Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2020. E-ISSN: 2621-9158 P-ISSN:2356-0401 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 35 TRANSITIVITY SYSTEM ON BUILDING CHARACTER OF MR. SUMMERS IN THE LOTTERY BY SHIRLEY JACKSON 1Intan Siti Nugraha*, 1Sutiono Mahdi 1Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia *Corresponding Author: intan19004@mail.unpad.ac.id ABSTRACT The Lottery is one of the most famous American canonicals written by Shirley Jackson (1948) which is sensational. The theme brought triggers controversy to contemporary critics. The story exposed one of the darkest dualities of human nature in ‘the lottery’ carried out by the society in the story. The controversial character in the Lottery which evokes social culture issue is analyzed by investigating the process types related to the character. Types of process are essential in the building characters or characterization. Thus, this study analyzed the main character of a literary work “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948) using transitivity system of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) approach. The data were all clauses related to Mr. Summers as the main character in this short story. They were analyzed using concept of transitivity system. The result shows that the author of the short story dominantly uses verbal process to construct the main character through his verbiage which is 52.63% of the total processes in clauses. In addition material process which also occupies high number (32.90%) after verbal process denotes that the character does activities in the domestic and physical domain. The relational process (7.89%) is used to characterize the characters explicitly. The mental process (5.26%) is used to depict the characters’ cognition while behavioural process (1.32%) is employed to a common activity. Keywords: Building character; Short story; Transitivity system ABSTRAK The Lottery adalah salah satu cerita kanonik Amerika paling terkenal yang ditulis oleh Shirley Jackson (1948) yang sensasional. Tema tersebut memicu kontroversi bagi para kritikus kontemporer. Kisah itu mengungkap salah satu dualitas tergelap dari sifat manusia dalam 'lotre' yang dilakukan oleh masyarakat dalam cerita itu. Karakter kontroversial dalam Lotre yang membangkitkan masalah budaya sosial dianalisis dengan menyelidiki jenis proses yang terkait dengan karakter. Jenis proses sangat penting dalam membangun karakter atau karakterisasi. Penelitian ini menganalisis tokoh utama dari karya sastra "The Lottery" oleh Shirley Jackson (1948) dengan menggunakan sistem transitivitas dari pendekatan Linguistik Fungsional Sistemik (LFS). Data dalam peneliatian ini diambil dari semua klausa yang terkait dengan Mr. Summers sebagai tokoh utama dalam cerita pendek ini. Semua klausa tersebut dianalisis menggunakan konsep sistem transitivitas. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa sang penulis lebih dominan menggunakan proses verbal untuk membangun karakter utama melalui kata- katanya yaitu 52,63% dari total proses dalam klausa. Selain itu penggunaan proses materi yang juga tinggi (32,90%) setelah proses verbal menunjukkan bahwa tokoh utama ini (Mr. Summers) melakukan aktivitas dalam domain domestik dan fisik lebih sering. Proses relasional (7,89%) digunakan untuk mengkarakterisasi tokoh secara eksplisit. Proses mental (5,26%) digunakan untuk menggambarkan kognisi tokoh sementara proses perilaku (1,32%) digunakan untuk aktivitas umum. Kata Kunci: Pembentukan Tokoh; Cerita Pendek;Sistem Transitivitas Nugraha, I.S., & Mahdi, S.(2020). Transitivity System on Building Character of Mr. Summers in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature, & Linguistics, 7(1), 35- 43. 36 INTRODUCTION The Lottery is one of the most famous American canonicals as well as a sensational short story written by Shirley Jackson and published in the same month it was published, June 26, 1948. The Lottery is ranked as one of the most famous short stories in America Literature. The theme brought by Shirley Jackson in the story triggers controversy to contemporary critics and remains mystery (Chen, 2012). Through ordinary and everyday-like tone of third-person narration, friendly description, neighborly behaviour and latter indifferent attitudes of towns people, Shirley Jackson successfully set unexpected and chilly ending and exposed one of the darkest dualities of human nature in ‘the lottery’ they carried out. In this short story, a lottery which is usually associated to a positive lucky for the winner is portrayed as a barbaric ritual. Language used in any text, including literary text such as short story, reflects the stored knowledge of the members of the speech community since language and literature are the product of culture which has basic function in relation to social environment and depict social reality (Wahyuni, 2014; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), such as the culture portrayed in literary works. Literary work is human expression in which people express their feeling, experience, thought and imagination that symbolize life as events and experience in society that describe reality (Handika & Hartiningsih, 2014). In other words, language also construes human experience. Language is a social semiotic which is a system for making meanings. SFL is a potent framework for describing and modelling language as a resource for making meaning and choices, which treats language beyond its formal structures and takes the context of culture and the context of situation in language use (Cunanan, 2011). Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) explain that language has three metafunctions. The metafunctions are ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Ideational function represents experience of world and it empowers people to build a mental picture of reality or their experience of what goes on around them and inside them. This experiential meaning is called transitivity (Eggins, 2004).Transitivity is a grammatical system which deals with several types of process found in structure of language. The processes in transitivity consist of process, participants and circumstances. Types of processes are material processes, mental processes, relational processes, behavioral processes, verbal processes, and existential processes. Material processes are processes of doing that involves an Actor and a Goal. The one that does the action is called Actor while directed act is Goal. Another process os mental processes which are processes of sensing that include Sensor and Phenomenon as two potential participants. The conscious being is what is called as Sensor that is doing mental action such as feeling, thinking or seeing while phenomenon is what is sensed, felt, thought and seen or the position in a sense reversed. Mental processes can be divided into four subtypes that are perceptive, cognitive, desiderative, and emotive (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Another process which is the process of being is called as relational process. There are three types of relational processes. The first relational process is intensive which depicts a process of “x is a”. The second relational process is circumstantial which describes a process of “x is at a”. The last relational process is possessive which describes a process of “x has a”. The three relational process describe the two kind of relationship between a and x: “a is an attribute of x” and “a is the identity of x”. Anoher process is behavioral processes which are related to physiological Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2020. E-ISSN: 2621-9158 P-ISSN:2356-0401 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 37 satet and psychological behaviour. The examples of behavioural process are cough, smile, breath, cry. Those processes have one participant called the Behavior. Next process is verbal process. Verbal process is process of saying. Different to behavioural process, verbal processes usually consist of three participants. They are the Sayer, the Verbiage, and the Receiver. The addresser is called the Sayer while the Receiver is the addressee. The content of the message in the process is the Verbiage. Existential processes represent that something exists or happens. It is usually realized by there- construction. Studies on characterization by using transitivity analysis have been done by previous researchers such as Patterson (2019), Song (2013), Tiejun (2007), Nurhayati (2018), Rashid (2016), and study of analyzing character in The Lottery using non- transitivity system was conducted by Chen (2012). Those studies serve as the basic previous studies for this study. The first study of using transitivity system on analyzing character Cat in The Rain is a study conducted by Tiejun (2007). The purpose of Tieju’s study is to verify unconcerned relationship among people in the story using transitivity system by analyzing their types of processes. The second is a study on analyzing character of Emily in A Rose for Emily short story by William Faulkner using transitivity system was conducted by Song (2013). The study focused on identifying processes in the story and analyzing their function of constructing theme and shaping the character. Similar with Song’s study, Rashid (2016) also investigated construction of main character, Hiroko Tanaka, and also other characters in Burnt Shadows by applying transitivity as tool of grammatical analysis of SFL. Not only investigating the process of clauses, Song interpreted them in relation to the meanings associated with the characterization of Hiroko Tanaka and other important characters in the story. Patterson (2019) carried out a study which combines the approach of Systemic Functional Grammar and Corpus Linguistics as the aim of providing transitivity analysis and metaphor cluster within collected words by Charles Dickens and Tomas Hardy to determine what types of processes used for metaphor and what constituent form in the processes. Patterson compared the metaphor in literary works of the two writers using transitivity system. The results of this study have shown some differences in the choices taken by Dickens and Hardy in their use of metaphors in which these differences also reflect wider issues such as their ideology, main themes in their writings, and characterization. There is also a study which concerns on analyzing character of Tessie Hutchinson in The Lottery short story by Shirley Jackson (1948) conducted by Chen (2012). The study focuses on physiological condition of characters in the story which are represented by Tessie’s character. It was found that Tessie had duality characters realized in the time she won the lottery. Mrs. Hutchinson is portrayed in the story as a victim or a scapegoat of the brutal primitive ceremony by a neighbourhood. However, it is also revealed the primitive nature of selfish and indifferent human beings in a figure of Tessie Hutchinson, which gives much reflection even up to these days. Derived from the preceding elaboration on the canonical short story The Lottery, SFL theory and studies conducted in analysing characters, in this study, transitivity analysis is applied to the short story written by Shirley Jackson, The Lottery. The Nugraha, I.S., & Mahdi, S.(2020). Transitivity System on Building Character of Mr. Summers in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature, & Linguistics, 7(1), 35- 43. 38 controversial character in the Lottery which evokes social culture issue is analyzed by investigating the process types related to the character. Types of process are essential in the building characters or characterization in which the writer depicts the personality of a character directly (where the write tells audience the personality) or indirectly (by showing things that reveal the personality) (Msuya, 2014). Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze Mr. Summers, the main character, using transitivity system and to reveal the characters from what are represented from types of processes in clauses related to Mr. Summers. METHOD In accordance with the purpose of the study related to analyzing the main character of a literary work The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (1948) using transitivity system of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) approach, the study employed descriptive qualitative research design since it places stress and describes in detail of certain phenomenon through textual analysis and interpretation rather than comparing the effects of a particular treatment (Burns, 1995; Creswell, 1994). The data was a canonical short story taken from short story compilation entitled The Lottery and Other Stories (2009). All the clauses related to Mr. Summers and other characters as the reaction to Mr. Summers were selected to be analyzed in term of their process types. The clauses were purposively chosen by considering their relevancy to the purpose of this study which only focuses on characterization of Mr. Summers. The data were collected through documentation method by taking particular data to be analyzed in a literary work, which in this study is a short story compilation book entitled The Lottery and Other Stories written by Shirley Jackson (2009). In the process of data analysis, there were several steps conducted. First step was reading through the whole short story. The second step was reading page over page of the story focusing on the main character, Mr. Summers. In the third step, all clauses about the character were sorted and collected including what narrator tells about the characters through direct description or through other characters. The next step was identifying all of the process in each clause and classifying them into verbal, material, relational, behavioral, mental and existential processes. The last, the result of classification are interpreted to reveal the personality of Mr. Summers. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The clauses in The Lottery are 526 clauses. From the clauses, there are 76 clauses exploited to narrate Mr. Summers. Only existential process is not found to narrate Mr. Summer by the narrator. Verbal, material, relational, behavioral, and mental processes are represented to characterize Mr. Summers. There are found that 40 clauses are categorized expressing verbal processes, 25 clauses express material process, six clauses express relational process, four clauses express mental processes and only one clause expresses behavioural process of Mr. Summers. The verbs of each process and their occurrence are presented in Table-1 below: Table 1. Distribution of Processes related to Mr. Summer Type of Process Verb and Occurrence Total Occurrence Percentage Material Ran (1), Arrived (1), Carrying (1), Waved (1), Set (1), Stirred (2), Began (1), Made 25 32.90 Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2020. E-ISSN: 2621-9158 P-ISSN:2356-0401 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 39 (3), Put (1), Wait (2), Going (1), Started (1), Leave (1), Turned (1), Hold (2), Hushed (1), Raised (1), Stepped (1), Selected (1), Cleared (1) Relational Attributive: To be (2), seemed (1) Identifying: To be (1) Possessive: Had (2) 6 7.89 Behavioral Nodded (1) 1 1.32 Verbal Called (3), Spoke (1), argued (1), Declared (1), talk (2), direct (1), consult (2), ask (2), say (27), hush (1) 40 52.63 Existential - 0 0 Mental Think (1), guess (1), know (1), look (1) 4 5.26 TOTAL 76 100 Table 1 above shows that Mr. Summers is dominantly associated with verbal process. There are 40 clauses of the 76 clauses or 52.63% of the total clauses related to character of Mr. Summers which represent verbal process. Another process which is significant in characterization of Mr. Summers is material process which is found 25 clauses or 32.90% of total clauses. Relational and Mental processes are found in six (7.89%) and four clauses (5.26%) for each, while behavioural process is only once which means 1.32% of all clauses. No clause related to Mr. Summers expresses any existential process. Verbal Process Verbal processes occupy the highest position of Mr. Summers representation. Throughout the whole story, there are 40 clauses expressing verbal processes. Verbal processes are realized by verbal groups such as call, speak, argue, declare, talk, direct, consult, ask, and say. Although the variation of verb groups expressing verbal process are not as various as material process, the dominance of verbal process representing Mr. Summers character indicates the important verbiage of Mr. Summers in the story. The character of Mr. Summers is mostly built by which he takes position as sayer. The following is the excerpt of verbal process of Mr. Summers: Data 1. Verbal process Mr. Summers Declared the lottery open Sayer Process: Verbal Verbiage Reporting reported From Data-1, Mr. Summers takes position as the sayer. In almost clauses representing verbal processes, Mr. Summers typically roles as the sayer in function of constructing conversation with other characters and representing feature of dialogic exchange, reply and counter by Mr.summers. The other participants representing addressee in all these clauses are mostly all town people and certain characters. The verbal processes of Mr.Summers signify that he is listened and respected by all town people so that he has power to direct and influence everyone. It is depicted in the narration description about Mr. Summers as the person “who had time and energy to Nugraha, I.S., & Mahdi, S.(2020). Transitivity System on Building Character of Mr. Summers in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature, & Linguistics, 7(1), 35- 43. 40 devote to civic activities”. The excerpt of another verbal process that shows this depiction of Mr. Summers’s character is presented below: Data 2. Verbal Process “Put them in the box, then,” Mr. Summers directed Verbiage Sayer Process: Verbal Quoted Quoting According to Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) , there are types of verbal verbs serving in verbal clauses. They are serving as activity of targeting (praise, insult, blame, criticize) and talking (speak, talk) and serving as semiosis neutral quoting (say, tell), indicating (report, announce, notify) and imperating (tell sb to do), ask, order, command). Referred to those types, the verbal processes found in the beginning of the story are realized by verbal group where the lexical verb choices are representing neutral verbal activities such as say which is 27 occurrences, speak which appears once and talk which occupies twice, even some of them denote to certain personality such as consult which depicts Mr. Summers as a democratic and open-minded leader. Unfortunately, the changing is seen as the story comes to the ending as the most unexpected event. The lexical verb selections represent power of Mr. Summers’s characters such as call, argue, direct and hush which serve as imperative and targeting verbs (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). In addition, from all of participant roles in verbal process clauses, Mr. Summers is configured more as a sayer than as a receiver and target. Material Process Material processes are frequently found after verbal processes in all clauses related to Mr.Summer as the participant. The occurrences of material process are 25 or 32.90 % of the total clause in which Mr. Summers is placed as the Actor. The high occurrence of material process indicates that the narrator concerns with the actions or events and the participants who carry them out (Sheikh, Asmat A; Rahim, Sadia; Hira, Ali; Suleman, Nazia; Asgher, 2019). Besides through verbal process, the narrator focuses building the character of Mr. Summers on narrating his physical activities rather than other activities. Material process is realized by transitive and intransitive verbs. In this short story, all material clauses related to Mr. Summers are realized by four intransitive verbs (non- goal oriented material process) such as run, arrive, wave and go which each occupies only once. The example of this material process is presented below: Data 3. Material process (non-goal oriented) When he arrived in the square Actor Process: material Circumstance: Place Goal oriented material process which occupies transitive verbs appear more frequently such as stir, hold, begin, select, wait, made, carry, set, turn and put. These goal-oriented material processes depict physical activities that affect participants. The fact that almost of Mr. Summers’s narrations are narrated by doing activity affecting to Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2020. E-ISSN: 2621-9158 P-ISSN:2356-0401 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 41 other people and the lottery ritual as the goal of the activities shows that role of Mr. Summers. Here is the excerpt of material process: Data 4. Material process (goal oriented) The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper Circumstance: Time Actor Process: material T Goal Data 4 is the example of material process in which Mr. Summers is the participant. The goal in the excerpt above is all the properties related to the Lottery the town people carried out. Relational Process Relational processes are found six occurrences. All of the relational processes represent how the narrator explicitly narrates Mr.Summers’s personality and identity. The relational processes are used to give attributes, identity and possession of Mr. Summer. For each function to give attribute and give identity or possession occupy three times. The following is the example of relational process to give attribute to Mr. Summers: Data-5. Relational Process (Attributive) He (Mr. Summers) seemed very popular and important Carrier Process: relational attributive Attribute (intensive) Data 5 presents how the narrator gives positive attribute to Mr.Summers. Mr. Summers is depicted as a very popular and important people in the town by the narrator explicitly. The other relational processes which give attribute to Mr. Summers also describe this character positively as follows: Data 6. Relational Process (Attributive) Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans Carrier Process:relational attributive Attribute Although the narrator narrates Mr. Summers directly as positively, the small number of this relational process signifies the character of Mr. Summers’ and gives more detail of the characterization through verbal and material processes which dominate the occurrence in clauses related to Mr. Summers. Furthermore, identity built by direct narration of the narrator is emphasized as follows: Data 7. Relational Process (Identifying) He (Mr. Summers) was a round-faced and jovial man Token Process: relational Identifying value (intensive) Nugraha, I.S., & Mahdi, S.(2020). Transitivity System on Building Character of Mr. Summers in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature, & Linguistics, 7(1), 35- 43. 42 Mental Process Another process that is less frequent occupied in the clauses to characterize Mr. Summers is Mental process. Mr. Summers is construed by this process through a quantum of change in the flow of events taking place in his consciousness about the world he experiences (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). In other words it encodes meaning of thinking and feelings (Eggins, 2004). These clauses construe inner experience and have senser as inherent participant role. The mental verbs such as think, guess, know are used to represent characterization of Mr. Summers through cognition. The following is the excerpt of mental process of cognition. Data 8. Mental Process Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well Senser Process: mental (cognition) phenomena Compared to the previous processes, the rarest process is behavioural process. It is found nod as the only behavioural process of Mr. Summers. Behavioral processes represent outer manifestation of inner workings, the acting out of processes of consciousness and physiological states (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). The behavioral process found is as follow: Data 9. Behavioural Process Mr. Summers nodded Behaver Process: behavioural (cognition) CONCLUSION The author of the short story dominantly uses verbal process to construct the main character through his verbiage which is 52.63% of the total processes in clauses. In addition material process which also occupies high number (32.90%) after verbal process denotes that the character does activities in the domestic and physical domain. The relational process (7.89%) is used to characterize the characters explicitly. The mental process (5.26%) is used to depict the characters’ cognition while behavioural process (1.32%) is employed to a common activity. REFERENCES Burns, R. B. (1995). Introduction to Research Methods. Melbourne: Longman Australia Pty Ltd. Chen, F. (2012). A representative and a scapegoat: Analysis of Tessie Hutchinson in The Lottery. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(5), 1022–1026. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.2.5.1022-1026 Creswell, J. (1994). Research Design: Qualitative and Quantitative approach. California: Sage Publication Inc. Cunanan, B. T. (2011). Using Transitivity as a Framework in a Stylistic Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Old Mrs. Grey. Asian EFL Journal, 54(4), 69–79. Retrieved from https://asian-efl-journal.com/PTA/Volume-54-bc.pdf Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2020. E-ISSN: 2621-9158 P-ISSN:2356-0401 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 43 Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.). London: Continuum. Halliday & Matthiessen, C. (2004). Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Oxford University Press. Handika, M., & Hartiningsih, S. (2017). An Analysis of Feminism Idea that represented by Queen Elizabeth I in the Shekhar Kapur's Film Entitled'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature, & Linguistics, 1(2), 75-82.https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v1i2.4669 Jackson, S. (2009). The Lottery. In The Lottery and Other Stories. MacMillan. Msuya, E. A. (2014). Stylistic Analysis of “Xuma” and “Leah” in Peter Abraham’s Mine Boy: A Verbal Transitivity Process. International Journal of Linguistics, 6(1), 132. https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i1.4729 Nurhayati. (2018). Identifying Characters Using Transitivity : A Stylistics Study of “ I Stand Here Ironing .” Journal of Cultural, Literary, and Linguistic Studies, 2(2), 1–8. Patterson, K. J. (2019). Metaphor, Transitivity, and the Literary World - How Dickens and Hardy represent their world through metaphor. Revista Documentos Lingüísticos y Literarios UACh, 38, 68–75. Retrieved from http://revistadll.uach.org/index.php/revistadll/article/view/427 Rashid, A. (2016). Transitivity Analysis of Hiroko ’ s Character in Burnt Shadows (COMSATS Institute of Information Technology , Islamabad). Retrieved from http://www.isfla.org/Systemics/Print/Theses/Rashid-MS-2017.pdf Sheikh, Asmat A; Rahim, Sadia; Hira, Ali; Suleman, Nazia; Asgher, T. (2019). Claiming the feminine voice: a transitivity analysis of “Meatless Days.” Dilemas Contemporáneos : Educación, Política y Valore, 6(Special), 6. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1477753 Song, Z. (2013). Transitivity analysis of A Rose for Emily. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(12), 2291–2295. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.3.12.2291-2295 Tiejun, Z. (2007). Analysis of Systemic Functional Linguistics on Catin the Rain. CELEA Journal, 30(3), 73–119. Retrieved from http://www.celea.org.cn/teic/73/73-119.pdf Wahyuni, E. (2014). Exposing literature into language teaching and learning. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature, & Linguistics, 1(2), 63-74. https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v1i2.4668