Analysis Of The Image Construction Of The Hero And The Heroine In The English Version Of Red Sorghum From Transitivity Perspective

Characters are essential in novels,for their encounter,reflection and experiences are of great importance in investigating an individual or a group who are the epitome of the special historical phase.Red Sorghum is the representative work of Mo Yan,the only winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in China.It is translated into English by the famous American Sinologist Howard Goldblatt,and then quickly enters into commercial channels and becomes a best seller.In the novel,a series of distinct characters such as Grandma and Granddad are created,most of whom have realistic archetypes,thus epitomes of a certain era.Previous studies focus on the two classical characters,Grandma and Granddad from a literary perspective,but are inconclusive on whether Grandma is a trailblazer of female liberation and whether Granddad is more positive as a hero or more negative as a bandit,leading further discussions on the theme of Red Sorghum: eulogizing feminism or patriarchy.In order to investigate the image construction of the hero and the heroine in the English version and the theme expressed through such construction,this thesis takes a new perspective:Transitivity.Transitivity is the grammatical system to embody ideational function to construe the experience of the outer world and inner world into a manageable set of Process Types.It combines linguistic structures with context of situation,contributing to a better understanding of stylistic features at a deeper level.From the Transitivity perspective,this thesis chooses both the Chinese version and the English version of Red Sorghum to establish a parallel corpus to exhaust all the processes Grandma and Granddad participates in by inputting“??”and“??”as main retrieval terms.Then it categorizes all the clauses into different types of processes in Transitivity and counts different participant roles of Grandma and Granddad.Associated with key plots in the novel,textual features on image construction and images established are analyzed.The study shows that,firstly,in the English version,Material processes are prominent in image construction.Their effective actions reveal their rich experience of the external world,and the other types of processes play important roles in character's internal world and utterances.With regard to participant roles,Granddad is more active and powerful than Grandma.Secondly,although Grandma is traditional and weak at thebeginning,she grows into a heroine with collectivism who dares to rebel against adversity,thus a trailblazer of female liberation;while Granddad has the bandit temperament,but more a national hero with affection,a positive figure.Thirdly,Red Sorghum creates a nation which is full of masculinity and patriarchy.