Transitivity in Political Discourse – A Study of the Major Process Types in the 2009 State-of-the-Nation Address in Ghana

Abstract

The study uses the transitivity model to analyze how President John Evans Attah Mills manipulates language in his first State-of-the-Nation address to express his political message to his people. The study is premised on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, and the qualitative research design was used for the content analysis of the text. The study applies the interpretative content analysis to investigate the communicative functions of the linguistic choices made in the address. 536 clauses in the State-of-the-Nation address were used for analysis. The clauses were parsed into their constituent parts, the processes were identified, coded and categorized and their roles determined. The study discovered that among the major process types, material processes dominate the speech with a total occurrence of 59.14% whereas the mental process types are used minimally in the speech with a total occurrence of 14.37%. The dominant use of material processes implies that Mills and his government are the main actors working on a number of concrete projects in an attempt to create a sense of developmental progression and continuity. The minimal use of the mental processes also implies that Mills gives few assurances and promises to the people, and rather tells things as they are. This means that the address calls for vigorous and rigorous action and not a mere formality of assurances and wishful thinking. The study concludes that language structures can produce certain meanings and ideologies which are not explicit for readers. This is in affirmation to the assumption that language form is not fortuitous, but performs a communicative function.

Keywords: John Evans Attah Mills, Ghana, Systemic Functional Grammar, Transitivity, State-of-the-Nation Address, Political Ideologies.