Ayub Khan’s Worldview in “Friends Not Masters-A Political Autobiography”: A Transitivity Analysis

Abstract

Transitivity analysis is one of stylistic tools that allow objective analysis of literary works. It has often been used by critics and reviewers to provide concrete support to their literary analysis. This paper aims to discover whether the utility of this framework extends to non-literary works as well; offering a novel test for the framework’s scope and applicability. To that end, transitivity framework is applied on Field Marshall Ayub Khan’s Friends, Not Masters: A Political Autobiography. It identifies the processes used in some portions of the book to trace the connection between Ayub Khan’s ideology and the use of his language. The study finds that the processes used by Ayub Khan are concomitant with his ideology and tend to reveal his world view. The results of the study indicate that the transitivity framework is replicable for non-fictional works, including autobiographies.