- Systemic Functional Linguistics and Lacanian Psychoanalysis theory emphasize the significant role of language in understanding human situations, creating human experiences and social realities (Tayson, 2006, p. 257). This research aims to explorewriter’s deft use of language choices to explicate the overarching socio-cultural effect on characters’ mental makeup and their interpersonal relationships. For this purpose, the researcher used Critical Discourse Analysis by employing Halliday’s Transitivity system of Systemic functional grammar and Lacanian Psychoanalysis theory as a tool to analyze a short story “The Duchess and the Jeweler” by Virginia Woolf. The results found Oliver (main character) as the representative of the morally bankrupt Victorian society, who transgressed ethical order to achieve materialist standard of respectability of his age. For being the representative of morally hollow Victorian age, the writer deployed highest frequency of material processes, projected by paratactic verbal quotes in the discursive narrative style of the writer to present social ails as the locution of the characters and kept herself detached from the straight description of Victorian social scenario. This linguistic functional analysis was further corroborated by psychoanalysis of Virginia’s specific technique of narration: Stream of Consciousness, in Lacanion perspective of Imaginary Order and the Symbolic Order of main the character. It endorsed main character selfish motives to meet prevalent age nobility standard. Hence, it is likely to infer that this research has potential to assist English Language Learners to understand the complex linguistic and social semiotic perspective behind the discursive literary text writing style.
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