Transitivity Analysis of American President Donald Trump's
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International Journal of Literature and Arts 2018; 6(2): 28-34 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijla doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20180602.11 ISSN: 2331-0553 (Print); ISSN: 2331-057X (Online) Transitivity Analysis of American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address Zhu Yujie, Li Fengjie Foreign Languages Department, School of Humanities, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, Tianjin, China Email address: To cite this article: Zhu Yujie, Li Fengjie. Transitivity Analysis of American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address. International Journal of Literature and Arts . Vol. 6, No. 2, 2018, pp. 28-34. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20180602.11 Received : April 13, 2018; Accepted : May 8, 2018; Published : May 31, 2018 Abstract: Political public speeches cause a large amount of attention, due to their political, economic and cultural influence. This thesis adopts Systemic-Functional Grammar as its theoretical framework to conduct a transitivity analysis in American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address. The aim of this thesis is to find the political motivation hidden by the form of language. At the same time, this thesis tries to explore the deep social significance via transitivity analysis of the ideational function. In Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address, the material process is the most frequently used process. The relational process and the mental process take the second and the third respectively. In transferring power to the people, material process is strongly involved. In advocating for U.S. interests in international contacts -- America first, relational process top the list of all the six processes. In recovering the audience’s confidence and looking forward to a better future, American President Donald Trump applied different mental processes. On the basis of the study, the researchers can better understand the thinking manner and cultural features of Westerners. Besides, it is a worthy study to uncover more differences of language expression between the East and the West. Keywords: Process, Transitivity, Functional Linguistics, Trump’s Inaugural Address systemic functional grammar approach to the study of 1. Introduction American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address to 1.1. Research Background work out the transitivity distribution of six transitivity processes in this speech and pragmatic functions of each Halliday [4] has researched the Inheritors written by transitivity type. The interrelated research questions are as William Golding from the perspective of transitivity, which follows: becomes the first application of Systematic Functional What are the distributions of transitivity processes in Grammar to analyze literary works. Huang Guowen [15] American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address? studies six English versions of the Chinese poem “Qingming” What are the functions of each transitivity process type in by using Interpersonal Function theory. He mainly focuses on American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address? the characters in the poem. And Zhu Yongsheng [8] studies thematic progression patterns and discourse analysis. When it 1.2. Research Design comes to using Systematic Function Grammar to analyze On the basis of Halliday’s systematic functional grammar, political speeches, many scholars have studied them. Such the present study is designed to analyze the linguistic features scholars as Wang Fang [13], Kong Jing [11], Liu Ming [12] of the American newly-elected President Donald Trump’s and so on. The common characteristics of their thesis lie in Inaugural Address by the method of transitivity analysis. In that they only can concentrate on one aspect of their this study, an investigation is conducted on the process types meta-functions and they hardly have any theoretical in this speech and the results were analyzed quantitatively by innovations. Few scholars have studied a piece of political using descriptive statistics. speech from ideational function. In order to get the reliable research results, the speech was The present thesis applied transitivity analysis in Halliday’s downloaded from the official website of American 29 Zhu Yujie and Li Fengjie: Transitivity Analysis of American President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address government www.whitehouse.gov/. (see appendix). their direct experience; therefore, the function is experiential. To conduct transitivity analysis of American President On the other hand, it also represents the abstract logical Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address, we first identify all the relations people perceive and drive from their experience; ranking clauses, the basis of the process types, in this speech, therefore, the function is also logical. which is followed by the identification of the process types defined by Halliday [4]. 2.3. Transitivity 1.3. Significance The English clause has transitivity, that is, it matches our experience of a real life event. The term transitivity used in In the inaugural speech which is usually delivered to the Systemic Functional Grammar is a semantic category, which people both at home and abroad, the speaker is expected to is a reflection of human being’s recognition at the show his political stand and view, make his government policy lexicogrammar level both in written and spoken form with the known to the public to accept and support his policy. The choice of process types and participant and circumstantial inaugural is significant because it reflects the fundamental element. political values. The inaugural address usually plays an The transitivity system construes the world of experience important role in teaching and encouraging the citizens. So the into a manageable set of process types. A process is composed new president impresses the public through carefully of three semantic categories: the processes, the participants weighing his words and polishing his address. involved and the circumstances as mentioned above. Based on Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar, this There are six types of processes in the transitivity system: thesis, by analyzing American President Donald Trump’s they can be sub-classified into three major ones: material, Inaugural Address, attempts to find the political motivation mental and relational and three minor ones: verbal, behavioral hidden by the form of language. At the same time, it tries to and existential. explore the deep social significance via transitivity analysis of The material process (MA) can be said to involve “doing” the ideational function. words. It expresses the notion that some entity “do” something to some other entity. The “doer” of this type of action is called 2. Theoretical Framework Actor. Any material process has an Actor, even though the Actor may not be mentioned in the clause. In many clauses, 2.1. Three Metafunctions the action may be represented as “affecting” or “being done to ” a second participant, which is called Goal. However, material The term metafunction originates in systemic functional processes are not necessarily concrete, physical event. They linguistics and is considered to be a property of all languages. may be abstract doing and happening. The Actor may also be According to Halliday, though languages vary in how and an inanimate or abstract entity, and the goal may be human or what they do, and what humans do with them in the contexts non-human as the table below shows. of human cultural practice, all languages are considered to be shaped and organized in relation to three functions, or Table 1. Material process. metafunctions. Halliday’s functional grammar contains three We will seek friendship metafunctions as follows: (a) Language is used to convey the A new vision will govern our land new information, to communicate the content that is unknown We defend other nation’s borders to the hearer. This function is known as the ideational function. Actor Process: material Goal (b) the interpersonal function embodies all uses of language to express social and personal relations. This includes the A mental process (ME) accounts for the process of sensing. various ways the speakers enter a speech situation and There are clear differences between something that goes on in perform a speech act. (c) the textual function refers to the fact the external world and something that goes on in the internal that language has mechanism to make any stretch of spoken or world of the mind. There are many verbs which refer to these written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a mental processes, of thinking, imaging, liking, wanting, living passage different from a random list of sentences. seeing, etc. Halliday further offered three subcategories of the According to Halliday, a clause is the simultaneous realization mental process: Perception (hearing), Affection (liking, hating) of ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. and Cognition (thinking, understanding). Tompson [3] also gave four criteria for distinguishing between material and 2.2. Ideational Function mental processes. This first is that mental processes always Language is used to organize, understand and express involve at least one human participant. Second, criterion is people’s perceptions of the world and of their own that the kind of entity which can fill the role of the other consciousness. This function is known as the ideational participant in a mental process is less restricted than the function. The ideational function can be classified into two entities which can act as participants in a material process. The sub-functions: the experiential and the logical.