IDEATIONAL MEANING IN JOYCE’S ‘EVELINE’: A SEMANTIC STUDY

Abstract

This paper traces the ideational meaning in a short story entitled ‘Eveline’ by James Joyce. The text of this short story is analyzed in terms of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar model. The ideational meaning of the text is traced and the verb processes used by the author in this short story are classified according to Halliday’s model. An explicit description of the characters is reached at the end by virtue of studying of all the functions of the verbs used in the text of this literary work. The current study will examine and analyze the sentence structure that conveys semantic processes. Verbs are classified into six processes: material, mental, behavioral, relational, verbal, and existential.Verb division according to their functions provides a fine picture of the whole atmosphere of the short story and a clear-cut description of the characters. Consequently, the meaning behind this literary work is ostensibly conveyed. The text is composed of 188 sentences which are all analyzed. The frequency of three verb process (material, mental & behavioral) was equal; each representing 20.21% of the whole text. The least frequent verb process was the verbal one 9.57%.