Using transitivity Analysis to Reveal the Nature of Characters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Abstract

This article used transitivity analysis to reveal the nature of four major characters in Playing Pilgrims, a short story in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. The four major characters in the story are: Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy. The items in the novel are classified into three main components of transitivity. The main components are Participant, Circumstance and Process but the focus of analysis was on process type. The process types assigned to each character was countered and tabulated percentage wise. It was established that the author used 233 process types in the story. The study established that transitivity analysis could be used to analyze or reveal the nature of characters in a story depending on the type of processes assigned to those characters in the story. Meg is the most emotional character in the story since she was assigned the highest number of mental process. Jo is the most sociable character in the story as she was assigned the highest number of relational process. Amy, on the other hand, is the most physically active character since she was assigned the highest number of material process. On the other hand, Jo can be seen as the most vocal character in the story since she was assigned the highest number of verbal process which focuses on the vocal ability of a character. Beth is the character who exhibited most of the behavioral attitudes in the story. Existential process was not assigned to any of the major characters in the short story. The study recommends that researchers who may have interest in transitivity analysis should use it to analyze other works of Louisa May Alcott to establish whether their findings would be similar to the findings of this study or different.