Representing Processes in Toni Morrison's Sula: A Critical Stylistic Analysis

Ideology-impregnated language is not necessarily confined to specific types of texts, such as news articles, political debates and speeches, or even promotional advertisements; rather, it can be found in all kinds of texts, whether literary or non-literary. however, literary language has become one of the most effective tools employed by writers to convey a sublime, rhetorically oriented message or idea to readers. based on that, the data targeted by this study is a fictional novel entitled sula by toni morrison. although the text was written by one of the most renowned fiction authors in today's world, only a few studies have addressed her novels from a linguistic perspective. hence, the study aims to examine how the exploitation of linguistic resources—verbs, in particular—helps to construct certain ideologies. the study employed one of jeffries' (2010) tools of analysis, namely 'representing actions/events/states', informed by simpson's (2004) framework of the transitivity system. the study found that the type and frequency of the verbal processes, the participant's roles involved, as well as the linguistic context in which those processes are produced, all contributed to the character's being perceived differently due to the various pictures the character draws for herself.