Adopting The Transitivity System And The Attitude System To Evaluate Literary Texts-Exemplifying The Red Badge Of Courage

This thesis, exemplifying The Red Badge of Courage, attempts to verify adopting the combination of the Transitivity System and the Attitude System in systemic functional stylistic analysis is more effective, more objective, more scientific and more exact than only adopting the Transitivity System to study texts'theme.The Transitivity System is a traditional and classical method in Systemic Functional Stylistics. It can expose the theme of texts through linguistic patterns, and befits studying language full of antagonism. Its deficiencies are the ensuing: it is unfit to study language concerned with psychological activities; it focuses on clauses extremely, which makes the analysis mechanic and kills the humanness of literary works.This thesis adopts the combination of the Transitivity System and the Attitude System. While conducting the Transitivity Analysis, we introduce the Attitude System into the analysis. The aim is to overcome the deficiencies the Transitivity Analysis has revealed, and to expose the theme further. The Attitude system can evaluate the feelings texts construe, including Affect, Judgment and Appreciation. Psychological activity in literary works is a way the language users (writers) expose others'Affect, Judgment and Appreciation by describing others'psychological activities. Evaluating others'feelings reveals the writers'feelings indirectly. Through analyzing language, we evaluate the stances, perspectives and attitudes of language users in events. These are the theme the writers try to reveal. The Attitude System focuses on discourses. In studying, it emphasizes the narrators'feelings. The narrators'feelings reflect language users'(writers') feelings. The analysis sheds light on the writers'attitude and feelings. The showing of the writers'feelings makes the analysis process full of humanness.This thesis, on the basis of the progress of The Red Badge of Courage, extracts two discourses for Transitivity Analyses, three discourses for Attitude Analyses. Then, according to the advance of the novel, the first Transitivity Analysis is combined with the first Attitude Analysis; the second Transitivity Analysis is combined with the second and the third Attitude Analysis. The Transitivity Analysis throws light on the fact that human helplessness contributes to exposure of their instincts; the Attitude System reveals human instinct reactions of Affect, Judgment and Appreciation to external world in harsh surroundings. The analyses results reveal the theme of the novel: in helplessness, man is in fear and frenzy. To further verify the combination of the two systems in stylistic study more effective, objective, scientific and exact, the thesis, choosing Liu Shisheng's Transitivity Analysis about Eveline as corpus, compares his result with our result by using the Transitivity System and the Attitude System.The result represents the combination of the Transitivity Analysis and the Attitude Analysis is an effective way in Systemic Functional Stylistics. The former exposes the conflicts and reflects the theme of texts; the Latter reveals the theme of the novel by evaluating the figure's psychological activities. The combination of the two systems expands the choice range of language in the text, which makes the analysis more objective, scientific and exact. Likewise, the Attitude System focuses on discourses, which is helpful for the reader to possess full insights into the writers'stances, feelings. This conquers the mechanism and inhumanness in the Transitivity Analysis focusing on clauses. This also verifies that the Attitude System can be applied to study the psychological activities in literary works. The combination of the two systems can further study texts'themes, enrich the Systemic Functional Stylistics.