Freedom in Exile : A Linguistic-discursive Analysis of the Representations of the China x Tibet Conflict in the 14 th Dalai Lama ’ s Autobiography

This article is part of an undergraduate course paper that studies the autobiography of the 14 Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso: Freedom in Exile. We analyse the discursive-linguistic representations of the conflict between China and Tibet within this autobiographical narrative through systemic functional linguistics. We understand the potential of the autobiographical narrative as a means to construe and organize life experiences through language and also giving new meanings to them. In this study we employ the theoretical and methodological apparatus of critical discourse analysis and the philosophy of critical realism in the attempt to understand the representational aspect of the texts. We use a qualitative research approach. The general objective of this study is to analyse the representations that the narrator creates of the contents of his vital experience by privileging and working with the ones that emerge from the conflict between China and Tibet. The specific objectives include: (i) to identify the lexical-grammatical choices regarding the constituents that structure these representations; (ii) to explore autobiographical writing; (iii) to analyse the representations discursively, in order to proceed to an explanatory critique of the discourse; (iv) to discuss and reflect upon the intransitivity of moral values to human emancipation and meta-Reality.

which deals with karma, has 2 periods, which were also numerated progressively and divided. The second excerpt of chapter XV also has 2 periods, which were also numerated. The two more spiritual ones sought to bear a message of peace and respect from Buddhism in the ways of the 14 th Dalai Lama.
Although we opted for a qualitative method, we decided to present at the end of the data analysis section just one graph with the numbers of processes, participants and circumstances, which were identified in the five selected excerpts. We first separated all the sentences, then we counted the constituents of each clause.

Systemic Functional Linguistics
Systemic Functional Linguistics is a theory centred in the meaning-making capability within the network of systems that belong to or derive from the language that users activate and employ to construe for themselves the significance, sense and organization of the human experience. Halliday (1994Halliday ( , 2004Halliday ( , 2014 describes the clause as the smallest representational unit of world experiences, in which participants are the instigators of the meaning-making process. They are also called goings-on because they can express meanings that are so wide-ranging they are capable of structuring the mind or internal world of an individual and thus allow the same individual to interact with others and generate palpable changes in the external or physical world.
This article embraces Halliday's theory by choosing to employ the system of transitivity in its axis of the Experiential Function to commit to an analysis of an autobiographical account, because the authors believe in language's potential to organize the mind, its recollections and even the writings of an author.
The system of transitivity (Halliday, 2014) is arranged as follows: (i) a process, represented by a verb or a verbal group; (ii) the participants, represented by the nominal group and (iii) the circumstances which are associated with the processes and are achieved by adverbial or prepositional phrases. Each clause within the system of transitivity will be addressed as a figure, the figures of the vital experience.
In our perspective, the object of study Freedom in Exile becomes an abundant textual and literal fount of figures because these figures represent the vital experiences of its own author, the 14 th Dalai Lama, who will, in turn, through system of transitivity analysis, convey the identification of the internal and external experiences of reality and the way these figures are constructed in their respective forms.
Halliday details three distinct and simultaneous linguistic metafunctions that operate within the system of language through interaction, thus rendering meaning possible. It is possible to observe, in the surface, the minimum constituents of the figures that combine among themselves, the smaller parts, to reflect upon the system and its own vitality whenever necessary (Halliday, 1994;Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014;Thompson, 2014;Eggins, 2004). This article will employ only the Ideational Metafunction of language.
In the architecture of the System of Transitivity, this article also highlights the contexts of situation and of culture and their correlation with the variable field.
Social context is also named context of culture -and it is responsible for allowing people to interact, by a multitude of factors, and, in response, these people will influence linguistic choices, for example. It varies from society to society, and also from different strata to strata within societies.
Halliday also advocates that language is more probabilistic than deterministic. It means that a dialogical component is necessary in order to understand the choices made by speakers: meaning-making is a negotiation, a gamble. Sometimes they are more perceptive; others, not so much.
Textual genres, for instance, are born from different cultural contexts, as they become increasingly specialized through time, with continued use, for however long they are consumed; only then do they become a language specimen that can be subject to analysis, as explained by Halliday and Hasan (1989).
The context of situation is responsible for identifying who the peers are, whether there is a hierarchy, what is happening in that given moment, who assumes the direction of the dialogue, which registers are in play, what is the actual message, etc. Halliday (2014:30) identifies three intrinsic metafunctions common to all natural languages. The Greek prefix metaseeks to signal this imbricated function of the language to organize and reflect upon and within itself. In his words, "language provides a theory of human experience, and certain of the resources of the lexicogrammar of every language are dedicated to that function. We call it the ideational metafunction [...]." When we wish to see language as a means and a tool for interaction, we focus on the uses of the Interpersonal Metafunction. The last meta-function that Halliday conceives is the textual metafunction, which will be shown as (2014:30-1) "the construction of the text". To Halliday this metafunction is an "enabling and facilitating" one, responsible for organizing the message in terms of coherence and cohesion.
Having briefly remarked on these metafunctions, this article now aims to conduct a more exhaustive presentation of the constituents of the system of transitivity. We will start by introducing the round of processes of Halliday, according to Figure 1 below. Figure 1. Round of processes adapted from Halliday's 2 nd edition of an Introduction of Functional Grammar source: https://najmoore.blogspot.com/2013/11/process-types-graphic.html?m=1 The image above is a graphical representation of the types of processes that integrate the System of Transitivity within its experiential facet. They are categorized as material processes, mental processes, behavioural processes, existential processes, relational processes and verbal processes.
The term process should be understood as the unfolding or development of the amount of change, the goings-on, and grammar is responsible for establishing and modelling experiences through figures. The fields of vital experience are graphically constructed, in the figure above, as worlds, thus there are three major dimensions of experience: the world of abstract relationships, the physical world, and the world of consciousness; which are expressed respectively as more general experiences of doing, feeling and being.
The present figure only gives a faint sample of the existing variety and diversity of processes; Halliday emphasizes that, just as the colours of the rainbow touch each other and blend into new nuances, so it occurs with human experiences: new processes emerge whenever necessary and, moreover, the processes are also blurred when touching the boundaries of classification.
The second most important constituent of the System of Transitivity is the participant. The participant is the one who is connected to the process because he/she is affected by it or because he/she is performing an action or enacting something. In the customary terminology of traditional grammar, the participant would be the subject. For each type of process there are two or more specific types of participants who can be identified.
Material processes render the idea of energy expenditure, modification and alteration of the material world. Halliday classifies them as figures doing & happening. The actor is the participant who enacts the figure of making or happening, while the goal participant is the participant affected by the development of the process.
Mental processes are responsible for linguistically representing the domain of human consciousness, especially emotions, moods and desires. Like material processes, mental processes have their specific participants: the senser and the phenomenon. The senser is the unit that represents the perception or sensation of the events of the mind, whereas the phenomenon is precisely what is captured by the senser as an event of consciousness.
Verbal processes are all processes that perform acts of human communication, such as saying, telling, speaking. They are blurred processes, bordering mental and behavioural processes. The participants are the sayer and verbiage; verbiage is characterized precisely as the de facto message that is conveyed in the communicative act. The sayer is the main active participant in this process and represents the unit that performs the communicative act.
Relational processes are figures which play a role in classifying and relating periods and ideas, expressing ideas of being, belonging, and having. Its participants are the carrier, which is the classified element, and the attribute, the classifying element.
There are also behavioural processes, and these processes linguistically enact the physical and psychological acts, simultaneously, of human behaviour, being blurred between the material processes and the mental processes, such as: looking, worrying, facing... The behaver is the one who performs the act and the behaviour is the defining element of the scope of the process.
Another less important component of the figures in the system of transitivity is represented by the circumstances. Circumstances are related to the process of a clause, and this link is reflected in its function as a complementary source of information, something which may or may not be added.
As stated by Fuzer & Cabral (2014:53-4), circumstances seek to answer questions for the processes, by placing them in a certain time (when?) or space (where?), in order to understand in what way (how?) or for what reason (why?) it has developed. The types and classifications of the circumstances of this work, specifically, can be seeing in Section 4.3 on the data analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Interface with Systemic Functional Linguistics
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be understood as a linguistic-based theoretical-methodological construct for the investigation of social phenomena directed towards social sciences, idealized by Norman Fairclough. Developed from critical social theory, in its twenty years of existence, CDA has established itself as a transdisciplinary field of study, whose focus is directed to the dialogical aspect between social practices and the discourses associated with them (Fairclough, 1989(Fairclough, , 1992(Fairclough, , 1999(Fairclough, , 2003 CDA's theoretical-methodological approach highlights the dynamics of human relationships, constructed as processes of meaning, thus reflecting Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (SFL) postulates, mainly considering the ideational metafunction of language. This article highlights a conceptual parallelism between these theories, in which Fairclough's notion of discursive representation will unite discourse and its practices to the potentiality of constructing the meaning of life, through language, exuberating the relationship between the representational meaning in Fairclough and Halliday's ideational metafunction.
Attention should be given to aligning the understanding regarding the notion of text, by relying on Halliday's (1994Halliday's ( , 2004Halliday's ( , 2014 considerations that the text should be understood as "everything that is said or written -[and that] unfolds in some context of use." It is possible to associate this initial consideration to the writings of Fairclough: for him, "any sample of language in use" becomes a text. It is therefore understood that an autobiography such as Freedom in Exile, as a language sample, should be characterized as a text and as a communicator of discourses which, since they are not apparently visible, must be problematized so that their meanings are rendered explicit. This is a concern in this analytical study. In addition to text analysis, Fairclough, based on Halliday, draws a parallel with the possible instances of meaning in the discourse and their correlation with the metafunctions of language; that is, how discourse and linguistic metafunctions work together, within the levels of analysis and in the three aspects of text meaning: representational meaning, actional meaning, and identificational meaning, as shown in Table 2, below.  Fairclough (2003), when referring to the representational meaning of texts, relates aspects of the material world and the subjective world. When choosing representational meaning, we wish to give evidence to discourse as a way of representing the world. The same text can, for example, consist of different discourses, and this is called interdiscursivity. The representational meaning of texts includes aspects of the physical world -objects, relationships, etc. -and aspects of the mental world -thoughts, feelings, beliefs, sensations, etc. The meaning of the representational aspect of texts is correlated with a concept of discourse as a means of representing the world. The representational meaning is related to Halliday's ideational metafunction (1994). The ideational metafunction correlates itself with the variable of registry field. In those cases, the clauses will encompass three elements: processes, participants and circumstances, nominated by Halliday (1994:104) as 'system of transitivity'.

Critical Realism
Supported by the considerations of Bhaskar's critical realism (1978), Fairclough, (Fairclough, Jessop, et all. 2010) manages to substantiate his practice of analysing texts, and in addition to problematizing power relations, he guides linguistic-discursive analysis towards social change, hence creating its three-dimensional process of analysing texts which will culminate in the explanatory critique of the discourse.
Critical discourse analysis operates with an explanatory critique of discourse, where, from the analysis of linguistic materiality, presented in Section 4.3 of this article, in the observation of its recurrent patterns and choices, along the lines of the SFL, we can point to the autobiographical genre as the germinator of bigger issues that involve human rights and human emancipation, by denouncing ideologies, power relations and social practices that are also discursive practices, in the domains of CDA and the moral domains, which are called into question by critical realism. For this reason, a necessary groundwork for attempting a critical discourse analysis can be found within the seminal writings of Roy Bhaskar, philosopher and creator of critical realism.
In A Realist Theory of Science (1978), Bhaskar argues that appropriating ontology (which is the study of the nature of being) is necessary, not only to provide a realistic account of science, but for science itself to understand and support its own foundations, its own intelligibility and practice. This is done through an inverted Kantian transcendental argument that asks: what must the world be like for knowledge of the world to be possible? In this issue, the emphasis of critical realism can already be detected: prioritizing 'the world' (the real one) as opposed to any other system of understanding or practice.
The explanatory critique presented by Bhaskar is a contestation of science's positivist paradigm while adopting a transcendental paradigm, and by transcendental one means that the dimension of the phenomena is more profound in life itself and also reaches the domain of beliefs, morality and value judgments. This work thus intends to conduct a transcendental critique of morals in order to discover a level of intransitive values.
The raison d'être of an explanatory critique of discourse is precisely to validate the critical aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis and to use the theoretical assumptions of Systemic Functional Linguistics so that the focus on social issues and morality is not lost from end to end.
The author advocates for human emancipation, in a general sense, and for self-determination and self-regulation of the Tibetan people, in a more specific sense. These moral principles guided this work through the concept of metaReality, with Bhaskar (2012), where we see all human beings as spiritual beings, and that human emancipation is also a spiritual one. This research, albeit limited in its causal power of change, seeks to at least be aligned with the spirit of a critique, to analyse linguistic patterns and discursive representations, and to discuss intransitive values, which is demanded by the Explanatory Critique of Discourse, as one of the stages of the analytical process.

Freedom in Exile: An Autobiography of the 14 th Dalai Lama
We hereby present a definition of autobiography, coined by the French literary critic and researcher, Philippe Lejeune, in his book The Autobiographical Pact (1989:4), from which the following excerpt was taken.

"A retrospective prose narrative produced by a real person concerning his own existence, focusing on his individual life, in particular the story of his personality."
This definition involves elements from four different categories: 1. Linguistic form: (a) narrative; (b) prose.
3. Situation of the author: author (whose name designates a real person) and narrator are one and the same.
4. Position of the narrator: (a) narrator and protagonist are one and the same; (b) narration is retrospectively oriented.
The word autobiography, deriving from Greek etymology, presents an apparently indisputable meaning between the entity it designates, the autobiography, and its constitution, described by Lejeune as having the form of a linguistic narrative. In the form of prose or of a theme focused on the story of a personality; where the situation of the author, that is, the identity of the authorship, can be verified by referring to the name of a real person, who also configures the possible identity of the narrator; and the position of the narrator, that is, the place of the narrator within the story; one finds, strictly speaking, an association between the voice that narrates and the main character who places himself in a retrospective perspective, that is to say, a return to the past, from where the narration/action will emerge. So, if an autobiography can be defined as the writing of a person's biography by himself/herself, what else can be deduced from this unsuspected relationship of reliability that the term's etymology suggests?
One detail spring to our attention when reading the definition of Lejeune, transcribed above: individual life. An autobiography is the product of delving into the past, indeed, but this action is not impartial or devoid of further intentions. By stating that the author highlights his individual personality, Lejeune indicates that the author's apparent lack of motive is non-existent, since, when starting the retrospective contemplation, there is, unconsciously -as is often -or not, a selection of what will be highlighted in the autobiographical account.
This shows that Freedom in Exile is characterized as a retrospective account of testimonial and experiential nature; however, its marker, or main emphasis, the purpose of highlighting the memories, and the facts that occurred and moments that were experienced by the 14 th Dalai Lama from Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, in his particular representation of the political and social tensions of Communist China's invasion of Tibet from the late 1940s until its definitive occupation.
And as readers, like Lejeune, we also put ourselves in this position, when it comes to Freedom in Exile. The reading of this autobiographical text -like any other text, not necessarily autobiographical -is of a dialogical nature because, for an author and a text to exist, a potential reader is necessary; without the reader, there is no Literature and no text. Without the desire to seek information about a role model or celebrity, the autobiographical vocation is incomplete. The game of the autobiographical text is a game of discovery, where the author and reader discover each other and reinvent each other.
The author's name is the minimum unit of the work's identity component -but it is often difficult to locate. The importance of the author's name for the autobiography is paramount, because the autobiographical status of the text must rely on a historically identifiable person with an unquestionable identity -any deviations in this way will gradually modify the autobiographical text, bringing it more or less into fiction and therefore, rendering the appearance of a novel.
As Lejeune himself emphasizes, in the autobiography, the attribution of authorship is "all or nothing", there is no doubt that the author's status calls for veracity and verifiability. The autobiographical account must be more than credible; it must be true. As the writing of a person's life by him or herself, to the reader of an autobiography, it must be a real product.
What can be inferred, then, from the definition and aspects of the name Dalai Lama that headlines the cover of the autobiography? Firstly, that in addition to an honorary name, which very remotely belonged to a singular historical person of Tibetan history and culture, in this case, the Third Dalai Lama; and far beyond of being able to mean something like Ocean of Wisdom, or Living Buddha, or Master/Teacher (guru, from Sanskrit.), Dalai Lama designates in the present a human being, endowed with real existence, subject to historical verification and even documentary, of his birth certificate. It says who the author is, both as a character and as a person, whom narrates his own life experiences to an audience.

Results of the Data Analysis: Systemic Functional and Critical Discourse Analysis
The excerpt presented below was taken from the third chapter of Freedom in Exile, entitled Invasion: The Storm Breaks, on page 52 of the book, divided into sequentially numbered statements, to facilitate the reading and classification of the constituents of the enunciates that create the paragraphs. Here can be found the beginning of the discovery of the imperialist intentions of Communist China and, as a spectator, the 14 th Dalai Lama is, himself, experiencing the discovery and realisation of the terrible truth. China began to advance systematically, through military testing, beyond natural and official borders with the neighbouring country. The episode's narrative, at this moment, is focused on the Dalai Lama's awareness of the initial situation of danger and wariness regarding China.
The pronoun I, in the category of senser, linked to a mental process that is expressed through the verb discovered. It is worth noting that mental processes are those rendering an idea of a physical and psychological behaviour of a simultaneous character, but which takes place in the conscious activity of the mind. Thus, the circumstance of manner in due course emphasizes how the process of discovery took place in the Dalai Lama's mind.
The phenomenon through which the senser and process are linked is, so to speak, the content of the process of discovery.
In the wake of the phenomenon there is also an attributive relational process expressed in had been, linking the Regent's letter both to the rest of the phenomenon's content and to the main sentence of the mental process.
The telegram sent by the Kham governor is the first topic that can be of interest in this account. It is configured as the insidious beginning of the armed invasion of China, with the crossing of entire garrisons on foot. The Chamdho region is located in the far west of the country, very close to the natural borders that separate Tibet from China and can be accessed after a few weeks' march.
Straightaway the Chinese preliminary action is markedly hostile and violent. After illegally crossing sovereign borders, they attack constituted authorities and execute many of them merely for the sake of exerting their power to kill.
This phenomenon is thus constructed, it seems to us, to portray an idea of the mental representation of a verbalized account, which for a 16-year-old should be bleak and frightening. Continuing, in the following sentence, the authornarrator-character goes on alert mode and creates, with the help of an attributive relational process, again expressed by the verb to be in the past, was, a participant carrier in this, this participant relates both to its immediate process, as well as to the mental process and the other relational process that also emerged in the previous sentence.
Its own attribute, grave news, is the characteristic of the relational process, denouncing a posture of wariness, cautious consideration. The cause-reason circumstance indeed strives for an added emphasis, that is, more energy to the attribute grave news and also to the previous clauses, since they are all interconnected.
The relational processes here link ideas, and news of an officer's death becomes the first most important information; the second, the invasion of the borders that will develop in the following clauses.
The mental and relational processes seem to appear here precisely as a way of highlighting, on the one hand, the perplexity, and, on the other hand, the feeling of confusion and surprise that can be inferred from the words of the 14 th Dalai Lama. This is felt most strongly when he conveys the fact that, in 1949, the presence of Chinese officials had been mandatorily suppressed.
So, in the following sentence, started by the circumstance of frequency already, the Dalai Lama will add more causal facts to his account, emphasizing that it was not the first time that something of this nature had happened.
The carrier the previous autumn is the temporal boundary of the event of the first Chinese incursion beyond its borders where the attribute there appears correlating this information with the relational process had been, which is the expression of past perfect continuous tense that seeks to mark a choice that privileges a focus on causal actions initiated in the past and updated in the present in the emergence of new facts -the second Chinese incursion beyond its bordersas experiential content, which subsequently becomes a re-configuration in the literary narrative, which was only done well after the events that are recovered by the representational capacity of language in the ideational metafunction.
As he proceeds with his presentation of the facts, the Dalai Lama now seems to take on the role of a messenger, because, from the adoption of a verbal process stated and of the sayer who, he personalizes the Chinese, giving them a voice through his mouth, to convey the fallacy of Chinese communist rhetoric that Tibetans should be freed from the hands of imperialist aggressors. He follows with a sarcastic remark -whatever that might mean -when commenting about the supposedly false idea that Tibet would need any help managing its internal affairs, within the verbiage with which he is communicating, as he also wishes to express his divergence from the fallacious rhetorical game.
Thus, he will conclude his consideration by re-emphasizing the fact that there was a systematic expulsion of Chinese officials and that the Chinese incursions into Tibet had no apparent usefulness, need, or, above all, legitimacy or right.

The relational process expressed in was in [this] was [despite the fact that all Chinese officials living in Lhasa had been expelled in 1949]
wishes to link the entire chain of previous clauses, by interrelating them, and hence, with this final sentence, establish causal closure, resorting once again to determining the age of events, as a resource to legitimize his postulates, which are based on facts that can be verified, thus creating a new circumstance of location, both in time, expressed in 1949 and also expressed as a place -in Lhasa. There is also a material process living.
It is interesting to observe this excerpt, because, once again, the true vs. false dichotomy arises, now discursively problematizable, since there is, on the one hand, the unfounded liberating message of communist China, and the exempt assessment that such a procedure was unjustified and unnecessary in the eyes of the Dalai Lama. This is a first interdiscourse that can be specifically observed here.
The following excerpt was also taken from the third chapter Invasion: The Storm Breaks, on page 52. The authors have divided it into enunciates for easier reading and analysis. It is the development of the recollections of the 14 th Dalai Lama in the prelude of the invasion and process of territorial occupation of the country by the military forces of the People's Republic of China. Attributive relational processes are the protagonists in this excerpt. The first enunciate structures itself through the mental process looked. In creating the senser it as a participant, there is a sense of cautious verification of the facts, which is reinforced with the also gradual aspect of the mental process looked, which, before leading to a violent finding, denotes a process of mnemonic elaboration by the 14 th Dalai Lama, this, the authors believe, points to a form of rationalization that is energetically cold, as if he were merely observing the facts and reserving judgment for the probabilities pointed out by immediate causal consequences.
With the emergence of a material process in were making, there is a complementation of the initial mental process, in which facts are discerned, with the irrefutable observation that danger increasingly loomed at every corner since, very soon, the squads of the People's Liberation Army would proceed to kill civilians, monks and nuns, lay government officials and peasants in the far west of the country and, in no time, engulf territories in the north and northwest of Tibet.
The circumstance of manner-quality good their threat is a unit in this figure, which concentrates an important emphatic load because it first and foremost expresses confirmation of the Chinese threat and, additionally, this threat that previously seemed merely hypothetical, is updated through the adjective good, which then assumes the condition of being true, that is, the threat is not so uncertain anymore, or distant: it is imminent, it is real, and it is going against the Dalai Lama's material and subjective world to destroy it completely.
The actual scenario is one where there is absence of resistance due to the comparatively low number of the Tibetan armada, so the scale would tip to the enemy side. In other words, there is a measure of strength here, an assessment of who would be better off in a military offensive or counteroffensive, in the case of Tibet.
A noteworthy aspect is that, even though Buddhist doctrine teaches absolute non-violence, force is permissible in cases of direct threat to life, provided that one has a strong feeling of compassion for the enemy and attempts to demonstrate that violent action is a bitter remedy to show the futility of conflicts. When the 14 th Dalai Lama assesses the possibility of armed force, he is taking into account the principle of irate compassion.
The excerpt illustrated below is also taken from the third chapter, on page 52. In this excerpt, the factual or causal developments of the previous two excerpts are presented. Here, relevance will be given to the verbal process and its verbiage, as resulting from the action of Chinese communist propaganda. The initial events unfold, as represented in excerpts 1 and 2. The presence of the goal two months is the instantiation of the causal-factual connection between them and it is also the initial centre of the invasion and occupation figure. It was not accidental that it was created by the memory. It is possible to infer, to some extent, that in this memory's game, when re-enacting this fact, the 14 th Dalai Lama saw through his mind's eyes the armed contingent crossing the natural border embodied by the Drichu River.
Thus, when we see that the circumstance of location-time later, in October is linked to both the goal and the material process were fulfilled, there is also a second circumstance of degree worst fears that adds an important emotional component to a figure that wishes to denote transformation and alteration, both in the material world, at first glance, but also, surreptitiously, in the symbolic world of the author-narrator-character who begins to suffer a process of destabilization before the approach of the enemy, now flagrantly and indisputably: the rehearsals for the occupation ended and, from that moment on, China would advance towards an ostensible occupation of the territory.
Following the first material clause, another one appears, structured from the material process reached. Here a new element is presented in terms of participants. In addition to the standard participant actor News, there is also a participant called a beneficiary, characterized by Lhasa and indicates that Lhasa, which is the capital of Tibet and the political centre of the country, also where the official place of residence of the Dalai Lama is located, is a figuration to say that the news of the invasion reached not the capital itself, but the government office and the Dalai Lama himself. The beneficiary's role, as shown by Halliday, is not always positive, as the beneficiary receives a gift, in this case the News, and must decide what to do with it.
In addition, the goal is a complement with important information, expressing the armed contingent of 80,000 initial soldiers who were deployed for this first incursion into Tibet, to pave the way for more and more troops to arrive in the country later. Within this goal, there is also a material process expressed in had crossed, it should be noted that this process is also not accidental, since, as can be observed, what emerges from this figure is an energy of material transformation with important subjective repercussions. It is the beginning of a process of indiscriminate violence, deaths and constraints on individual liberties. It is as if we could hear the echoes of the troops' pacing march in the freezing waters of the Drichu River; the enormous clouds of dust rising in the air. The sweat, the smell of metal, of blood.
Chamdo is the name of the province where the Dalai Lama was born and his native village is Taktser. This was the first province in the country to suffer from the establishment of a Chinese provisional government at the time of invasion. Many sad events were staged in that place. Therefore, when the location is involved in the goal of the process reached and is also linked to the process had crossed, a design representing a physical and also symbolic trajectory is crafted.
There is a junction of lives, desires, social structures, ways of life, economic structures, which become, in its entirety, a representation of the world that will collide with another.
As a discourse, this figure with a predominantly material aspect is configured as the arena of sovereignty and tyranny. The asymmetry of power is felt mainly in the expressive military contingent to liberate Tibet peacefully.
Furthermore, as will be noted below, the verbal clause structured by the verbal process announced introduces a fallacious interdiscourse of an ideological nature and with propagandistic elements, which is characteristic of the warmongering bravado displayed by totalitarian regimes. Such a speech is expressed by the verbiage that is the message de facto that one wishes to communicate and that the Dalai Lama recovers from memory and reproduces in the book: that, on the anniversary of the Communists coming to power in China, the 'peaceful liberation' of Tibet had begun.
The participant sayer here, in this clause, is not a living entity, as the Dalai Lama is; rather, it is, above all, the Chinese Radio, seen as an abstract entity imbued with communication capacities.
The role of the radio, ever since it was invented and as it remains today, has always been central, but it is of particular importance when one considers for a moment that the broadcast of mass information and entertainment took place on the radio, especially between the 1930s and 1950s, viewed as the Golden Age of Radio, and that, therefore, one can understand the relevance of state-owned radio programs as means for maintaining ideological structures through the massification of the message and, in that role, they should convey everything that the truth of the Communist party in China desired.
In this scenario, there is, on the one hand, the manipulation of Chinese public opinion, aiming for complicit public support of the central government's imperialist desires, and on the other, the manipulation of Tibetan subjectivity, in a process of subjection, in which the goal is to portray an image of weakness, indignity, so help for a peaceful liberation of Tibetwhich had not been requested -unfortunately began to take its course.
It is possible to infer that China's expansionist interests seek justification in Marxist ideology, but use it more as an alibi for their crimes than as a de facto motivation. There is desire for more territory, more resources. The use of a circumstance of manner as in peaceful is the singular character of this grotesque lie, which means to hide behind a smiling smokescreen the barrels of the primed rifles.
Since 1949, what are now called post-truths are characterized as the emergence of interdiscourse (Fairclough, 2003), as they are nothing more than well-told lies to convince a group (the Chinese people) that another group (the Tibetan people) must then be helped to free them from invisible invaders.
as in the assessment of tensions between China and the conflict with Tibet. The idea of karma makes us touch within the causal laws of the universe and ponder the ordering of things: from ideas, even as roles as human beings in the world.
The statement cannot be taken out of context, and the Dalai Lama wishes to emphasize that, if it were not for The Three Poisons, from the previous excerpt, karma would not exist, and neither would its fruitions or consequences, which are human suffering. This phenomenon has intentionality, it wishes to make the reader and even the Chinese people reflect upon their motivations.
Enunciate II, below, shows an attributive relational structure and a mental-related structure with their respective circumstances. The second enunciate presents a senser you singularized to highlight the weight of the individual action of personal reflection amidst the connection that should be made between motivation and effect.

Enunciate II -
It also expresses, through the relational process will become, that not only will there be a connection of ideas, but also a transformation process that is expressed in an attribute more alert, that is, we human beings move from a state of dormancy to a state of energy, of greater perception, and such states -both the dormancy and the greater perception -are a choice.
The following graph illustrates the numbers of the processes, participants and circumstances present in the five selected excerpts.

Figure 2. Graphic: Processes, participants and circumstances. Our elaboration
The graph shows us the three main constituents of the system of transitivity as stated by Halliday (1994Halliday ( , 2004Halliday ( , 2014. In total, the five corpora that integrate our research corpus are constituted by participants, processes and circumstances. There is a greater predominance of participants (30 occurrences) once they are performing an action or enacting something. Most of them are expressed by the personal pronoun I. In this case, there is a correspondence between author, narrator and character which can be justified by the autobiographical genre presenting this particular order of constituency.
The processes appear in second place (20 occurrences). The largest number is presented through relational attributive processes. These processes express ideas of being, belonging, and having. In fact, the relational processes, with focus on the character-author-narrator, confirm the authenticity of the autobiographical pact, as stated by Lejeune (1989). This implicates in our understanding of the use of the language via metafunctions. The grammatical choices presented by the 14th Dalai Lama shows that there is a discourse concerning the responsibility of human beings in the world with regard to their actions. The attributive relational processes of the type be being expressed by was in the past. It can be noted that the sentences emerge as a kind of rational argument about the likelihood of armed struggle and resistance being as immediate and feasible as possible.
The circumstances (12 occurrences) of manner and place denote that the Buddhist principles not only constitute the personality of the 14th Dalai Lama, but also constitute it linguistically. The choice of these circumstances spreads his Buddhist faith and faith in humanity, although timidly, that is, the Dalai Lama wants to establish himself as the promoter of human emancipation (Bhaskar, 1978(Bhaskar, , 2012 and Buddhism as the vehicle that leads to this emancipation.

An Explanatory Critique of the Discourse
Fairclough (2003) claims that, through texts we "can also start wars, or contribute to changes in education, or to changes

PROCESSES PARTICIPANTS CIRCUMSTANCES
in industrial relations". In this sense, the discourse of the author should be highlighted and the note written by the 14th Dalai Lama at the beginning of the book as a foreword and that connects with the potential for texts to cause wars. Statements II and III, present in Excerpt 3, are centred around the news that hit the capital, Lhasa, and caused a bombastic impact: an armed contingent of 80,000 soldiers from the forces of Communist China's People's Liberation Army had crossed the Drichu River, a natural border between the two sovereign nations.
It is worth noting, however, that the passage is not about just the contingent of armed soldiers of the People's Liberation Army of China. What is striking is the power, at the time, and even today, of transmitting information to the population, through the radio. Chinese radio, seen as an institution (Fairclough, 2003) that was broadcasting an oralized text, which was previously written, with intention to be read in a very powerful, explicit manner, in the end, reaching its final goal. Therefore, its message is the mission of keeping "peace" in a region, which had previously been a sovereign state. The statements contained in Excerpt 3, for example, when referring to a conflict that is discursively that, even before becoming armed, became ideological and loaded with symbolisms that reinforce our position of an asymmetry in the power struggle between the nations, beginning in their minds, first of all. We clearly perceive the use of linguistic resources to dissuade and conceal, finally distorting the facts.
In Excerpt 1, for example, the statements signal the process of apprehending reality by the narrative focus on the characterauthor-narrator, as well stated by Lejeune (1989); that is, he celebrates a reliable reading contract, by at the same time, when focusing on the process of knowing the content of the telegram addressed to the regent of the time, what is seen is the main character not only projecting himself to the reader, but analysing and verbally presenting his discovery process.
We are able to see here a wealth of work with language, which, although it emerges from an overwhelmingly terrible context, indicates, nevertheless, that the contents of the 14 th Dalai Lama's vital experience are positioned in a way to counter the enemy's position, since the beginning. Everything he reports is not only his truth, but it is a subtle reminder that his account is made with the express desire to determine, as an unwritten history about Tibet, how things happened and more, happened with and for him and even, despite of him.
In Excerpt 2, the statements bring not only a narrative-factual development of the conflict led by China and Tibet. What can be seen is both the escalating turn and the insidiousness of the process. The initial contingent of 80,000 soldiers only materializes fears and doubts that are elaborated in the context of Excerpt 2. This excerpt is not only a vehicle for cold consideration, but a form of impartial historical description, in which one tries to convey data with apparent detachment, which, at some point, it is possible to understand. However, because it is an autobiographical narrative, such detachment is more a language device employ than a reality. The narrative self and the facts, numbers, sensations and apprehensions are totally and inextricably implicated in each other. Excerpt two is the nerve fibre of the autobiographical pact and an exposition of the emotionality of its narrator-author-character.
In Excerpt 3, we witness the mobilization of the apparatus of a totalitarian state. First in the ideological realm, highlighted in the radio discourse and, secondly, in the material environment, doing what Fairclough (2003) even argues, using the power of texts to act in the material world and modifying it. The contingent of Chinese troops was the initial vehicle for the deadly material action to occupy sovereign territory. This leads to a consequent reflection on the effects of texts, once we consider them as social practices: the causal power of texts and their influence or penetration in the social fabric. As Fairclough (2003) points out, texts have considerable causal power, especially today in the era of New Capitalism or even Postmodernity.
In Excerpt 4, the statements of the 14th Dalai Lama will assume a derivative character, that is, the spiritual or moral consequences that underlie the armed-ideological conflict between China and Tibet in this autobiography will culminate as opportunities for exposure, here and there, of postulates of faith and conduct based on Buddhist philosophy and religious practice. As the forth excerpt introduces the irreducible view of the conflict, seen through the eyes of the compassionate monk, as suffering, what is seen is both the appreciation of a personal character and that of an impersonal character, both diluted in the discourse and in the experiential representations, which assume, within the narrative account, characteristics of both the monk and the human being, who is involved in this great depiction of suffering resulting from the conflict between China and Tibet.
Unlike the other previous excerpts, in which it could be said, almost unanimously, that there was no doubt about the presence of a real enemy, when presenting the thesis of the Three Poisons and their effects on Chinese action, we observe the exercise of humanization and true compassion. Ultimately, the 14 th Dalai Lama suffers as much as any human being, whether Tibetan or Chinese. This excerpt can also be seen as the moral conclusion but is primarily focused on the role attribution and distinct functions in the relationship of suffering. The Chinese people, and more specifically the Chinese soldier, suffer when acting under the influence of the Three Poisons, but those who suffer the most from the actions motivated by the Three Poisons are the Tibetan people. We must pity everyone, but we must not forget, first and foremost, who the real victims are and who the executioners are.
Finally, in Excerpt 5, the moral lesson deepens, as the 14 th Dalai Lama sheds light on the entanglement of karma, and how it can affect every human being. A key element for our understanding is the word motivation. Karma is a motivated action, which translates into manners of body, mind and speech in the Buddhist philosophy. Karma are all the actions that the Chinese army undertook in the field of battle, as are equally the actions of rebels, the resistance, and regular people. It does not matter, as long as there is motivated action, there will always be karma. And karma motivated by the Three Poisons are deeper and tenaciously engraved in our own selves.
The Dalai Lama wishes to call our attention to the fact that, both grand-scale actions as well as ordinary ones can generate a karma that may take many lives, a very long time to fade away, and a long time to liberate ourselves from its ill effects. Once we have devised the functions of the Three Poisons and the role of Karma, what the 14 th Dalai lama is doing is expounding the Four Noble Truths in reverse, not expounding in the origins of suffering, as the Buddha did, but, by tackling on the effects, karma and the unstable mind of beings, he is expounding the Dharma (the true law of life), regarded by us as the materialization of the dimension of the intransitive moral values brought up by Bhaskar (1978Bhaskar ( , 2012 where finally we can see our eyes gazing upon something that is profound, but also, attainable. It is only by considering a reality that is transcendental, like Bhaskar insisted in his meta-Reality theory, that Freedom in Exile can bring forth its utmost power: the power of change.
The real message that we can extract from these excerpts, is one of change. Everybody and everything are undergoing changes. History will always point out to China as a protagonist of a bitter conflagration that reverberates to this day. But the eyes of history will also not forget to see the victims: The Tibetan people. The roles may change some day: there will be neither aggressor nor casualty if we repose in the good heart and take our human responsibilities seriously. 1

Conclusion
In this paper we analysed the discursive-linguistic representations of the conflict between communist China and Tibet that were presented in the Dalai Lama's autobiographical narrative. The study was based on the ideational metafunction of language, critical discourse analysis and critical realism, for believing in the potential of the autobiographical narrative as a means to construe and organize life experiences through language. We also sought to elucidate how life representations and conflicts were structured; more precisely: the conflict between communist China and Tibet and its unfolding in an autobiographical narrative.
To do so, we devised that it would be optimal to focus both in the linguistic and discursive axis of analysis with our corpus for believing that representations of the world, and, in particular, representations of a conflict in this same word, are the workings of complex units of meaning.
The ultimate goal was hence to analyse the units of meaning employed by the Dalai Lama himself in the course of his textual testimony in Freedom in Exile. In order to be able to bring to light the constituents of these representations, the study considered the concept of cultural context and of emergence in Halliday's systemic functional linguistics theory. By doing this we were capable to see the positioning and function of a diverse sample of participants, processes and circumstances. The data have shown that in some figures, for example, a design was weaved first by a material process, depicting an idea of an energy or a work imbued with force, physical force, or to borrow a Hallidayan term, quanta of change, that would ultimately be related to mental or verbal processes and different kinds of participants would then take turns both executing actions and being affected by them, like the role of goals, in material processes like comes (see excerpt 4 enunciate II).
In respect to the autobiographical text, we marvelled at the linguistic aspects of the representations, as whole paragraphs, with their clauses and phrases, were beautifully assembled in order to communicate to the audience of readers the ways and manners of thinking or feeling, or to grasp information and its consequences by the author-narrator-character, as shown in Excerpt 1 and in all its enunciates. This points to a different view of autobiographical narratives, more like an anatomy of the perception and creation of realities than a way to merely create a testimony about human behaviour and actions.
Thus, in the discursive axis the interpretation of the linguistic data aided by the context of culture in turn, showed, not only asymmetries in power and the insidiousness of the propaganda (see Excerpts 2 and 3), but, also pointed to a way beyond division, the metaReality of Bhaskar, where, not only is possible to transcend human division and human suffering in general, and, specifically of the Tibetans; to achieve mutual understanding, a humanisation of the enemy and, an awakening in us, of a sense or perception of the world and ourselves, living in it, that regardless all the destitution, the deaths and blood shed by Chinese soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, being a human person, which was taken far from home and transformed into one figure of reverence and respect, because all this very same suffering is, as the authors see it, the gateway to peace, reconciliation and transformation of an awfully painful reality into a possibility for concrete change, that will bring about the human emancipation and mutual respect for all humanity (see excerpts 4 and 5).
By studying the autobiography of the 14 th Dalai Lama of Tibet in detail, we have learnt a lesson, a lesson about respect, integrity, mutual understanding, transcendence of the mundane aspects of life by the varied conditions in which life presents itself. Academically, this research contributes to the studies of autobiographical narratives, critical discourse analysis and critical realism using the apparatus of systemic functional linguistics because it delves from the surface into deeper layers and extract meanings that should be viewed in the most holistic way possible in order to attempt to answer the questions in this study.
The linguistic representations of the Dalai Lama were constructed not only as a means to put the record straight as the author sought to do, but to be a window, a path, a gateway or any metaphorical expression that can conceive the reunion and transformation of people by people from all walks of life, emphasizing the universal laws of life: everybody suffers, everybody wishes to stop suffering, and there does exist a path that leads to the end of suffering: the universal good heart, or in other words: kindness.