The contribution of verbal processes to narrative discourse in Spanish

Abstract

In this article we explore, from a systemic-functional perspective, the role played by two subgroups of verbal processes, “processes of saying + quality” and “processes of judgment”, in encoding meanings central to the creation of different elements in narratives, more specifically their contribution to the portrayal of characters and the tenor between them, to the advancement of action and to the articulation of the more profound themes in the narratives. We base our observations on a sample of narrative texts by two hispanoamerican authors, Julio Cortázar and Eduardo Galeano, and we seek to support them by reference to the semantic and lexico-grammatical properties of the processes under study and to patterns they form in the text. We draw upon transitivity descriptions within Systemic Functional Linguistics and on work by Halliday (1971, 2002) and by Hassan (1985, 1996) setting forth principles for a Linguistic Stylistics.