Putri, Tyara Sesarini Risky (2026) REPRESENTING VALUES THROUGH TRANSITIVITY AND MODALITY ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY OF DESMOND DOSS’S CHARACTERIZATION IN HACKSAW RIDGE (2016) MOVIE. Undergraduate thesis, Faculty Of Humanities.

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Abstract

Movies, as a form of literature, are not only a medium of entertainment but also represent the values that underlie human behavior and identity. However, previous studies on Hacksaw Ridge (2016) have predominantly focused on its moral values and characterization of its main character, Desmond Doss, with limited attention to how these values are linguistically represented and how such representations contribute to the construction of his characterization. Addressing this gap, this study investigates the values represented in Desmond Doss's self-referential utterances and explains how these values construct his characterization. Employing a qualitative descriptive method, this study analyzed 51 self-referential clauses using Halliday and Matthiessen's (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics, particularly transitivity and modality, to identify Schwartz's (1992) basic human values, while Abrams and Harpham's (2014) showing method was used to interpret characterization. The findings revealed five values: universalism (44%), benevolence (34%), tradition (10%), self-direction (10%), and conformity (2%). Material processes were the most dominant, indicating that Desmond primarily realized his values through concrete actions. Universalism was the only value frequently expressed through modality, whereas the remaining values were predominantly realized through categorical clauses without modality. The cumulative linguistic patterns portray Desmond as a universally compassionate, responsive, loyal, dutiful, pious, confident, autonomous, aspirational, and cooperative character. These findings demonstrate that integrating Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Schwartz's framework of basic human values provides a comprehensive framework for explaining how linguistic choices encode values and construct characterization in film dialogue.
Keyword: values; Hacksaw Ridge; Systemic Functional Linguistic; transitivity; modality; characterization

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