A systemic functional analysis of mood system in Olu Obafemi’s “Dark Times Are Over?”

Abstract

Systemic theory was chiefly put forward by the British scholar M.A.K. Halliday in the 20th century. The theory looks at language as property owned by the society to serve some functions identified by the proponents of the construct. Precisely, Halliday holds that language performs three functions, namely, ‘the representational function’, ‘the interactional function’ and the ‘textual function.’ Analogous to these metafunctions, as he calls them, are three network systems: transitivity, mood and theme. The aim of this paper is to examine the mood network system in Obafemi’s Dark Times Are Over? To achieve this objective, 40 clauses were randomly selected from the play. The study employed systemic theory that largely comes from Michael Halliday and espoused by Eggins for data analysis. The study finds out that declarative moods are more present in the text.