doi: 10.18178/IJLLL.2022.8.3.341
The Analysis of the Soldier from Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspectives
Xintong Yu
- Shandong University, Weihai, Shandong Province, China.
Abstract
The Soldier is a sonnet written in 1914 by RupertBrook, a British war poet. The paper aims at analyzing thepoem by applying M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic FunctionalLinguistics (SFL) as a theoretical framework. The study mainlyadopts a qualitative methodology to analyze the text by textlinguistics. However, the quantitative methodology is also usedto calculate the proportions of each metafunctional process inthis poem. The main findings of this paper are:<br />1) Topic theme: the themes of the poem are I, dust, England,this heart, et., which show the soldie'’s love and gratefulness forEngland; 2) The focus of tense: The Soldier starts with aconditional clause and then uses present and past tense to createa context as if he was depicting a real external world instead ofan imagination from the inner world. 3) Patterning andre-patterning: The patterning analysis shows the soldier in thepoem emphasizes his motivation for sacrificing and spreadingthe precious things in England who had brought him up. Thepaper concludes that The Soldier shows a strong sense ofpatriotism, which might be an approval for the former literarystudies of this poem from linguistic aspects.
Keywords
- Patterning and re-patterning
- systemicfunctional linguistics
- text linguistics
- the soldier
- transitivity
- topical theme
How to Cite
Xintong Yu, "The Analysis of the Soldier from Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspectives," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 165-169, 2022. https://doi.org/10.18178/IJLLL.2022.8.3.341
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).