Internal contrast and double decoding: Transitivity in Hughes's “On the Road”

Abstract

There have appeared, over the past thirty years or so, numerous stylistic investigations on transitivity, which tend to focus on the contrast between different types of transitivity process. This article, however, directs attention to how a literary writer creates a thematically-motivated contrast within the same (sub-)type of transitivity process. The case chosen for illustration is Langston Hughes's “On the Road” (1952). It is argued that such an internal contrast may, by way of semantic reorganization, change the nature of certain transitivity processes on a deeper level, and further, that the functioning of such context-determined deeper-level meaning, which interacts with the conventional surface meaning, depends on double decoding. Based on the analysis, the present study offers a comparison between stylistic analysis and literary criticism to help to show the usefulness of the former in advancing literary interpretation.