Reflections on some syntactical processes and their communicative implications in two short stories written by Julia Álvarez : My English and A Genetics of Justice

Abstract

Our hypothesis in this article is that Julia Álvarez chooses several anomalous syntactical structures in English in the short stories My English and A Genetics of Justice to point out certain facts or certain feelings that are important in her life. In this sense we can say that there is a relationship between the use of words or structures and the author’s ideology. This article is within the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar for two main reasons: a) the importance of context for the analysis of the main syntactical processes of thematization and postponement in English and b) because it studies language in relation to society and analyses the main reasons for choosing between some linguistic forms or others, fact that is always determined for the function that those linguistic forms have in society. The main purpose of this article is to show that presenting ideas using certain syntactical structures in English (existential sentences, extraposition, pseudo-cleft sentences, passive, cleft sentences, reversed pseudo cleft and left dislocation) is not at random because those structures have specific communicative implications, as we will see when we analyse the examples in the two short stories we have chosen.