Whose Story? A Systemic Functional Perspective on Mariah

Through a systemic functional analysis of Che Husna's Mariah, this paper argues that Mariah is not the protagonist of the story. The study intends to explore the social cultural identity of a Malaysian woman in the linguistic context deriving from the analysis of semantic structure and lexical grammar features. Employing the Hallidayan framework, particularly thematic choice in the system of Theme and Rheme, this paper justifies its findings from the distribution and the experiential elements in these thematic choices. The distribution of thematic choice in the story shows that Mariah, who is supposed to be the Protagonist of the story is indeed an object, a muted shadow, suggesting a subordinated female identity in the Malaysian and Islamic context.