An exploratory study of representation of gay characters in a parallel corpus of short stories: a systemic-functional approach

Abstract

This exploratory paper focusses its analysis on the system of transitivity of an English/Portuguese parallel corpus of a collection of gay stories first published in 1966 in the United States of America and retextualized more than thirty years later in Brazil. Since this is an ongoing research project, the paper’s main objective is to map out the discursive choices of transitivity in one of the short stories and its translation, in order to reveal how the protagonist is represented in both, as well as to analyse general discursive features in the original and translated corpora as a whole. The analyses carried out suggest that there is a relative frequency of processes that represent human participants acting upon the world and on each other, and parts of the characters’ bodies seen as abstract agents or participants that act upon the world as well. Finally, the paper is expected to serve some of the methodological needs of MA students who approach their research data for the first time.