Transitivity Structure of Research Articles: Variations across Sections

This study investigates the transitivity structure of research articles and examines the variations of process types across sections, aiming to explore experiential meaning construction in academic discourse. The corpus for this study consists of ten applied linguistics research articles published from 2018 to 2020 in the top journals of the discipline. Features of the transitivity structure of the whole research articles are presented. The distribution of different process types is also examined in relation to the rhetorical purposes and stylistic features of the abstract, introduction, method, results and discussion, and conclusion sections. The findings reveal that transitivity structure could largely reflect the stylistic features of research articles, which are characterized as being informative and objective as well as interpersonal. Results also show that the distribution of process types may contribute to the regularity manifestation and purpose fulfillment of distinctive sections. This study has implications for both academic writers and academic writing courses.   

A Transitivity Analysis of the Courtroom Discourse: A Case Study of Jodi Arias Trial

Court discourse is a typical institutional discourse, recently arousing scholars’ interest. Systemic-functional approach provides an important perspective to investigate the court discourse, among which transitivity that involves the construal of experiential meaning is a significant tool in the analysis. However, it is still unknown how experiential meanings are construed through different process types in American courtroom discourse. Therefore, this paper will take the case of Jodi Arias’ murder as an example and investigate the courtroom discourse from the perspective of transitivity. In this study, two research questions will be focused on: (1) What is the distribution of six transitivity processes in the courtroom of Jodi Arias’ murder case? (2) What are the functions of six processes for each courtroom participant in the courtroom of Jodi Arias’ murder case? After the detailed analysis, two conclusions are reached: (1) The paper finds that the major processes in the courtroom is the material, mental, relational, and verbal process. The behavioural process and the existential process is least or none in the courtroom discourse. (2) Second, the processes have their own functions in the courtroom discourse. The findings can help improve people’s understanding of American courtroom discourse and enhance American courtroom communication.

Experiential Meaning Breadth Variations of the English-Bahasa Indonesia Alice in Wonderland Movie Texts

Research on experiential meaning breadth of bilingual analysis is rarely performed. The research aims at describing (1) the experiential meaning breadth variations of Alice in Wonderland English- Bahasa Indonesia movie texts, (2) the contextual factors that motivate the occurrence of meaning and realization variations, and (3) the contextual effects of the meaning and realization variations in question on the context in reference to the target readers of the texts. The research used descriptive qualitative approach to make the interpretation and the research findings. The data were taken from Alice in Wonderland (2010) movie texts then measured and validated in terms of quantitative research then analyzed through several steps: classifying the data into realized and unrealized expressions, classifying the data into the categories or degrees of variations, classifying the higher degree of each clause compared, giving number of clauses and their process type, contrasting each analysis result, and drawing conclusions. Research results indicate that the most prominent degree of experiential meaning breadth variations falls into the “lowest” category of variation with 57.54%. This means that the Target Text is closely related to the Source Text and/ or the translator of Target Text applied source- based translation as regards experiential meaning breadth complexity. It is also strengthened by the average degree in each of the analysis falling in “very low” category. The contextual factors that motivate the occurrence of the variations consist of inter- textual and situational context (field, mode, and tenor). The contextual effects in reference to the target readers are related to two aspects; the readability and the purpose of creating the texts. The Target Text is readable for the target readers of the text, target readers feel entertained by interpreting the text. The purpose for creating the Target Texts is for education and gives effects for the target readers to enrich their vocabularies and improve their English skills.

The Experiential Meaning of Dancow Advertisements

Experiental process is a part of systemic functional linguistics, a theory of language that is oriented to the description of how language makes meaning in context. Systemic functional grammar views language as a resource for making meaning. This research was conducted to investigate the types of experiential meaning and the most dominant of experiential meaning used in Dancow advertisements in 1983, 1986, 2003, 2010 and 2014. This study was conducted by applying a descriptive qualitative method. Data were taken from television, websites and magazines. The relational process was found to be dominant, with a value of 40%, and it occurred 16 times. The material process had a value of 27.5% and was used 11 times. The mental process was on the third level with 25% and was used 10 times. Finally, the behavioral, verbal and existential process had the lowest percentage with 2.5% and was used 1 time. Keywords: Experiential Process, advertisement, mass media

Actor and Goal Representation in the Transitivity System of Undergraduate Theses and Journal Research Articles: an SFL Perspective

The current study scrutinizes the representation of actors and goals of transitivity system in the introduction sections of theses (ISoT) composed by undergraduate students in reference to that of the introduction sections of research articles (ISoRA) considered as the target writings in the academic discourse of knowledge building. 738 English ranking clauses from 10 English-field ISoT and 694 from 10 ISoRA of TESOL Quarterly were analysed for their material processes as well as their participants and circumstances. The analysis was executed with the tables of analysis adapted from Halliday’s experiential meaning framework. The analysis reveals that in the material processes of ISoRA previous studies and previous researchers instead of current studies and current researchers are more frequently employed as actors. Contrary, in their ISoT counterpart, the latter outnumber the former. The analysis also finds that goals in the material processes of ISoT in comparison with its ISoRA counterpart still lack previous findings. Overall, the representation of actors and goals in the material processes of ISoT still needs lexical resources that underpin the process of knowledge building. This has been confirmed by the tendency of actors and goals of ISoT to represent its study undertaken, compared with its ISoRA counterpart focusing more on previous related studiesKeywords: actors, goals, material process, transitivity system, ISoT, ISoRA

Meaning and Meaning Making in Arabic: Moving from Semantics to Pragmatics to Ka:rmatics

Ka:rmik Linguistic theory is one of the most revolutionary theories in linguistics which aims to describe language from a causal perspective of WHY giving rise to WHAT through HOW: “As you are, so you think; as you think, so you speak (or act)” (Bhuvaneswar). In an adapted form, it can be modified as: As you are, so you think; as you think, so you mean. In his extension of semantics to ka:rmatics in dealing with proverb-meaning, Bhuvaneswar (2012) has shown a new dimension of meaning and meaning-making, namely, the causal dimension of creation, change, and transformation of meaning in language. According to Bhuvaneswar, if semantics deals with sentence meaning and pragmatics with utterance meaning, ka:rmatics (i.e., experiential pragmatics) explores experiential meaning via dispositional meaning of contextual meaning (pragmatics) of sentential meaning (semantics). What this amounts to is a causal understanding of meaning as it is created, changed, and transformed as languages are evolved and developed: Language is as it is (i.e., lingual meaning is as it is) because of what it is (dispositionally) intended to do (i.e., to mean) what it does (i.e., means). In this paper, an attempt has been made by selecting two sentences used in real life Yemeni Arabic to show how meaning is derived. In the process, it will be shown how semantics becomes pragmatics and pragmatics becomes ka:rmatics.

Pemaknaan Naratif Pengalaman dalam Cerpen Melayu/Narrative Experiential Meaning-making in Malay Short Stories

The experiential meaning-making in narrative can be studied by applying the Ideational Metafunction theoretical framework as introduced by Halliday. According to Halliday, the meaning-making can be realized by means of three Transitivity main elements found in clauses which are process, participants and circumstances. A study was conducted on three Malay short stories entitled ‘Catatan di Meja Makan’, ‘Anita’ and ‘Meneruskan Perjalanan’ by Zurinah Hassan to analyse the experiential meaning-making of narrative using Transitivity analysis from Systemic Functional Linguistics as the analytical framework. The findings of the Transitivity analysis on Malay short stories show that material process types are mostly found and followed by mental processes. This results in the most found participants are actors for material process types, whilst participants for mental processes are sensors. The findings also show that the participants for material processes can be living or non-living entities. The writer usually conveys the meaning of short stories in active forms, by which means active processes are used to illustrate the actions of participants in Malay short stories. The findings of this study are a contribution to the field of Malay language studies using the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, of which studies on Malay language using this theory are still lacking.