PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN THỂ LOẠI TIỂU sử

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
1
PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1. RATIONALE
There have always been biographies since the dawn of human writing – works that
chronicle the changes that these normal men bring to the world. The early days of
biographies were evidenced in ancient Assyrian, Babylonian and Mesopotamian society.
Ancient Greece and Roman Empire also had biographies for religious purposes. Through
the Medieval, then the Renaissance until modern days of history, this literary-historical
genre persists. Perhaps to understand what great men did with their time and circumstances
is always the concern of the other people – great or ordinary they may be.
Nowadays, biography is one of the most popular categories of books. A simple search with
the key word “biography” at www.amazon.com yields 220,442 results; 7,303 biographical
dictionaries 787 biographical encyclopedias available on this popular book vendor website.
These impressive statistics are undoubtedly indicators to the popularity of biographies.
According to Nye (2006), a 1994 poll on reading habits in Britain revealed biography to be
the most popular category of non-fiction book and a genre considerably ahead of
contemporary fiction (preferred by 19% percent of readers, compared to 14% for
contemporary fiction.) James Atlas, a biographer and the editor of the Penguin Lives
Series, writes in the New York Times Book Review of a rainy afternoon leisurely spent in a
London bookshop, where he was “stunned by the sheer profusion of ‘lives’, as the British
people call biographies”. Biographies of Churchill lined an entire back wall, surrounded by
shelves of biographies of people unknown or unfamiliar to Atlas.
Greene (2006), over the past few years reading the “Book Review” section of the New
York Times, noticed a pattern: biography is reviewed more frequently. “One year, 2000, I
counted: there were 188 reviews of books related to biography, amounting to three-plus
reviews each Sunday. Curious, I dug around in the Bowker Annual and confirmed my
inkling. In 1994, 1,758 biographies were published in the United States; seven years later,
4,887 appeared.”

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
2
The importance of biographies to the education of children and young adults need hardly
be stressed. Even a mature person can still benefit from a biography. Kett (2002) noticed
that twelve- and thirteen-year-olds were beginning to break away from fiction and she
believed that biographies make a good literary transition into non-fiction. Any grown-up
adults must stretch their imagination to hypothesize how they have grown up without
reading one or more biographies of some famous persons. American magazines in the
nineteenth century, according to Kiskis (1999), published myriad articles on the purposes
of biography. In their diaries, women and men in all U.S. regions described reading
biographies and taking useful lessons from them. Biographies are certainly not primarily a
vehicle for meeting the insatiable demands of a public that made and dropped celebrities,
every fifteen minutes. When biographies succeed, they did so by influencing people’s
lives, not just stimulating their imaginations literary or otherwise. In Kiskis’s dictum,
biography has “constructive, cultural purposes”.
Such omnipresent and influential as biographies are, they have received little attention
from linguists. Biographies have never been investigated in the light of DA and related
linguistic research work is scanty, therefore implying the need for a DA of biographical
discourse.
Most research pertaining biographies are from historians, scientists and demographers,
who utilize the biographical data to analyze the political, social and demographic situations
of a particular country at a particular historical period, especially in the past.
Almost no research work in linguistics which derive its data from biographies can be
identified. If biographies are even more popular than contemporary fictions and a
multitude of people are reading the genre today, exploring the distinctive characteristics of
the genre is an imperative task for the linguistic researcher.
TIME’s series of articles namely “100 Most Important People of the Century” is among
those biographical works that do not teach – they inspired. The first reason why this series
is intriguing lies in its attempt to vote for the most important people of the 20

th
century.
From a revolutionary to an entertainer, from a scientist to a hero of courage and
selflessness, from a person from a small country, to the president of a vast territory, from a
child to an elderly woman: all of them engraved in the 20
th
century traces that cannot be

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
3
erased. The second reason why this series of articles deserves exploration is its language.
Briefness, clear organization and eloquence are the first impressions.
In order to have a holistic look at the genre of biography, we choose to follow the approach
of discourse analysis. Only by using the DA approach can the genre of biography be
comprehensively inspected. Thus we choose the name of the thesis “An Analysis of
Biographical Discourse”.

2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The aim of the study is to examine the characteristics of biographical discourse, both at the
holistic and analytic level. The objectives of the study specifically are:
- To investigate the biographical characterization through transitivity and point of
view.
- To frame a template biographical discourse structure
More detailed explication as how the aforementioned objectives have been formulated and
how these objectives can be attained is specified in Chapter 2: Methodology.

3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Although we are well aware that the wider the range of biographical data we achieve from,
the more reliable the research results will be. However, within the constraints of time and
resources, the data that we opted for include 30 out of the 100 biographical articles that are

compiled by the TIME ® magazine in 2001 in the serialized “100 Most Important People
of the Century”. Criteria for ensuring the representativeness of the data are as follows:
- biographies of people that have influence in different areas: science, revolution,
innovation, entertainment and philanthropy
- biographies of both male and female personifications of the century
- biographies written by both male and female biographers


An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
4
4. METHODOLOGY
We choose the descriptive research approach as it grants permission to our attainment of
the objectives. First of all, the descriptive research is both synthetic (holistic) and analytic
(constituent). This characteristic is in accord with our general research aim: to investigate
the characteristics of biographical discourse both at the macro level and at the constituent
level. Secondly, the descriptive research operates on the basis of hypotheses, thus its
deductive nature. In our study, hypotheses are generated based on previous related research
and careful study on distinguishing features of the biographical genre (see chapter 2 for the
study’s hypotheses). Thirdly, the descriptive study aims to gather data without any
manipulation of the research context, which makes it non-intrusive and deal with naturally
occurring data. Our data are pre-existing as published articles and the preexistent data are
retained without any adjustment of the researcher. Fourthly, the descriptive study’s
subjects can be both treated as individuals and individual variations, enabling the average
behavior for the subjects group. Therefore, each biography in our archive can be explored
in details and variations in the results yielded can be compared and conclusions can be
drawn with regards to the underlying reasons for the differences. Average numerical
results can also be attained to describe the general characteristics of the genre as a whole.

5. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
The thesis consists of 3 main parts:

- Part 1 is Introduction, which discusses the rationale, the aims and objectives of the
study, the scope of the study, methodology used in the study and the organization
of the study
- Part 2 is Development, which includes three chapters as follows;
- Chapter 1 - Literature Review: This chapter presents all related theoretical
background that precedes and necessitates the formation of our research
- Chapter 2 - Methodology: This chapter describes the research procedures that
have been utilized in the study

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
5
- Chapter 3 – Data Analysis: This chapter presents and discusses the data
collected and is divided into three major parts: data regarding actions and
events in biographies, point of view in biographies and biographical discourse
structure.
- Part 3 is Conclusion, which summarizes the major findings and implications of the
research and suggestions for further study


An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
6
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, a range of fundamental theoretical concepts will be introduced. First of all,
definitions pertaining to what is meant by discourse and discourse analysis, the backbone
concepts of this research paper, are presented in 1.1. as a gateway to the understanding of
the consecutive notions and models. Second, a taxonomy of discourse type is discussed in

1.2. in order to prove that biography is qualified for discourse analysis (henceforth DA).
Third, discussions of methods in DA are included in 1.3. Fourth, in 1.4., theoretical
background regarding definitions of biography, types of biography, the concepts of genre
and style are set forth. Simpson’s model of elements in narrative discourse is discussed in
section 1.5. Halliday’s categorization of Actions and Events is presented in 1.6. Section
1.7. introduces the Leech and Short’s classification of speech and thought, whereas 1.8.
discusses Labov’s model of narrative discuss.
* * *
1.1. DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
According to Cook (1994), the recent decades have seen a very considerable growth of
interest in discourse analysis. Therefore, the term ‘discourse’ has been widely used by
linguists. Most of them defined discourse as language in its social contexts. For example,
Potter in Wood & Kroger (2000) offers a definition of discourse as text and talks in social
practices. That is, the focus is not on language as an abstract entity such as lexicon and set
of grammatical rules (in linguistics) or a systems of differences (in structuralism). Instead,
language is the medium for interaction; analysis of discourse becomes, then, analysis of
what people do with language. Embedded in Potter’s definition of discourse and discourse
analysis is the assumption of the difference between text and discourse, whereby discourse
is a process or a practice and text (or talk) is the product of that process.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
7
The aforementioned perspective on discourse and DA stands in correspondence to that of
earlier linguists. Brown & Yule (1983) considers DA the analysis of language in use. As
such, DA cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the
purposes of functions which those forms are designed to serve in human affairs. Cook
(1994) claims that DA has focused very much upon the social nature of communication,
stressing contextual aspects of meaning which are interactive and negotiated, determined
by the social relations and identities of the participants in communication. Halliday, as
cited by Cook (1994), holds the view that language is a social semiotic and believes that

the function of all discourse is a blend of interpersonal and ideational. As in Brown & Yule
(1983), the two corresponding functions of discourse, in their own terms, are interactional
and transactional.
From all the definitions of discourse and DA, an inference can be safely drawn: DA cannot
be restricted to the description of text. However, the linguistic pitfall here may lead to a
DA novice to the conclusion that the descriptive method has been deprived of its import in
DA. According to Coulhart (1994), all branches of linguistics are first and foremost
descriptive. Please note that the descriptive factor of DA does not and should not hinder
the parameter of the area.

1.2. TYPES OF DISCOURSE
There are a number of ways of classifying discourse. As Wood & Kroger (2000) noted, we
can probably agree on the specifications for gross categorizations, for example, written
versus spoken discourse or telephone versus face-to-face talk, and we have no trouble
identifying a particular instance of discourse as a member of such category. The issue will
be less manageable if we notice that the difference between different types of discourse can
be a matter of structure (e.g. of turn-taking, the use of pauses) or a matter of orientation to
power and purpose. Wood & Kroger (2000) also highlights the obscurity of discourse
categorization by the specious dichotomy of monologue and dialogue. They claim that all
discourse are dialogic in nature. In sum, we cannot make statements about forms of
discourse in general in terms of some set of essential properties. Wood & Kroger (2000)
denies the possibility of an exhaustive list of all types of discourse, but proposes a tentative
possible data that DA researcher may draw upon.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
8

Spoken discourse Written discourse
Sub-type Examples Sub-type Examples
Locations: home, school,

offices or work sites, etc.
Face-to-face
Activities: household
chores, recreational
interactions, parties,
meetings, etc.
Correspondence Letters, memoranda,
messages, e-mail
(including “chat” group)
Telephone Conference calls, calls to
information, compliant,
reservation, etc.
Publications Articles in magazines,
newspapers, journals,
books, book chapters,
etc.
Mediated or
other
Television, film,
documentaries, etc.
Unpublished Dairies, shopping lists,
memos, notes, etc.
Table 1: Types of Discourse
The kind of discourse probed in this research is a series of articles from the TIME
magazine – therefore, it is written discourse and belongs to the subtype of publications.
The biographical nature of the selected data will be reserved for later discussions in 1.4.

1.3. METHODS OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
In the field of DA, various methods have been developed. According to Hatch (2001),
when we follow one method, adopting the units and processes described by that method,

we arrive at one picture of what discourse is. When we follow another method, the picture
changes as the units and processes change and the focus of the research changes. Each new
method adds another layer to the total discourse picture. Moreover, none of the methods
seems more “correct” than the others; each has its own purpose – some focus on writer’s
intent, others on component forms or templates, and others on more abstract notions of
how discourse and language may be modeled or mapped as cognitive system. Wood &
Kroger (2000) offers a three-way classification

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
9

Methods in DA
1. Goffman’s system components
2. Labov and Waletsky’s narrative structures
3. Levinson’s (1983) deictic and Halliday and Hasan’s
cohesion ties
4. Analysis of differences in features across modes
A. Linguistic and cognitive
templates (text characteristics)
5. Speech act analysis
1. Schank and Abelson’s script analysis
2. Mann and Thompson’s rhetorical structure analysis
3. Participant cohesion
4. Pragmatics of speech acts
B. Linguistic and cognitive
processes (text structures results
from selection/ activation based
on speaker’s/writer’s goals and
intents)
5. Clece-Murcia’s (1980) contextual analysis

1. Schegloff’s conversational analysis
2. Goffman’s ritual constraints; the playing of ‘self’
3. Labov’s evaluation component
4. Tannen’s and Chafe’s (1982) involvement features
C. Social, linguistic and
cognitive processes (text
structure evolves from socially
built communication)
5. Speech event analysis
Table 2: Methods in DA
Wood & Kroger (2000) only sketch “very roughly and broadly” the major perspectives or
groups of perspectives that they find most useful for conducting research: DASP
(Discourse Analysis in Social Psychology), CA (Conversation Analysis), CDA (Critical
Discourse Analysis) and works in pragmatics. Wood & Kroger states that all of the major
perspectives share an emphasis on discourse as practice, on the phenomena constructed in
discourse, on the action being accomplished. There are differences in the sorts of discourse
with which researchers work; to some extent, these line up with different perspectives.
Like Hatch (2001), Wood & Kroger (2000) discourage the idea of there being a or the
method of DA. However, they are also mindful of the potential pitfalls of eclecticism.
They do not propose a simple combination of approaches or methods, but suggests that
each researcher should have a strategy of drawing upon resources – notions, techniques,
devices, and strategies from different perspectives as appropriate to the specific project at
hand. They have a predilection for made-to-order DA rather than off-the-rack DA.
From Hatch (2001) and Wood & Kroger (2000), the methods for a DA research should
depend on the resources of data. In the following parts of the chapter, we will discuss the
characteristics of the data that we chose to research: biographical discourse.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
10
1.4. BIOGRAPHY

1.4.1. Definitions
Gentz (2001) states that biography is a recent term in Western lexicon, although the
tradition of biography extends back to antiquity. Biography was often practiced to
memorialize, commemorate, extol, and morally instruct readers and listeners. The word
biographer was first used by Thomas Fuller in his History of the Worthies of England,
written in 1662, where he argued for a more objective approach to writing, even about
saintly figures (Parke, 13-14). The word biography was first used by John Dryden in 1683,
who wrote on one of the earliest practitioners of biography, Plutarch (Winslow, 8).
According to Désilets (2006), biography is the study of a life. It reveals a personality and
an analysis of an individual’s work in the context of the age in which it existed. The author
or biographer does not merely recount a narrative; they make judgment about what the
individual was like and about their significance in history. Biography can also be the story
of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work. A biographical
work is supposed to be somewhat factual. However, since the biographer may be
prejudiced in favor of or against the subject of the biography, critics, and sometimes the
subject of the biography may come forward to challenge the accuracy of the material.
As analyzed in the Introduction, biography is the most popular categories of books – and
indeed the most popular category among nonfiction books, according to one British poll.
Nye (2006) claims that a 1994 poll on reading habits in Britain revealed biography to be
the most popular category of nonfiction book and a genre considerably ahead of
contemporary fiction (preferred by 19 percent of readers, compare to 14 percent for
contemporary fiction). Biographies also hold an important place in the history of Canada,
according to Désilets (2006). According to Marcus (1994), the ancient Greek public square
was where the first biographies were first told. In China, the first biographies were
composed around (100 B.C.) (Gentz, 2001) and had a rigid and formalized form.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
11
1.4.2. Types of biography
Park, C. A., as in Gentz (2001), classifies five broad categories of biographies as in the

following table.

Type name Characteristics
1 Popular biographies narrating the lives of current celebrities–movie stars and
sports heroes, for instance
2 Historical biographies emphasizing their central and influential figures'
relations to and effects on their times
3 Literary biographies recreating the life and personality of artists, attempting
to account for the particular bent of their talent and
sometimes, as in critical biographies, interpreting and
assessing their work
4 Reference biographies also called collective biographies, consisting of
alphabetically arranged, relatively brief entries on
notable figures, associatively collected by several
factors, such as profession, notable achievement, and
geographical-historical coordinates of their lives
5 Fictional biographies taking factual materials about real people and events
and developing them by applying fictional narrative
techniques
Table 3: Types of biographies
The type of biographies we choose to analyze is historical biographies, since it was a
series of articles depicting the lives and influences of 100 most influential of the 20
th

century. Therefore, historical biographies are more academic than popular biographies or
reference biographies but less literary than fictional biographies. However, we hereby will
discuss a question: Should biographies be regarded as being literary, or, in other words, is
biography eligible for a literary genre?
1.4.3. Biography as a genre and style
Biography has always been considered a genre – however, the term ‘genre’, although

attractively sounding, is slippery. Genre, as defined by the www.geocities.com dictionary
of literary terms, is a class or category of literature having a particular form, content or
technique, i.e. epic poetry, comedy, an fiction. For example, Shakespeare's Othello falls in
the genre of dramatic tragedy. Sophocles Antigone is an example of epic drama. Joyce's
The Dead could be labeled as realistic fiction.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
12
According to Swales (1990), a genre comprises a class of communication events, the
members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are
recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby
constitute the rationale for the genre.
Elizabeth Brus, cited in Marcus (1994), indicates a criterion for a kind of literary texts to
become a genre. She claims that to become a genre, a literary act must be recognizable by a
particular community of readers and writers, and that its function must be relatively stable.
All definitions of genre so far have underscored the function and the shared characteristics
in structure of discourse that belong to a genre. Biographies can be recognized both by
laypersons and linguistics experts as a set of discourse with certain purposes: either to
edify some popular figures or to revitalize the lives of influential people in a certain period
of history. Therefore, biography can be considered a genre. This explains why we use in
this research some techniques of genre analysis, which usually focuses on framing an
overall template for the genre (Hatch, 2001). An example in Swales (1990) is a graphic
overall organization of the research paper, with the inception of an Introduction, followed
by Procedure and Discussion. The methods of Genre Analysis is important in our research
in order to attain the third research objective: constructing an overall structure of the
biographical genre.
The biographies that we investigate are historical biographies. Historical biographies are
not as ‘literary’ as fictional biographies, but being less literary is not synonymous with the
fact that historical biographies do not resort to fictional narrative techniques (a significant
feature of fictional biographies). To some extent, a study of a historical biography can

employ achievements in studies in narrative techniques.
Fowler in Carter (1997) argues that in terms of linguistics properties, there is no special
variety of language which is distinctively or exclusively literary. “Some of the varieties
used in the constitution of a specific literary text may tend to occur regularly in some, but
not all, other ‘literary’ texts, but they are not restricted to literary texts (rhyme and
alliteration are found in advertisements); and ‘literary’ texts also draw upon patterns which
tend to occur in ‘non-literary’ texts (conversation, news report). From this viewpoint,

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
13
stylistics is concerned with many types of discourse, none of which are exclusively
‘literary’ or ‘non-literary’.
Moreover, the literary nature of biographies, though not as strong as in epic poetry, novels
or drama, is an essential . In biographies, one can find literary tropes such as metaphor,
metonymy, irony. One can also discern syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices
(which, according to Galperin (1981), are two important stylistic tools). Consequently, the
techniques and research results of Stylistics can also be employed in this research. Simpson
(1997) defines stylistics as a branch of language study which is principally concerned with
the integration of language and literature. Later in his career, Simpson (2004) asserts that
modern stylistics is positively flourishing, witnessed in a proliferation of sub-disciplines
where stylistic methods are enriched and enabled by theories of discourse, culture and
society. He also names discourse stylistics as a branch of modern stylistics and
acknowledges the contribution of DA methods to the procreation of modern stylistics.
Carter (1997) also quoted Leech (1983) “Stylistics may be regarded simply as the variety
of DA dealing with literary discourse”. The entwinement between DA and stylistics entails
a combination of methods so that a literary discourse can be best analyzed.
A obfuscating term has been used discursively in our previous arguments about the
characteristics of biographies: ‘narrative’. Are biographies axiomatically narrative?
According to Labov (1997), narrative and the broader field of story telling has become a
keen focus of attention in many academic and literary disciplines. A simple definition of

the word in Merriam-Webster Dictionary is a story, an account of a tale. Jann (2005)
claims that a narrative presents a story. A story, in its turn, is a sequence of events which
involves characters. Hence, according to Jann, a narrative is a form of communication
which present a sequence of events caused and experienced by characters. Toolhan (1998)
also offers a definition of narrative. A narrative, is at minimum a text in which the reader
or addressee perceive a significant change. In a narrative, something happens, such that we
sense a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, one state of affairs is displaced by a different state of
affairs, and this latter state is, ideally, not merely temporally but causally related to the
former state.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
14
A biography, seen in this system of reference, is the story about one’s life. All biographical
discourse, including newspaper articles, have a central character, or protagonist (heroic or
not heroic) – the real person whose life is being edified by the biographer. Undoubtedly
there are always other surrounding characters apart from the protagonist. The life of the
hero or antihero in a biography usually consists of some events that shaped or changed the
person’s life, some obstacles or some risks they took. As aforementioned, a biography is
not a mere narrative account of a person’s life, but it should be narrative first before being
evaluative of the influence or the qualities of the hero (antihero).
It will be a more cogent argument if a researcher who considers biography a narrative
genre can be named. In what Jann (2005) footnoted as an incomplete list of various
narrative themes and genres, there are narratives of personal experience (Labov), biblical
narratives (Kermode, Sternberg), teacher’s narratives, children’s narratives, doctor’s
narratives, etc., and a kindred of biography: historiographic autobiography/fictional
autobiography (Lejeune, Cohn, Loschnigg) (names in parentheses are researchers with
works on the narrative genre aforementioned). Autobiography can also be a sub-type of
biographies; thus it can be inferred that Jann (2005) may have put biographies in this list if
there had been one (or more) linguists choosing them as data for their research.
Hence, another resource in our DA attempt has been identified: Narrative Theory or

Narratology. Narratology is the theory of the structures of narrative. To investigate a
structure, or to present a ‘structural description’, the narratologist dissects the narrative
phenomena into their component parts and then attempts to determine their functions and
relationships.
So far the discrete discussions of stylistics and narratology seem to put them at two
unconnected domains. Probing through the works on stylistics and narratology, we found
out that they overlapped in a Venn’s Diagram. According to Jann (2005), the objects of
stylistics are not restricted to narratives, whereas the objects of narratology are.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
15
Figure 1: The relationship between Stylistics and Narratology
To the extent that narratology (more appropriately, discourse narratology) focuses on the
ways, means, and effects of telling narratives, narratology is of, or intersects with,
stylistics in the sense that the tools of narratology can be used for the purposes of stylistic
analysis. However, one cannot say much of interest about an epic's narrative quality by
examining its meter, or about a lyric poem by examining its narrative situation. A subject
of narratology can be oral talk about a personal experience, e.g. in response to a question
“Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious danger of being killed?”, which is
beyond the subject scope of stylistics. In set-theoretical terms, imagine two intersecting
circles, one large, one small. The large one is stylistics, the smaller one is narratology.
Biographies can be the chosen data for stylists, because they are literary; they also provide
an option for narratologists, whose aim is to explore the narrative genre. It turns out that
biography lies in the intersection of the two circles: stylistics and narratologists.
Techniques and devices of the two areas can thus be employed in our DA of biographies.

1.5. SIMPSON’S MODEL OF ELEMENTS IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
From this point onward, we would gradually narrow the research focus by examining
different elements of narrative discourse (with relations to biographical discourse). Only
the two elements in characterization will be chosen: actions and events along with point of

view.



STYLISTICS


NARRATO-
LOGY
x
biography

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
16
According to Simpson (2004), in its most minimal form, a narrative comprises two clauses
which are temporally ordered. Of course, most narratives, whether those of canonical prose
fiction or of spontaneous stories of everyday social interaction, have rather more to offer
than just two simple temporally arranged clauses. There is, in fact, more to a narrative than
just a sequence of basic clauses.
Two basic concepts for much work in stylistics and narratology are narrative plot and
narrative discourse. The term plot is generally understood to refer to the abstract storyline
of a narrative; that is, to the sequence of elemental, chronologically ordered events which
create the ‘inner core’ of a narrative. Narrative discourse, by contrast, encompasses the
manner or means by which that plot is narrated. Narrative discourse, for example, is often
characterized by the use of stylistic devices such as flashback, prevision and repetition – all
of which serve to disrupt the basic chronology of the narrative’s plot.
As implied in the title of our research, our objective is towards the understanding of the
narrative discourse rather than narrative plot. However, the distinction between the two
concepts does not mean that the two terms are mutually exclusive. For example, when we
explore the structure of biographical discourse, we will have to resort to the developments

of the biographical plot.
The next step in stylistic DA proposed by Simpson (2004) is sorting out the various
stylistic elements which make up narrative discourse. The model below is provided in
order to organize narrative analysis into clearly demarcated areas of study.








Figure 2: Simpson’s model of Elements in Narrative Discourse

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
17
The first of the six is textual medium, which refers to the physical channel of
communication through which a story is narrated. In the case of biographies we discuss in
this research, the channel is written magazine articles – so we would not choose to explore
this into details.
Sociolinguistic code expresses through language the historical, cultural and linguistic
setting which frames a narrative. Sociolinguistic code encompasses, among other things,
the varieties of accent and dialect used in a narrative. Sociolinguistic code, therefore, is not
the focus of our research. The sixth element, intertextuality, overlaps, in case of
biographies and narrative, with sociolinguistic code; thus this element will not be
examined in our data.
According to Simpson (2004), the first of the two characterization elements, actions and
events, describes how the development of character precipitates and intersects with the
actions and events of a story. It accounts for the way in which the narrative intermeshes
with particular kind of semantic processes, notably those of ‘doing’, ‘thinking’ and

‘saying’, and for the way in which these processes are attributed to characters and
narrators. In order to investigate the actions and events, thoughts and perceptions that are
represented in the grammar of the clause, stylistics resort to the system of transitivity by
Halliday (1994). However, Simpson (2004) emphasizes that what is of interest to
stylisticians is “why one type of structure should be preferred to another, or why, from
possibly several ways of representing the same ‘happening’, one particular type of
depiction should be privileged over another”. Because of this predisposition of certain
structure(s) in a certain type of narrative, Simpson concluded that the “choices in style”
have a profound impact on the way texts are structured and interpreted.
This element in a narrative is one of our main concerns. Given the penetrating influence
that the representation of actions and events exert in any narrative, we assume that the
same conclusion about a preferred style as choice (in transitivity) will be of a considerable
import in biographies. Since biographies has a central character and the life of this
character must be edified to readers, processes as those described in Halliday’s 1994
Functional Grammar are usually used. However, from a stylistician’s view, one should not
only list the processes that have been employed but has to find out the most privileged
“choices in style” that characterize biographies.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
18
Also pertaining to the mechanism of narrative characterization, the fourth element, point of
view, stipulates whether the events of the story are viewed from the perspective of a
particular character or from that of an omniscient narrator, or indeed a mixture of the two.
The way speech and thought processes are represented in narrative is also an important
index of point of view.
Point of view will also be one of the main foci of this research.
Textual structure accounts for the way individual narrative units are arranged and
organized in a story. A stylistic study of textual structure may focus on large-scale
elements or plot, or alternatively, on more localized features of story’s organization. In our
research, we will explore the macro-organization of biographical narrative, with recourse

to narrower aspects of narrative cohesion when necessary.
The term intertextuality, the sixth narrative component, is reserved for the technique of
‘allusion’. Narrative fiction, like all writing, does not exist in a social and historical
vacuum, and it often echoes other texts and images either as ‘implicit’ intertextuality or as
‘manifest’ intertextuality. However, this component is more concerned with a critical DA,
and therefore, will not be our concern.

1.6. HALLIDAY’S MODEL OF PROCESS TYPES
The first element that will be further investigated in more details in chapter 3 is the
characterization element: action and events. As discussed in 1.5., in order to explore
actions and events in a narrative discourse, one has to resort to Halliday’s concept of
transitivity. This section will provide Halliday’s insight in transivity and all these concepts
discussed will be reused in chapter 3.
The particular grammatical facility used for capturing experience in language is the system
of transitivity. Transitivity refers to the way meanings are encoded in the clause and to the
way different types of processes are represented in the language. According to Halliday
(1994), a process consists, in principle, of three components.
(i) the process itself
(ii) participants in the process
(iii) circumstances associated with the process

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
19
The figure on the next page, adapted from Simpson (2004) and Halliday (1994) illustrates
the types of processes in English, as in Halliday (1994).
1.6.1. Material processes
Material processes are processes of ‘doing’. They express the notion that some entity
‘does’ something – which may be done ‘to’ some other entity. Associated with material
processes are two inherent participant roles which are the Actor, an obligatory role in the
process, and an optional Goal, a role which may or may not be involved in the process.

For example:
(1) I nipped Daniel
Actor Process Goal
(2) The washing machine broke down
Actor Process
World of abstract
relations
being
sensing
doing
Physical world
World of
consciousness
EXISTENTIAL
(existing)
‘There was a nip’
MATERIAL
(doing)
‘I nipped
Daniel’
BEHAVIORIAL
(behaving)
‘She frowned at
the mess’
RELATIONAL
(being)
‘The best Irish
writer is Joyce’
VERBALIZATION
(saying)

‘The minister announced
the decision’
MENTAL
(sensing)
‘Sibohan detests
paté’
Figure 3: The grammar of experience: Types of processes in English

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
20
Material processes are not necessarily concrete, physical events; they may be abstract
doings and happenings. Material processes are also manifested in passive voice. For
example
(3) The two schools combined
Actor Process
(4) The two schools were combined
Actor Process
As Jann (2005) points out, linguists further making a distinction among the events in a
narrative: volitional acts (shown in verbs that signal willful acts – e.g. jump from a bridge,
watch a show) and non-volitional acts or experiences (e.g. falling from a bridge)
1.6.2. Mental processes
Mental processes are essentially processes of sensing. Unlike material processes which
have their provenance in the physical world, mental processes inhabit and reflect the world
of consciousness, and involve cognition (encoded in verbs such as ‘thinking’ or
‘wondering’), reaction (encoded in verbs such as ‘liking’ or ‘hating’) and perception (as in
‘seing’ or ‘hearing’). The two participant roles associated with mental processes are the
Sensor and the Phenomenon. Here are illustrations of the three main types of mental
processes:
(1) Mary understood the story
Sensor Process Phenomenon

(2) Anil noticed the damp patch
Sensor Process Phenomenon
(3) Siobhan detests paté
Sensor Process Phenomenon
1.6.3. Behavioral processes
This is a type of process that, in the words of Simpson (2004), “sits at the interface
between material and mental processes” and is a process that “represents both the activities
of ‘sensing’ and ‘doing’. Behavioral processes embody physiological actions like ‘breathe’
or ‘cough’, although they sometimes portray these processes as states of consciousness as
in ‘sign’, ‘cry’ or ‘laugh’. They also represent processes of consciousness as forms of
behavior, as in ‘stare’, ‘dream’ or ‘worry’. The key participant in behavioral processes is
the Behaver.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
21

(1) That student fell asleep in my lecture again
Behaver Process Circumstance
(2) She frowned at the mess
Behaver Process Circumstance
1.6.4. Relational processes
Relational processes can be considered ‘processes of being’ in the specific sense of
establishing relationship between two entities. Relational processes can be divided into
three main types: intensive, circumstantial and possessive. This three-way classification is
rather complicated by the fact that it intersects with another distinction between attributive
and identifying relational processes.

Type Mode
attributive

identifying
intensive Paula’s presentation was lively Joyce is the best Irish writer
The best Irish writer is Joyce
possessive Peter has a piano The Alpha Romeo is Clara’s
Clara’s is the Alpha Romeo
circumstantial The fete is on all day The maid is in the parlor
In the parlor is the maid
However, we will not consider all 6 subtypes of relational processes. We will only deal
with the two types: attributive and identifying. In the attributive mode, the entity, person or
concept being described is referred to as the Carrier, while the role of Attribute refers to the
quality ascribed to that Carrier. In the identifying mode, one role is identified through
reference to another such that the two halves of the clause often refer to the same thing.
This means that unlike attributive processes, all identifying processes are reversible. One
entity (the Identifier) picks out and defines the other (the Identified).
1.6.5. Verbal processes
These are processes of saying, but ‘saying’ has to be interpreted in a rather broad sense.; it
covers any kind of symbolic exchange of meaning, e.g. The notice tells you to keep quiet,
or my watch says it’s half past ten. The grammatical function of the notice and my watch is
that of Sayer. Other participant roles in this type of processes are Receiver (the entity to
which the speech is addressed) and the Verbiage (that which gets said). Thus:
(1) Mary claimed that the story had been changed
Sayer Process Verbiage

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
22
(2) The minister announced the decision to parliament
Sayer Process Verbiage Receiver

1.6.6. Existential processes
Existential processes constitute the sixth and last category of the transitivity model. Close

in sense to relational processes, these processes basically assert that something exists or
happens. The only participant role in this type of process is the Existent.
(1) There was a storm
Process Existent
Following is a summary of 6 types of processes and their respective participant roles
Process type Category meaning Participants
Material ‘doing’ Actor, Goal
action
event
volitional
non-volitional

Mental ‘sensing’ Senser, Phenomenon
perception
affection
cognition
‘seeing’
‘feeling’
‘thinking’

Behavioral ‘behaving’ Behaver
Relational ‘being’
attribution
identification
‘attributing’
‘identifying’
Carrier, Attribute
Identified, Identifier
Verbal ‘saying’ Sayer, Verbiage, Receiver
Existential ‘existing’ Existent

Table 4: Processes and Participants
1.7. LEECH & SHORT’S MODEL OF STR TYPES
Point of view, as the concept is employed in our research, refers to the specific
perspective(s) from which the characters and events in a biography or narrative are viewed
and the manipulation of perspective switching.
According to Simpson (2004), in an influential publication on prose composition, the
narratologist Boris Uspensky proposed a four-way model for the study of point of view in
fiction. This model was later revised and refined by Roger Fowler; thus it is probably best
to refer to this composite framework of analysis as the ‘Fowler-Uspensky model’. The four
components identified by the Fowler-Uspensky model of point of view are as follows:
(i) point of view on the ideological plane

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
23
(ii) point of view on the temporal plane
(iii) point of view on the spatial plane
(iv) point of view on the psychological plane
This four-component classification is provisional rather than absolute. For example, the
concept of ideological plane is abstract and almost unmanageable, due to its lack of
parameters. The point of view on the spatial plane is about the narrative’s ‘camera angle’
and is a device which has palpable grammatical exponents in deixis and in locative
expressions. Spatial point of view in biographies is used within limitation, and therefore,
will not be examined further in this research. In the Fowler-Uspensky model, temporal
point of view is about the way relationships of time are signaled in narrative. ‘Time
analysis’, to Jann (2005)’s dictum, is concerned with three questions: When? How long?
How often? These three questions lead to three main concepts: order, duration and
frequency. Although the parameters in researching temporal point of view are clear-cut, we
will not focus on this aspect within the limited scope of our research. Psychological point
of view is the focus of our research, investigating the speech and thought representation
(STR) in biographies.

There are frequent incidences of the narrator’s attempt to switch his psychological point of
view. As clarified in previous discussions, a narrative can be either homodiegetic
(recounted by one who is also a character in the main story line) or heterodiegetic (a
narrative imparted by a person who was not a character in the main story line). In
biographies, the biographer usually stands on the sidelines of the story, but (s)he also
switches the position frequently. As an omniscient narrator, the biographer sometimes
narrates as if (s)he knows what the character thought or heard what the character speak.
Besides, the biographer may resort to an external character, who presents some thoughts or
speaks about the biography’s main character. The biographer’s thoughts are also
represented in the biography. As Simpson (2004) comments, ‘while it is true that a great
deal of what makes up a story is actions and events, it is also the case that stories contain a
great deal of reported speech and thought’. Exploring the representation of speech and
thought has always been an important preoccupation of narratologists, not excluding those
whose primary concern is biographical discourse.

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
24
According to Simpson (2004), the most influential framework for the analysis of speech
and thought representations in narrative fiction is undoubtedly that developed by Mick
Short and his co-researchers. Leech and Short’s textbook (1981) contains the first
systematic account of this important narrative technique. In this research, we choose this
model, as introduced in Simpson (2004), with some adaptations and examples from
Freeborn (1996).

Speech representation Thought representation
Direct
Direct Speech (DS)
E.g. She said, ‘I’ll come here tomorrow’
Direct thought (DT)
E.g. He wondered, ‘Does she still love

me?’
Free
direct
Free Direct Speech (FDS)
E.g. ‘I’ll come tomorrow’
Free Direct Thought (FDT
E.g. Does she still love me?
Elliptical
Elliptical Direct Speech (EDS)
E.g. He “immediately withdrew into his
shell” when relations became intimate

Indirect
Indirect Speech (IS)
E.g. She said that she would go there the
following day
Indirect Thought (IT)
E.g. He wondered if she still loved him
Free
indirect
Free Indirect Speech (FIS)
E.g. She would be there the following
day
Free Indirect Thought (FIT)
E.g. Did she still love him?
Narrative
Report
Narrative Report of Speech (NRS)
E.g. She spoke of their plans for the day
ahead

Narrative Report of Thought (NRT)
E.g. He wondered about her love for him.
Table 5: Leech & Short’s classification of STR types
In this classification, we have added one type of speech representation: Elliptical Direct
Speech. This is because of the fact that many words or phrases, used by a certain person,
have been used in biographies, without referring back to their whole statements.
One problem arises here: in most biographies, speech and thought of the main character, as
well as those of the biographer and of other characters (e.g. other people commenting on
the personality of the main character) are all represented. As Jann (2005) points out, a
narrative text can be divided into the narrator’s discourse and the characters’ discourse.
However, because there exists one central character in any biography, we will divide the
biographical discourse STR into three types: the speech and thought of the main character,
those of the ‘secondary character and those of the narrator (or biographer).

An Analysis of the Discourse of Biographies
25
We also adapted the transition of speech and thought graphic proposed by Simpson (2004),
in order to illustrate the transition of speech and thought (of the main character, secondary
characters and the biographer) in biographies. Below is an example:
(Abbreviations used in the chart are in List of Abbreviations – 1)

1.8. LABOV’S MODEL OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
Discourse structure is the third research concern in this paper. Any piece of discourse is not
just a string of unconnected sentences, but a whole with its interrelated . According to
Georgakopoulou & Goutos (2004), this internal structure, consisting of a set of units, has
been a major preoccupation in research on narrative discourse. The search for structural
units of narrative text characterizes most classic work in the field, from Aristotle’s Poetics
to Propp’s work on Russian folktale. Cook (1994) comments that positing larger structures
of discourse is often specific to discourse types or genres. Fabb (1997) holds the view that
the macro-structure of narratives is one of the aspects of narrative form which exists quite

independently of language.
Stein, in Georgakopoulou & Goutos (2004), devises an influential scheme of a story’s
prototypical structure, identifying the following constituents.
(i) Setting: the internal or external state and habitual actions that introduce
characters and their social and physical environment
(ii) Initiating event: some type of change in the protagonist’s environment
(iii) (The protagonist’s) Response or Reaction to the event
Figure 4: A sample chart of Speech and Thought Representation (STR)
Einstein
01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829
MC
N
SC
NRS
FIS
IS
EDS
FDS
DS
NR
A
DT
FDT
IT
FIT
NRT