A study of the ideational metafunction in Achebe’s things fall apart: A monogeneric corpus-based analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the ideational metafunction in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in order to explore the characterisation of Okonkwo, Unoka, Ezinma, Ekwefi and Mr. Brown. The study confines itself to the following objectives, namely, to identify process-types attributed to characters; identify the transitivity patterns embedded in process-types attributed to characters; establish the significance of transitivity patterns attributed in the characterisation; and establish the significance of process-type collocations in projecting the development of characters in the story. The present undertaking is drawn from the theoretical frontiers of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and the analytical lens of transitivity model, backed by the methodological locale of Corpus Linguistics (CL). The study reveals that although Okonkwo, Unoka, Ezinma, Ekwefi and Mr. Brown are attributed material processes (MaPs); mental processes (MePs); relational processes (RePs); and verbal processes (VePs), significant differences exist not only in how the allotted process-types are mapped per character but also on how they impact on characterisation.