made can greatly affect the interpretation of meaning. For this reason, models and frameworks for the study of transitivity in literal and non-literal texts have been developed as tools for both stylistics and critical linguistics analysis. This paper presents a linguistic analysis of transitivity in the narrative discourse of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992/2002). The main purpose of this analysis is to explore how choices of certain processes and their participants influence the perception of meaning and contribute to the shaping of characterisation in the novel. .