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A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai

The current study is a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014) investigation of character in a famous and timeless Sanskrit epic called The Mahabharata, a beloved Indian narrative classic and an important piece of history (Doniger, 2020). The data used for the study...

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Main Author:	Shevaanni , Pillai
Format:	Thesis
Published:	2022
Subjects:	P Philology. Linguistics PN Literature (General)
Online Access:	http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/1/Shevaanni.pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/2/Shevaanni_Pillai.pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/
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spelling	my.um.stud.155592025-02-19T18:27:09Z A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai Shevaanni , Pillai P Philology. Linguistics PN Literature (General) The current study is a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014) investigation of character in a famous and timeless Sanskrit epic called The Mahabharata, a beloved Indian narrative classic and an important piece of history (Doniger, 2020). The data used for the study is an English retold version by Krishna Dharma (1999) who is a well-known author of Indian classics. Altogether four chapters of the book are used in relation to the topic, The Dice Game. The current study employs Halliday’s System of Transitivity as a theoretical framework to analyze two central characters, Duryodhana, a Kaurava prince and antagonist of the story and Draupadi, a Pandava princess and protagonist of the story. The methodology will employ Cresswell’s (2017) qualitative textual analysis and Sriniwass’s (2009) SFL methodology to analyze the data in a systematic way. A total of 620 sentences were analysed regarding the two characters. For Duryodhana, the predominant Participant role is Actor (15.86%) which has the most frequent characteristics of wickedness, hot-temperedness and enviousness foregrounding him as a dominant villain. In contrast, for Draupadi, the predominant transitivity role is Goal (19.26%) which has the most frequent characteristics of helplessness, valuableness, and wisdom, rendering her the victim of Duryodhana’s greed and cruelty. In terms of Circumstances, the Circumstance of Manner was the most prominent found for both Duryodhana (26.42%) and Draupadi (22.78%) which showed many adverbial and adjectival phrases showing their characteristics. Similarly, the Material process (Transformative-Transitive) was most prominent Process type found for both Duryodhana 26.12% and Draupadi 39.18%. The study has shown that the System of Transitivity was indeed a useful tool to study how characters are constructed through a linguistic analysis of a narrative text. The significance of the study is that it shows how characters can be interpreted in an objective way using transitivity patterns found in the text. 2022-08 Thesis NonPeerReviewed application/pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/1/Shevaanni.pdf application/pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/2/Shevaanni_Pillai.pdf Shevaanni , Pillai (2022) A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaya. http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/
institution	Universiti Malaya
building	UM Library
collection	Institutional Repository
continent	Asia
country	Malaysia
content_provider	Universiti Malaya
content_source	UM Student Repository
url_provider	http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/
topic	P Philology. Linguistics PN Literature (General)
spellingShingle	P Philology. Linguistics PN Literature (General) Shevaanni , Pillai A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai
description	The current study is a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014) investigation of character in a famous and timeless Sanskrit epic called The Mahabharata, a beloved Indian narrative classic and an important piece of history (Doniger, 2020). The data used for the study is an English retold version by Krishna Dharma (1999) who is a well-known author of Indian classics. Altogether four chapters of the book are used in relation to the topic, The Dice Game. The current study employs Halliday’s System of Transitivity as a theoretical framework to analyze two central characters, Duryodhana, a Kaurava prince and antagonist of the story and Draupadi, a Pandava princess and protagonist of the story. The methodology will employ Cresswell’s (2017) qualitative textual analysis and Sriniwass’s (2009) SFL methodology to analyze the data in a systematic way. A total of 620 sentences were analysed regarding the two characters. For Duryodhana, the predominant Participant role is Actor (15.86%) which has the most frequent characteristics of wickedness, hot-temperedness and enviousness foregrounding him as a dominant villain. In contrast, for Draupadi, the predominant transitivity role is Goal (19.26%) which has the most frequent characteristics of helplessness, valuableness, and wisdom, rendering her the victim of Duryodhana’s greed and cruelty. In terms of Circumstances, the Circumstance of Manner was the most prominent found for both Duryodhana (26.42%) and Draupadi (22.78%) which showed many adverbial and adjectival phrases showing their characteristics. Similarly, the Material process (Transformative-Transitive) was most prominent Process type found for both Duryodhana 26.12% and Draupadi 39.18%. The study has shown that the System of Transitivity was indeed a useful tool to study how characters are constructed through a linguistic analysis of a narrative text. The significance of the study is that it shows how characters can be interpreted in an objective way using transitivity patterns found in the text.
format	Thesis
author	Shevaanni , Pillai
author_facet	Shevaanni , Pillai
author_sort	Shevaanni , Pillai
title	A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai
title_short	A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai
title_full	A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai
title_fullStr	A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai
title_full_unstemmed	A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai
title_sort	systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the mahabharata, duryodhana and draupadi / shevaanni pillai
publishDate	2022
url	http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/1/Shevaanni.pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/2/Shevaanni_Pillai.pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15559/
_version_	1825160883758694400
score	13.239859

A systemic functional linguistic transitivity analysis of character in the Mahabharata, Duryodhana and Draupadi / Shevaanni Pillai

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