Systemic Functional analysis of transitivity patterns in Victor S. Dugga’s Gidan Juju

Abstract

Despite growing scholarly interest in transitivity studies across literary genres, Victor S. Dugga’s Gidan Juju remains underexplored in terms of its linguistic structures and ideological formations. This study examines transitivity patterns in Victor S. Dugga’s Gidan Juju within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Guided by Halliday’s (1994) transitivity framework, the study adopted a qualitative research design. Data comprised purposively selected passages from the play. Analysis was conducted at the clause level to identify the six process types of transitivity patterns (material, mental, relational, behavioural, verbal and existential), their associated participant roles and the contextual circumstances. Findings reveal a striking dominance of material and verbal processes across the text to foreground thematic concerns in Gidan Juju material processes foreground physical acts of conflict, corruption and manipulation. Participant role analysis demonstrates consistent alignment with socio-political power structures: figures of authority are systematically encoded as actors and sayers, while subordinate characters occupy goal, recipient, or senser positions. The study concludes that transitivity analysis constitutes an indispensable linguistic lens for uncovering the ideological and thematic underpinnings of African dramatic literature. The study recommends that literary scholars should integrate Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and transitivity analysis to uncover linguistic mechanisms of meaning-making beyond traditional thematic interpretations.