The scene of the story “Guess Who’s Coming for the Dinner” is laid in an ordinary Irish house of an ordinary Irishmen. The story reflects the time of intolerance against interracial marriages. Ireland in the author’s story is against any interference into routine life. The people are shown as if from the point of view of an immigrant, who has come to an unknown country and sees prejudices of the native Irish. The reality of family life in Ireland is depicted in the short story “Guess Who’s Coming for the Dinner” by Roddy Doyle.
It is necessary to analyse cohesion and discourse of the given text in the specific field (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1989, p.524). A description of a happy family life is an example of the reality of an Irish society with deep racial prejudices. We see family life depicted from the point of view of the head of the family, Larry by name. We got to know about members of the family. Larry’s reality and his picture of the world are shown in the given excerpt. He enjoys observing trifles and serious quarrels of his daughters, does not pay attention to his son mocking him gradually drifting apart from his father. Family life was calm. “Until Stephanie brought home the black fella”.
In the course of lexis analysis we have found different groups of words, which carry lexical meaning, which is very important for the understanding of the text, and contribute to subject matter of the text: (1) great, grand, loved, trusted, quiet, (2) to cheer up, modern, successful, Irish, habit, really good days, crack, (3) rejection, hurt, pretending, crooked, (4) madder, louder, screaming, roaring roundabout. Groups (1) and (2) prove positive moods, happy life and deep affection of Larry for his family. The word crack in spoken Irish English means “a good time, friendly enjoyable talk”. Groups (3) and (4) show the real state of things in the family, contempt of the son and condescension of daughters.
Such vocabulary items as telly, bitch, wagon, ref, cuppa, fella, fart belong to informal nouns and jargon and contribute to the understanding of the family members as representatives of working class.
According to “a socially oriented model of analysis”, which investigates language and texts taken within a particular social situation (family life in our text); it is necessary to describe the relationships between language, texts, and social systems (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, p.29). Analysing the tenor, we defined several persona taking part in the text. The language used by the writer implies both positive (Groups of words 1 and 2) and negative (Groups of words 3 and 4) attitude towards the family. Until the last phrase of the excerpt the atmosphere in the family is just like in any other family; but appearance of “black fella” has changed it.
Analysis of the tenor presupposes identification of social relations between the participants in the text. Larry, his wife Mona, his son Laurence, and daughters Tracy, Vanessa, Nicole, Stephanie are taking part in the text. The first type of social relations is “parents-children”. It implies that parents, especially father, occupy leading position. However, in this family the father is rejected to be the head of the family. We see that the son disdains his father, the daughters condescend to him. The next type of relations, which takes place between the sisters, shows that they quarrel very often and insult each other. The relation between Mona and Larry (the 3rd type) is that of a married couple, who got used to the spouses; sex and Crunchie were the only things, which could refresh Mona’s feelings of affection to Larry; soon even they disappeared.
In terms of analysing mode of the text, it is necessary to mention a text’s cohesion. There are some lexical chains: “Under-7, Under-8, Under-9”; parallelisms (the use of successive constructions corresponding in meaning): “great value out of them, great crack”, “that was great, too”, “he pretended he was a bit hurt and, actually, he was a bit hurt”, which contribute to cohesion of the text. Substitution “having a son, bringing him to the football” and ellipsis of the initial part “Not bad for forty-five!” also cohere the elements of the text in the grammatical aspect. Conjunction is carried out through words though, and, but, that etc.
We have already mentioned above use of informal lexis and jargon. Language plays an important part in cultural and situational contexts. Especially vivid the language is in speech acts. It helps to understand the characters and their relations better, for example the succession of insults of sisters and a dialogue about biscuits.
Translation of informal vocabulary and jargon will present a particular challenge. Here belong cuppa, ref, fella, fart. Other phrases present difficulty because their cultural context is unknown to the reader from another culture: “The second kid had been a boy and that was great, too, having a son, bringing him to the football – Under-7, Under-8, Under-9”, “But it had all been fine because Mona, the wife, had bought him a Crunchie to cheer him up”, “Their voices reminded Larry of the Artane roundabout – mad, roaring traffic coming at him from all directions”. And the phrase “like a ref who’d been bribed by both sides and soaked up every wallop and hug” also presents some difficulty in jargon and specific terms. The dialogue with the words Bitch, Wagon represents a difficulty in terms of adequate translation of the insults to the target language.
To sum up, it is necessary to highlight the main points of the paper. Field represents family relations. Tenor represents social relations, and the status of Larry is not equal to that of his son, because Laurence treats his father with scorn. Laurence’s requirement to be absent on his matches is an evidence. As for mode, we may assume that cohesion of the text is observed. It is proved by use of lexical chains, parallelisms, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction.
Reference List
Halliday, M.A.K. and R. Hasan, 1989. Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: OUP.
Halliday, M.A.K. and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen, 2004. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Hodder Education.