Investigating Journalist’s Language through Transitivity in Editorial of the Jakarta Post Newspaper: Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective

Abstract

Transitivity, under Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), examines how actions, events, or relationships are presented in language, specifically in written text (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014). This study explores the utilization of transitivity in presenting actions, events, and relationships in editorial discourse and to determine the most dominant process present in the text. This study utilizes a descriptive qualitative approach to explain the transitivity process of the text and its realization. The source of data in this study was gathered from editorial of the Jakarta Post newspaper published in April 2024. Meanwhile, in selecting the data, the researchers apply criterion-based sampling techniques, the data resulted in 2 editorials to analyze. In addition, this study employed Halliday's transitivity analysis framework to examine the type of processes found in the data including the participant, processes, and circumstances. The result of this study depict that material processes were the dominant processes found in the text. Furthermore, these findings offer a comprehension of how transitivity analysis, under Halliday's systemic functional linguistics framework, provides a spotlight on the rhetorical techniques and communicative objectives of editorial texts. This research enhances our comprehension of how editorial discourse forms perceptions, creates arguments, and impacts readers' interpretations by analyzing the relationship between language structure and meaning.