Gender Representation in Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls: A Transitivity-Based Critical Discourse Analysis
Abstract
This study aimed to explore the gender representation in the short story Boys and Girls by Alice Munro using Halliday’s (1985) Transitivity system. The purpose of the study was to examine how gender stereotypes and expectations were portrayed in Boys and Girls through major transitivity processes, including material, mental and verbal processes. The study intended to investigate how these transitivity processes challenged or reinforced traditional roles of men and women in a patriarchal setting. A mixed-method research approach was employed combining both qualitative and quantitative techniques. For quantitative analysis, UAM corpus tool was employed to measure the frequency of participants, processes and circumstances. The qualitative analysis aimed to study gender representations through familial relationships, power dynamics, and societal expectations. On quantitative analysis, the frequencies were 28.1%, 24.3%, and 19.7% for participants, processes, and circumstances, respectively. Apart from this the frequencies of transitivity processes were also measured. Material processes represented 12.1%, mental processes accounted for 2.6%, verbal processes were 1.4%, relational processes made up 3.7%, and existential processes comprised 0.4%. The qualitative analysis explored and endorsed that men were typically characterized by authority, dominance, confidence, resilience, and strength; whereas, women were portrayed as more dependent, less dominant, delicate, and submissive. These distinctions about men and women were defined through the major transitivity processes found in the actions of both genders. Despite challenging the expected social gender roles through the protagonist of the story, Alice Munro had to conform to the stereotypical gender roles of the patriarchal society due to social constraints.
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