Thesis (M.A.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

The purpose of this study is to investigate how language reflects the social reality in the two folktales: Robin Hood and alsīra alhilāliya. It attempts to analyze from a linguistic perspective two textually documented folktales from two different cultures. Through a systemic functional analysis, it explores variation in the social reality in the two folktalkes. Six episodes, three from each folktale, are selected based on similarities in motifs and analyzed using the experiential level of Halliday. The method of analysis is a mixed quantative-qualitative one. Having reached statistical results regarding the use of processes, participants and circumstances, the research looks closely at the text to highlight differences in the social realities of both. The results show a distinction between both alsīra alhilāliya and Robin Hood in the delineation of war, fantasm, treatment of animals and women, dominance of the hero, use of circumstantial details and dialogic nature of the processes in both. It also draws attention to aspects of social realty in the two folktales that are not accounted for by Halliday{u2019}s SFG

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