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 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” BY JACK LONDON Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 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 LONDON Chuyên ngành Mã số : Ngôn ngữ Anh :8220201 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 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 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 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 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Language plays an essential role in human life because it is considered as a useful tool to help people express what they think and what they want to convey to others in terms of spoken and written forms It is due to language’s tremendous importance that scientists carry out much investigation in the aspects of language, one of which is grammar At first, linguistics seems to have paid much attention to traditional grammar which focuses on morpheme, phonemes, words, and phrases However, usage of traditional grammar to analyze a clause, a sentence, or a text separates grammar from discourse In other words, the relationship between grammar and discourse is obviously left out This problem results in the birth of Functional Grammar which is developed by many linguistics, especially Halliday (2014) The presence of Functional Grammar facilitates analysis of discourse and understanding of its meaning According to Halliday (2014), grammatical function is classified into three broad metafunctions, which are experiential, interpersonal, and textual Each of them addresses an aspect of the world, but the combination of the three metafunctions makes a great contribution to the meaning of a discourse Experiential meaning seems to be taken into consideration when a text is analyzed Experiential meaning is shown through the system of transitivity including six kinds of processes – material process, mental process, behavioural process, relational process, verbal process, and existential process Here are some examples of material process and mental process Mary The gift Senser Phenomenon I The ball Actor Goal (Hoang Van Van, 2006) From the samples above, it can be seen that syntactic features of two samples of mental process are completely different; the first one is “Senser – Mental process – Phenomenon”, and the second one is “Phenomenon – Mental process – Senser” The differences in terms of syntax are also found in two samples of material process: “Actor – Material process – Goal” and “Goal – Material process – Actor” From things drawn from the samples above, I have a desire of having a deeper look into syntactic features of expressions of processes to get more knowledge about the differences mentioned above To a research about what is mentioned above successfully, choosing a suitable data is one of the most important things After careful consideration, the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London will be chosen as a source of data for the research This novel, one of the most popular work which brings the fame and success to Jack London, is about not only the dog shedding the veneer of civilization and leading the wild by its primordial instinct and accumulated experience but also the great love between the dog and its owners To the best of my knowledge, the narrative novel hasn’t been investigated in the aspect of syntactic features of expressions of material processes and mental processes; therefore, my decision is choosing the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London to be a source of data in this M.A thesis From all the reasons above, I would like to carry out a research with the title “Linguistic Features of Experiential Meaning in “The Call of Wild” by Jack London” for my master thesis, basing on the framework of Functional Grammar by Halliday (2014) 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.2.1 Aims This study aims to investigate the features (focusing on sentence patterns) of expressions of material and mental processes in transitivity system in the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London, especially from that, the research will investigate the activities of verbs as human’s experiential expressions, which contributes to the successful communication of the major message of the novel the writer has an intention to convey to readers 1.2.2 Objectives With a view to achieving the stated aims, the following objectives will be fulfilled amply First, the researcher will find out the frequency of material and mental processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” and analyze them The next one is giving some discussions from the findings in terms of transitivity system 1.3 Scope of the study In view of the limited time, the research cannot deal with all kinds of processes in transitivity system Besides, after analyzing data, it is found that material and mental processes are two processes which are used with the highest frequencies (This is clearly demonstrated in Research Methodology) Therefore, the research investigates syntactic features of the transitivity expressions in material and mental processes The data is collected from the novel mentioned ranging from chapter I to chapter VII Moreover, embedded clauses are considered as a constituent of a unit of text analysis to facilitate analysis of data 1.4 Research questions The study will collect and analyze data to find out answers for the following questions: 1) What are features of the transitivity expressions in material processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London in terms of functional analysis? 2) What are features of the transitivity expressions in mental processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London in terms of functional analysis? 1.5 Significance of the study The significance of the M.A thesis “Linguistic Features of Experiential Meaning in “The Call of Wild” by Jack London” is listed out below  It improves the understanding of using the transitivity expressions in material and mental processes  It helps readers get a better understanding of the novel’s message through syntactic features in transitivity of material and mental processes 1.5 Organization of the study Chapter 1: Introduction 84 REFERENCES A Bibliography [1] Bloor, T., & Bloor, M (1995) The Functional Analysis of English London: Arnold [2] Dang Thi Cam Ngoc (2015) An Investigation into linguistic features of Material Processes in “Perfect Spy” by Larry Berman versus Its Vietnamese Translational version by Đỗ Hùng (Master thesis), The University of Danang [3] Downing, A., & Locke, P (2006) English Grammar: A University Course (Second Edition ed.) London and New York: Routledge [4] Eggins, S (1994) An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics Printer Publishers London [5] Finch, G (2000) Linguistic terms and concepts Houndmills: macmillan Press Ltd [6] Halliday, M A K (1974) Explorations in the Functions of Language London: Edward [7] Halliday, M A K (1994) An introduction to Functional Grammar (second ed.) London: Arnold [8] Halliday, M A K (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.) London: Edward Arnold [9] Halliday, M A K (2014) Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed.) London and NewYork: Routledge [10] Hoang Van Van (2006) Introducing discourse analysis Ha Noi Open University 85 [11] Le Thi Thuy Diem (2016) An Investigation into the Experiential Meaning in the Short Story "The Last Leaf" by O.Henry (Master), Quy Nhon University [12] Lock, G (1996) Functional English Grammar: An Introduction for Second Language Teachers New York: Cambridge University Press [14] Nguyen Thi Tu Trinh, Phan Van Hoa, & Tran Huu Phuc (2018) Ideational Metaphor in English and Vietnamese Behavioral Clauses Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 4(2), 237-254 [15] Quirk, R., & Greenbaum, S (1973) A University Grammar of English: [16] Sinnemaki, K (2003) On Halliday's Distinction between Embedded and Hypotactic Clauses Symposium of Syntactic Functions – Focus on the Periphery, 375-384 [17] Thompson, G (1996) Introducing Functional Grammar London: Arnold [18] Yaqub, H., Azhar, M., & Kakepoto, I (2017) The Material Clause System in English and Urdu Tests: A Corpus-based Analysis of Ideational Metafunction ELF Annual Research Journal 19 [19] Zhiwen Feng (2013) Functional Grammar and Its Implications for English Teaching and Learning English Language Teaching, 6(10) B Source of data https:||www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/London/Call%20of%20Wild.pdf 86 APPENDIX  SAMPLE ANALYSIS: THE CALL OF WILD Because of the length of the novel “The Call of Wild”, it is difficult to present the analysis of the whole chapters in this section Therefore, each paragraph from each chapter is extracted for transitivity analysis CHAPTER I (A) Buck did not read the newspapers,|| or he would have known [[that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego]].||| (B) Because men, [[groping in the Arctic darkness]], had found a yellow metal,|| and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find,|| thousands of men were rushing into the Northland.||| (C) These men wanted dogs,|| and the dogs [[they wanted]] were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by [[which to toil]], and furry coats [[to protect them from the frost]].||| CC A cl cl CC B cl cl cl 87 CC C cl cl (1) Buck Actor (2) he Actor (3) men, [[groping … darkness]], Actor (4) steamship transportation companies Actor (5) thousands of men Actor (6) These men Senser (7) the dogs [[they wanted]] Identified 88 CHAPTER II (A)Thus, as token of [[what a puppet thing life is]], the ancient song surged through him|| and he came into his own again;|| and he came|| because men had found a yellow metal in the North,|| and because Manuel was a gardener’s helper [[whose wages did not lap over the needs of his wife and divers small copies of himself]].||| (p 23) CC A cl Thus, as token of [[what a puppet thing life is]], the ancient song surged through him|| cl and he came into his own again;|| (1) as [[what…is]], (2) he Actor (3) he Actor 89 (4) men Actor (5) Manuel Identified CHAPTER III (A) On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous rival,|| Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth.||| (B) He even went out of his way to bully Buck, [[ striving constantly [[to start the fight [[which could end only in the death of one or the other]] ]] ]].||| (p 24) CC A cl cl CC B (1) cl On the other hand, Matter (2) Spitz 90 Material pro: Transformative Actor Goal (3) he Actor CHAPTER IV (A) Franỗois complied,|| whereupon Buck trotted in, [[laughing triumphantly,]] and swung around into position at the head of the team.||| (B) His traces were fastened,|| the sled broken out,|| and with both men running they dashed out on to the river trail.||| CC A cl cl CC B cl cl cl (1) Franỗois Actor (2) whereupon (3) His traces were fastened, 91 Actor the sled (4) Goal (5) with both men running Cir CHAPTER V (A) On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength.||| (B) They never did it again.||| (C) She let her legs [[go limp like a spoiled child]], and sat down on the trail.||| (D) They went on their way,|| but she did not move.||| (E) After they had travelled three miles|| they unloaded the sled, came back for her, and by main strength put her on the sled again.||| CC A cl CC B cl CC C cl CC D cl cl CC E cl cl 92 (1) On occasion Cir: Location (2) They Actor (3) She Actor (4) They Actor (5) she Actor (6) After (7) they Actor one 93 and by main strength Cir: Manner CHAPTER VI (A) The crowd fell silent;|| only could be heard the voices of the gamblers [[vainly offering two to one]].||| (B) Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal,|| but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their eyes for them [[to loosen their pouch-strings]].||| CC A cl cl CC B cl cl (1) The crowd Actor (2) only could be heard Mental pro: Perceptive (3) Everybody Mental 94 (4) twenty pound of flour Actor CHAPTER VII (A) As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow,|| his nose was jerked suddenly [[to the side]]|| as though a positive force had gripped and pulled it.||| (B) He followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig.||| CC A cl cl cl CC B (1) cl As Buck Actor (2) his nose Goal 95 (3) as though (4) He Actor  RESULT OF ANALYSIS Table 1: The number of clause-simplexes and clause-complexes in the novel “The Call of Wild” Chapter I II III IV V VI VII Sum 96 Table 2: Frequencies of two verb groups of material processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” Creative Elabora- Transformative tion Extension Enhancement Sum Table 3: Frequencies of four verb groups of mental processes in the novel “The Call of Wild” Perceptive Cognitive Desiderative Emotive ...MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY PHẠM THỊ THANH TRÀ LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF EXPERIENTIAL MEANING IN “THE CALL OF WILD” BY JACK LONDON Field: English Linguistics... in the novel “The Call of Wild” by Jack London in terms of functional analysis? 1.5 Significance of the study The significance of the M.A thesis ? ?Linguistic Features of Experiential Meaning in. .. 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