A comparative analysis of the construal of real-world experiences in English translations of interviews with three speakers of Djerbi Berber

Mohamed Elhedi Bouhdima

Abstract

Text analysis has been conducted by means of a variety of methods, including the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework and Critical Discourse Analysis framework. It appears that there has been no deployment of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis or a combination of both in the analysis of interviews with speakers of minority languages in general and the speakers of Berber languages in particular. As an attempt to fill this gap in the literature, English translations of three transcripts of interviews, conducted with three Berber speakers of Djerbi Berber, were comparatively analyzed, combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics. The study was set to discover whether the participants construe the same real-world experiences in the same way. Results showed that the participants construed their real-world experiences differently. They also showed that their mental construction of their experiences in the real world was influenced neither by their social similarities nor by their social differences, namely generation and educational level. The study has two implications: first, the combination of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis is effective in comparing the three interview transcripts; and second, the combination of the Systemic Functional Linguistics Transitivity model and the Critical Discourse Analysis Representation framework has contributed not only to the empowerment of both frameworks but also to the validity of the results.