Gender Matters - Sara Mills
5. Transitivity analysis
Gender Matters - Sara Mills
Sara Mills [+]
Sheffield Hallam University
Sara Mills is a Research Professor in Linguistics at Sheffield Hallam University. Her most recent publications include Gender and Colonial Space (2005, Manchester University Press), Michel Foucault (Critical Thinkers Series, 2003, Routledge), Feminist Post-Colonial Theory: An Anthology (edited with Reina Lewis, 2003, Edinburgh University Press) and Gender and Politeness (2003, Cambridge University Press).
Description
The aim of this essay is to evaluate critically a form of close feminist textual analysis – the analysis of transitivity choices, that is, who does what to whom in a text. Following Deirdre Burton’s influential essay on transitivity, this chapter sets this type of analysis within a wider framework of feminist textual analysis and considers some of the advantages of a close textual analysis in general for feminist work (Burton, 1982). It also considers some of the difficulties which this type of work engenders, and proposes a model of feminist analysis prepared to acknowledge some of the difficulties of attributing straightforward meanings to sets of language items.