(Luận văn thạc sĩ) linguistic features of experiential meaning in “the call of wild” by jack london

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY PHẠM THỊ THANH TRÀ LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF EXPERIENTIAL h MEANING IN “THE CALL OF WILD” BY JACK LONDON MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH Binh Dinh – 2019 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY PHẠM THỊ THANH TRÀ LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF EXPERIENTIAL MEANING IN “THE CALL OF WILD” h BY JACK LONDON Field: Code: English Linguistics 22 02 01 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr PHAN VĂN HÒA BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN PHẠM THỊ THANH TRÀ ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGÔN NGỮ HỌC CỦA NGHĨA KINH NGHIỆM TRONG TÁC PHẨM “TIẾNG GỌI NƠI HOANG DÔ CỦA TÁC GIẢ JACK h LONDON Chuyên ngành Mã số : Ngôn ngữ Anh : 22 02 01 Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS PHAN VĂN HÒA i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I totally assure that the thesis “Linguistic Features of Experiential Meaning in “The Call of Wild” by Jack London” is my own work for the purpose of graduating the MA course of English Linguistics The content of this thesis has not been published or written by any other authors except for some references which are used in this thesis The thesis has not been submitted for any degree or diploma in any university Quy Nhon, July, 2019 h PHAM THI THANH TRA ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the period of doing the research, much considerable support and great encouragement from my teachers, friends, and family were given to me so that I could overcome difficulties and complete my master thesis successfully First of all, I would like to show my deep gratitude to my respected supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Phan Van Hoa, who gave me his helpful guidance and were together with me from the beginning to the end of my thesis Without his companion, encouragement, and helps, I not think I could finish this MA thesis which met nearly all of the requirements of a MA thesis Second, I owe an unpaid debt to all the qualified and experienced h teachers who helped me broaden my knowledge about English Linguistics and my friendly classmates who gave me unforgettable memories during the two-year master course Last but not least, I am extremely thankful to my parents, my relatives, and my close friends who gave me not only material but also spirit supports in the past two years of pursuing this MA course iii ABSTRACT The thesis offers an investigation of the linguistic features in the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London from Halliday’s functional linguistic view The aim of this thesis is to find out the syntactic patterns of material and mental processes, the most popular processes in this novel, together with the activities of verbs as human’s experiential expressions From that, how processes, especially material and mental processes, make a contribution to imparting the content successfully to readers can be revealed The study is carried out with a combination of different research methods – descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative methods The data of the study is the clauses containing material and mental processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” The finding shows that material processes are used in both transitive and h intransitive with two kinds of verbs – creative and transformative verbs, in which the second kind is present in the novel more frequently than the first kind Each kind of verbs is included in different syntactic patterns of expressions of material processes Participants attaching with material processes of creative verbs are Actor, Goal, and Client while Actor, Goal, Scope, Recipient, Attribute are participants with the other kind of verbs of material processes Mental processes are used with four kinds of verbs – perceptive, cognitive, desiderative, and emotive verbs Mental processes together with participants Senser and Phenomenon are used in two structures “Like” type and “Please” type in which the “Like” type is much more popular than the other The presence of processes in transitivity system, especially material and mental processes play an important role in building the image of characters, imparting the content of the novel naturally and deeply to readers iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF FIGURES ix CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.2.1 Aims h 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 Scope of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Significance of the study 1.5 Organization of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The previous studies 2.2 Theoretical background 2.2.1 Clause complex 2.2.1.1 Clause 2.2.1.2 Clause complex 2.2.2 Classes and functions 11 2.2.3 Actor, Subject, and Theme 13 v 2.2.4 The three metafunctions 14 2.2.5 The grammar of experiential meaning: Transitivity 16 2.2.5.1 Processes 19 2.2.5.2 Circumstances 31 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 34 3.1 Research method 34 3.2 Data collection 34 3.3 Data analysis 36 3.4 Research procedures 37 3.5 Reliability and validity 37 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 39 4.1 Overview of material process and mental process 39 4.2 Material processes in the novel “The call of wild” 41 h 4.2.1 Material process with creative verbs 42 4.2.2 Material process with transformative verbs 48 4.3 Mental processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” 64 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 80 5.1 Conclusions 80 5.2 Implications 82 5.3 Limitations 82 5.4 Suggestions for further researches 83 REFERENCES 84 APPENDIX 86 vi ABBREVIATIONS - Cir: Circumstance - Pro: Process - p : page h vii LIST OF TABLES Title of tables Table 2.1 Function structure of clause with syntagm of classes realizing functions Table 2.2 Three lines of meaning in the clause Table 2.3 Typical experiential functions of group and phrase classes Table 2.4 Type of doing: ‘creative’/‘transformative’ Table 2.5 Examples of verb groups fulfilling the role of Process in types of material clauses Table 2.6 Type of doing and additional participants in 12 14 17 21 22 25 h ‘material’ clauses Page Table 2.7 Examples of verbs serving as Process in mental clauses 27 Table 2.8 The principal categories of ‘relational’ clause 30 Table 2.9 Process types, their meaning and participants 31 Table 2.10 Types of circumstantial elements 32 Table 3.1 The number of clause simplexes and clause complexes Table 3.2 The frequency of six process types Table 4.1 The frequencies of material and mental processes in each chapter in the novel “The call of wild” 35 35 40 Table 4.2 Frequencies of participants 41 Table 4.3 Usage of verbs denoting material processes 42 Table 4.4 Usage of creative verbs in material processes 42