Investigation of the Interpersonal Metafunction in A S Ogundimu’s A Silly Season

Abstract

People use language to interact. In interacting, they take various social roles. Grasping the specific roles thus played by interactants and their implications in a text is the finality of the study of the interpersonal metafunction in Systemic Functional Linguistics. This paper explores the interpersonal metafunction in A silly season, a novel by A. S. Ogundimu. Based on text exploration for mood patterns, especially the choice of mood types and modality features, the investigation reveals unusual tenor dimensions in the corpus under consideration. It ultimately appears that A silly season is not just about bribery, but it mostly relates some social malaise and threat of disruption due to a single individual’s firm attempt to sow or restore the sense of rectitude within a corrupt, rotten society.