transitivity system

According to systemic functional grammar, a text is constructed in accordance with the situational and cultural context of its production. With this assumption, this paper attempted to explore the distinct linguistic features in the texts of the websites of Persian and English-language science and technology parks that must be considered in their translation. To this end, the texts of “About Us” sections on the websites of 6 Iranian and 6 British and American science and technology parks were comparatively analyzed using the transitivity system within the framework of systemic functional grammar. The findings showed that despite the higher frequency of material processes in both groups of texts, in the Persian texts the parks appeared more in the role of Goal than Actor due to the higher frequency of passive clauses. Significant differences were also observed between the two groups of texts in the number and frequency of certain Circumstantial elements. Finally, it was proposed that in the translation of such Persian texts into English adopting the accepted norms of the international discourse of such texts would lead to better communicative results.

The present study aims to analyze the Transitivity Metaphors in the listening module of the TOEFL books. In this regard, the present study with a qualitative content analysis method investigated three official iBT TOEFL books (including fourteen tests, and each test includes six texts in the form of conversation and lecture). First, we identified each clause of these 84 texts. Then, Transitivity Metaphors were extracted, analyzed and compared in terms of type and frequency. The results indicated that: 1. Transitivity metaphors entail a higher frequency in lecture texts (68%). 2. Two processes have the highest frequency in metaphorical and incongruent meaning: material processes (38%) and relational process (28%), respectively. The results of the Mann-Whitney U test showed Transitivity Grammatical Metaphors are significantly more frequent in the lecture section. So, applying more lecture texts in the listening parts makes TOEFL tests more efficient to measure communicative and metaphorical competence of volunteers

The present study analyzed Houshang Golshiri’s discourse style in his short story of "Dehliz (=Atrium)", and the use of language in this text considering systemic functional grammar. The main question in this paper is: To what extent have the linguistic elements of the story been successful in representing political and social realities? In order to answer this question, the authors examined the text of the story according to the metafunctions to reveal how Golshiri's mental images of reality were coded in the language of his writing. In this story, 239 processes have been found and examined based on Halliday’s model, but due to limitations, only a few examples of each process are mentioned. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical. In this way, all verbs in the text have been extracted and the frequencies of the processes were identified. Then they were grouped and analyzed according to Halliday’s method. Among the three metafunctions, the focus of this article is on ideational and textual metafunctions. The findings demonstrate that material, behavioral and relational processes have mostly been applied and existential, mental and verbal processes have rarely been used. The high frequency of the material process in the story reflects its relevance to the historical context of Golshiri-era society, which coincided with the growth of capitalistic thought and the development of industry in Iran. Also, it shows that in his realistic discourse, the writer seeks to represent his attitude toward the political situation of the society. Compared to the material processes, mental processes have less frequency. It indicates that the writer has seldom involved his own and his discourse addressees’ feelings, and mental characteristics in the discourse of this short story. The processes and texture of the text fit together. The high frequency of use of past tense is a factor that has increased the degree of certainty in discourse.

In this study, the main question is how to achieve the mystical style and the distinctive linguistic-semantic features in Masnavi based on the Halliday`s Functional Grammar. The perception of Rumi’s methods in the expression of spiritual matters and its linkage with the material and concrete experiences could express the properties of the context. To this end, the main purpose of this research is to investigate the characters of two stories of Masnavi with a focus on Pir (Sufism) character according to the transitivity system. Therefore, the linguistic and stylistic features of the studies context is identified after presenting the frequency of the processes associated with each character in each story; so, initially, the verses related to the original story plot is separated and then qualitative analysis along with statistical and quantitative frequency is presented by specifying the percentage and frequency of processes used. Applying a variety of processes in order to teach mystical issues and the position of Pir (elder) shows that induction of Rumi’s attitude using various processes within verbal and sometimes mental processes reflects a distinctive feature of mystical style and induce the superiority of the verbal process and dialogue method from the point of view of the poet of this eternal work.

Teaching the “verb” is very important in learning the grammatical and semantic structure of any language. In Halliday’s functional grammar, verb is considered as “process” under the transitivity system. From the viewpoint of this system, verb has the ability to represent the experience in language; therefore, it is considered in the format of experiential metafunction. Process, event, being and not-being, feeling, and action are issues which appear in form of verb phrases. By considering the types and frequency of processes in educational texts, one can identify their approaches to the transfer of experiential concepts of the language and the diversification or non-diversification of processes and the educational outputs of these processes. The main purpose of this article was to explore the frequency of process types and investigate the embedding of those processes into educational approaches in three intermediate books titled “Let’s learn Persian”, “Modern instruction of Persian language”, and “Persian language”. Hence, the processes which appeared in the texts of these books and their types were specified in an analytical-statistical method. The results showed that in the three considered books, relational process has more frequency than the other processes. Since a wide range of sentences are made by relational process in the language, its significant frequency in elementary language teaching materials is educationally justified. However, the books considered in this paper related to the intermediate level. Furthermore, behavioral and material processes which represent most of the human’s life experiences are of average frequency in these books and for the learning and retention of these processes, the writers have resorted more to semantic variables such as partial or complete repetition, synonymy, collocation, and antonymy.

In this essay¡ we study transformation of linguistic representation of religion in thetexts of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This research attempts to reveal what political events trigger the linguistic representation of religion by Shah and how these representations are used to foreground favorite concepts and background those which are not favorable. Thus¡ all spoken and written texts produced by Shah is studied. The results indicate that religion is not represented the same by Shah. Having studied the data¡ we reach to five historical periods which show the best the transformation of linguistic representation in the texts of Shah. These five periods respectively are: first period¡ religion for unity (1320-1332)¡ second period¡ 28 Mordad coup (1332-1334)¡ third period¡ Cento treatment (1334-1341)¡ fourth period¡ white revolution (1341-1348) and fifth period¡ Palestine issue (1348-1357). Among these periods¡ the most highlighted linguistic representation of religion belongs to the fourth period¡ i.e. white revolution.

Sa’di’s Gulistan has always been considered as one of the most important sublime masterpieces of Persian literature. Regarding to stylistic researches on Gulistan, one of the peculiarities of Sa’di’s artistic techniques is to select the verbs in such a way to reflect the influence of didactic qualities. In Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, the verb category is also considered as a process of transitivity system (grammatical ability for representation of experience in language), ideational and experiential meta-functions. The study of the types and frequencies of the processes leads to the achievement of the author’s mental status and style. In the stylistic study of texts, transitivity system makes it possible to select the processes systematically and to represent the author’s intentions. The goal of this article is to study the main components of masterpieces like Gulistan and to describe its features. To attain this goal, having explained the processes and its types, seven parts of Gulistan (the first seven Babs) and their frequencies are studied at the first step. The study reveals that Sa’di has paid attention to the selection of the processes and the capability of the simultaneous artistic repetitions besides meaning and rhythm. Since most Sadi’s examples are of behavioral nature, it is concluded that the main concentration of Gulistan is on humans, social relationship and the didactic principles.

Style of a text is the way a writer or a poet uses the language and the result of what he chooses from the language treasury of his culture. The mind of an artist affects this choice and it is the artist who chooses how to express a theme. Therefore، the style used by a writer or a poet is a reflection of his special view to the inside and outside world. In fact، this view is manifested in his words. If an artist has a new view of the world، then he uses a new language to convey his mental concepts and inevitably has specific language choices. In his choices، the artist applies his personal preferences to language، and sometimes gets out of the conventional norms of the language. So، style is a product of the artist''s specific word choices. The present paper aims to study the effect of language choices on the style of the artist from the viewpoint of Paul Simpson.