Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Activity

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more structural aspects of narrative to consider models for the analysis of narrative
as discourse. 
Transitivity
is the first of those models.
TRANSITIVITY, CHARACTERISATION AND LITERARY
GENRE
This unit offers some practical activities based around the model of transitivity 
developed in A6 and B6. It details first of all a stylistic experiment where transitivity
can be used to highlight techniques of characterisation in narrative. It then widens
the scope of the analysis to illustrate the ways in which transitivity can work as an
important marker of literary genre.
Transitivity profiles
Some years ago, I co-authored an article with Martin Montgomery which examined
a range of narrative devices, including patterns of transitivity, in Bernard
MacLaverty’s novel 
Cal
(Simpson and Montgomery 1995). The implications of the
article for the present unit will be clear soon. As far as our analysis of transitivity
was concerned, we noted how certain types of process functioned to cast the novel’s
central character, Cal, as a rather ineffectual and passive observer on the events
around him. Specifically, Cal is often represented as the Sensor in mental processes
of perception or as the Actor in material processes which are not Goal-directed. Here
is a flavour of the transitivity framework through which Cal the character is portrayed.
Using the material provided in units A6 and B6, you should be able to identify the
process types by yourself:
A.
Several times Cal saw the yellow Anglia pass in the opposite direction and
followed it with his eyes. During the day he occasionally saw Marcella’s 
child playing in the back garden or heard her prattling from another room
when he was standing having a cup of tea in the kitchen. He also heard 
again the stomach-churning bubble of coughing from somewhere in the
house.
(MacLaverty 1984: 69)
In essence, Cal’s actions are portrayed through a regular pattern of transitivity
choices, a 
transitivity profile
in other words. The transitivity profile embodied by a
text is a generally useful indicator of character in prose fiction.