SPEECH ROLES IN THE SHORT STORY “THE BROTHERS” AS SEEN FROM INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION IN SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
Vol. 135 No. 6B (2026), Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
Vol. 135 No. 6B (2026)

SPEECH ROLES IN THE SHORT STORY “THE BROTHERS” AS SEEN FROM INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION IN SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
https://doi.org/10.26459/hueunijssh.v135i6B.7817
Published 2026-07-15
Thanh Tin Nguyen
Research Affairs and International Relations Office, Quy Nhon University, Vietnam
Nhan Thanh Le
Faculty of Foreign Languages, Quy Nhon University, Vietnam
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Keywords

SFL
lượt phát ngôn
hành vi ngôn ngữ
truyện ngắn
nghĩa liên nhân SFL
speech roles
speech act
short story
interpersonal metafunction

Abstract

This study analyzes the speech roles in Louisa May Alcott’s short story “The Brothers” using the interpersonal metafunction framework in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by Martin and Rose (2007). The research addresses the question: What are the speech roles in the story’s conversations? The qualitative analysis of eight conversations in the short story reveals that Statement dominates, followed by Question, Command, Offer, and Exclamation. Unique cases such as intertwined speech acts, far-apart complementarity, and complex moves highlight the challenges of applying this framework to prose. The findings demonstrate the framework’s utility in analyzing literary dialogues, emphasizing the relationship between speech roles and their linguistic expressions. This study contributes to SFL-based discourse analysis and provides a reference for future research on speech roles in literary texts.

https://doi.org/10.26459/hueunijssh.v135i6B.7817
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