Rereading Two Travelogues of Qajar Era Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics of Halliday at Ideational Metafunction Level

Systemic functional linguistics of Halliday is one of semantic approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literary texts as opposed to structural linguistics. In the present study, we have examined the applicability of this theory at the level of ideational metafunction to reread the style of the text of two travelogues of the Qajar era and to differentiate between language functions in both feminine and masculine styles through how they are represented in verb processes. The main question of this research is how to represent the experiences and observations of two authors during the journey through the transient structure formed in the processes that have depicted the experimental world of the two travelogues. By selecting similar parts in each travelogue, we examined five hundred process samples. After determining the type of each process and its statistics, we compared the frequency of the function of each of the six processes (material, mental, relational, verbal, behavioral, and existential) at the level of ideational metafunction. The results showed the higher frequency of the mental process in the Qajar lady’s travelogue, and the higher frequency of the relational process in the unknown man travelogue, respectively, indicating the greater attention of the Qajar lady to the inner world, and the greater importance of discovering relationships in the world around and evaluation of these relations in the mind and language of the male author. Through our examining the use of marginal additions in the two travelogues, it became clear that Sakineh Sultan used these additions 27% more than the unknown man in the text, which shows her paying more attention to recording details during the trip. In terms of the use of various marginal additions, the addition of place and accompaniment in the male author’s travelogue and the addition of degree, quality, intention, and cause in the female author’s travelogue are more frequent. This shows style differences in the two writings regarding the formation and depiction of outside world experiences in the mind and their representation manner in the language of these two authors. In terms of transitive structure in these two travelogues, wherever the writers are preparing the ground for expressing the main point, the sentences are less transient and wherever an important event and speech is presented, the degree of transientness of the sentences is higher. This means that verb processes in the foreground of the speech have more participants, are voluntary and positive, have real face, with high agency and ultimate appearance, and individuality is object and the degree of the object’s being influenced is more than the sentences in the background of the speech.