J. Basic. Appl. Sci. Res., 2(2)1050-1055, 2012 © 2012, TextRoad Publication ISSN 2090-4304 Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research www.textroad.com *Corresponding Author: Ali Sorayaie Azar, English Department, Islamic Azad University- Maragheh Branch, Iran Email:asorayaie@yahoo.co.uk A Stylistic Analysis of “Maria” in “Clay”: The Character in James Joyce’s Short Story Ali Sorayaie Azar 1 * and NasrinSamad Yazdchi 1 1. English Department, Islamic Azad University- Maragheh Branch, Iran ABSTRACT During recent years “Discourse Analysis” has been very popular in analyzing literary texts. One of the frameworks used in discourse analysis is the “Systemic Functional Grammar”, developed by Halliday. Transitivity is a model taken from this framework, which works on processes and participants to analyze a text. In this paper, transitivity model is used to analyze a short story, “Clay” by James Joyce, or to say more precisely to analyze the main character of the story “Maria”. According to the different processes, sentences related to the character, are collected and analyzed. The result of the analysis approves the words of the literary critics, that “Maria” is a symbol for Virgin Mary in her being well-natured. KEY WORDS: Transitivity, Narrative, Stylistics, Systemic Functional Grammar. 1. INTRODUCTION In linguistics the purpose of close analysis is to identify and classify the elements of language being used. This close analysis has been a useful way to study literary texts. In literary studies the purpose is usually an adjunct to understanding, and interpretation; so an extremely detailed attention is paid to the text. One of the ways to search for the hidden meanings in literary texts is using the transitivity model. Transitivity model in text analysis helps us with the identification of the ‘ideology” used behind the text by the author. Linguistic choices in transitivity play a fundamental role in clarifying implicit and dominant ideologies;these ideologies are pictured by processes used in the clauses. It is with investigating these processes that one can go beyond the clause level and draw the ideology that the author has used in his/her text. In this study the aim is to see how these processes act in creating the characters in a narrative. 1.1 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 1.1.1 What is narrative? Narrative is a story consisting of thoughts or experiences. It has its own standards and includes some stages. Theses stages of narratives have been distinguished by [1] who claimed that narrative stages are: 1. Abstract, 2. Orientation, 3. Complicating action, 4. Evaluation, 5.results and resolution 6. Coda [1]. And also according to [2], narrative is a creative artefact and it is not necessarily representation of the actual events. 1.1.2 What is stylistics? Stylistics is studying the variation that can be found in texts.“Linguistics is the academic discipline that studies language scientifically and stylistics as a part of this discipline studies certain aspects of language variation” [3]. It mentions that different forms can convey different messages and these messages can be understood by close analysis suggested by stylistics. According to [4], stylistics can look like either linguistics or literary criticism, depending upon where we are looking at it.According to [5], the word style refers to the way in which, language is used in a given context, by a given person, for a given purpose.[6]gives a different definition of stylistics that it is the “study of literary discourse that has a linguistic orientation.” [7], in his “Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies”, mentions: “Linguistics is not and will never be the whole of literary analysis, and only the literary analyst—not the linguist—can determine the place of linguistics in literary studies. But if a text is to be described at all, then it should be described properly, by the theories and methods developed in linguistics, whose task is precisely to show how language works.” 1050