TRANSITIVITY: THE REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL ACTION.

Introduction: How participants are represented in texts and speech can shape how we perceive them. These

representations align us alongside or against these participants.

The representation of transitivity can also shape the way we perceive people.

Transitivity  is the study of what people are depicted as doing. Is an analytical component that allows

us to deal with the huge variety of goings on in the world into a small number of categories.

- Allows us to reveal who plays an important role in a particular clause and who receives the

consequences of that action.

- A transitivity analysis of clause structure shows us who is mainly given a subject (agent/participant) or

object (affected/patient) position.

Linguists have explored the lexical choices available for representing actions.

Halliday grouped verbs into 6 categories of “process types”:

Material: Is doing something in the world that has a material result or consequence.

“The woman built the house”.

Behavioural: Is where we act without material outcome.

“the boy jumped”.

Mental: Is where a person thinks evaluates or senses.

“The boy saw the dog”.

Verbal: Is where a person is represented as simply saying something saying.

“The man talked about democracy”.

Relational: Is where people are represented as being like, or different to, something else

“The militia had crude weapons.” (in contrast to the US soldiers) or simply “the boy was taller”.

Existential: Is where people are represented simply in a state of existing, appearing

“he sat in the chair”.

Ex.

- Some of these processes are transitive

- Transaction is involved in the first sentence and others are no transitive

- The second sentence doesn’t presents any transaction; there is no direct outcome.

- This can give us a sense of who is represented as the agent in a text.

- Another way of thinking about this is in terms of the way that participants in a clause, social actors, can

be activated or passivated.

Activated social actors are represented as “the active, dynamic forces in an activity”, the ones who

do things and make things happen. Being activated is an important and generally positive aspect of

representation.

For Fairclough an activated actor’s capacity for “action, for making things happen, for controlling

others and so forth, is accentuated”.

Action processes foreground agency, contributing to representations of power.

Passivated  what is accentuated is their subjection to precesses, them being affected by the actions

of others.

The pilot bombed the village

The civilians were in the house

The soldier protected the civilians

The woman waited and thought, wishing for him and then sang

The politician said it was time to act

The politician was not attractive

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TRANSITIVITY: THE REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL ACTION.

Introduction: How participants are represented in texts and speech can shape how we perceive them. These representations align us alongside or against these participants. The representation of transitivity can also shape the way we perceive people.  Transitivity  is the study of what people are depicted as doing. Is an analytical component that allows us to deal with the huge variety of goings on in the world into a small number of categories.

Allows us to reveal who plays an important role in a particular clause and who receives the consequences of that action.
A transitivity analysis of clause structure shows us who is mainly given a subject (agent/participant) or object (affected/patient) position. Linguists have explored the lexical choices available for representing actions.  Halliday grouped verbs into 6 categories of “process types”:  Material: Is doing something in the world that has a material result or consequence. “The woman built the house”.  Behavioural: Is where we act without material outcome. “the boy jumped”.  Mental: Is where a person thinks evaluates or senses. “The boy saw the dog”.  Verbal: Is where a person is represented as simply saying something saying. “The man talked about democracy”.  Relational: Is where people are represented as being like, or different to, something else “The militia had crude weapons.” (in contrast to the US soldiers) or simply “the boy was taller”.  Existential: Is where people are represented simply in a state of existing, appearing “he sat in the chair”. Ex.
Some of these processes are transitive
Transaction is involved in the first sentence and others are no transitive
The second sentence doesn’t presents any transaction; there is no direct outcome.
This can give us a sense of who is represented as the agent in a text.
Another way of thinking about this is in terms of the way that participants in a clause, social actors, can be activated or passivated.  Activated social actors are represented as “the active, dynamic forces in an activity”, the ones who do things and make things happen. Being activated is an important and generally positive aspect of representation.  For Fairclough an activated actor’s capacity for “action, for making things happen, for controlling others and so forth, is accentuated”.  Action processes foreground agency, contributing to representations of power.  Passivated  what is accentuated is their subjection to precesses, them being affected by the actions of others. The pilot bombed the village The civilians were in the house The soldier protected the civilians The woman waited and thought, wishing for him and then sang The politician said it was time to act The politician was not attractive

 it is often the case that participants who are made the subjects of mental processes are constructed as the focalizers or reflectors of action. These actors are allowed an internal view of themselves. This can be one device through which listeners and readers can be encouraged to have empathy. But it can also be one way that these participants appear very busy whereas they only engage in mental processes.  if these mental verbs are mainly about sensing and reacting this can also convey passivity.

Existential processes can be fairly passive as these simply describe location
Relational processes are simply about definition of the category to which a subject belongs.
You must be careful to see who is activated, whether animal, nature, abstract or complex nouns
You must look for ways that this can be concealed or played down through a number of grammatical strategies. Ex. Machin and Thornborrow use this model to show how in women’s magazines women are highly active but in non material processes, in other words those that have no outcome. So the women might be busy “hoping”, “worrying”, “walking”, “watching”, “reading”, that so mainly behavioural and mental processes rather than material ones which actually bring about change in the world. This is even though the magazine is branded as for the “Fun, Fearless, Female”. Ex. Van Leeuwen uses analytical framework to describe the way that children are represented textually in contrast to teachers. He analyses the texts for “transitivity” that so actions that have an outcome. The analysis reveals that children, in contrast to teachers, are rarely represented as having an effect on the world. He substains that the ability to “transit” requires a certain power, and the greater that power, the greater the range of “goals” that may be affected by the actors actions.  There is a theoretical assumption here that levels of actor agency are directly correlated to Material process types.  Individuals or groups not involved in such processes are represented as being weak agents.  Teo concludes that the agents or dominant subjects are those attributed with Material or Verbal processes. In contrast those who are not may be “ineffectual”. Unspecified reactions: One category of reactions are those that are not defined. Ex:
These can be used to conceal certain kinds of actions.
You can observe that different categories of participants are often given different types of reactions. Grammatical positioning of actions: Prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses:  For Fairclough the second strategy of representing social action is within a circumstance, such as within a prepositional phrase or subordinate clause.  Fairclough sees subordinate clauses as useful for achieving backgrounding of certain acts.
Prepositional phrases are so called because they begin with a preposition such as “for”, “at”, “after”. Ex. The main clause is “We bought it” and the prepositional phrase is “for them”. Ex. A newspaper headline might use a main clause and a prepositional clause as in “Boy stabbed at school”. The policeman reacted The soldiers responded

Who is doing the expecting and who’s accepted rule it is remains unspecified.
Those in power do not have such mysterious powers watching over them or defining their role
You can found no such absentee actor included in the obstetric text.
The implications of this discovery were that, not only did the represented midwives achieve very little in terms of material outcome, but the little that they did was done only through deferential reference to this unidentified social actor.

Transitivity and Social Action: An Analysis of Participant Representation, Sintesi del corso di Lingua Inglese

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TRANSITIVITY: THE REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL ACTION.