Actor and Goal Representation in the Transitivity System of Undergraduate Theses and Journal Research Articles: an SFL Perspective

Abstract

The current study scrutinizes the representation of actors and goals of transitivity system in the introduction sections of theses (ISoT) composed by undergraduate students in reference to that of the introduction sections of research articles (ISoRA) considered as the target writings in the academic discourse of knowledge building. 738 English ranking clauses from 10 English-field ISoT and 694 from 10 ISoRA of TESOL Quarterly were analysed for their material processes as well as their participants and circumstances. The analysis was executed with the tables of analysis adapted from Halliday’s experiential meaning framework. The analysis reveals that in the material processes of ISoRA previous studies and previous researchers instead of current studies and current researchers are more frequently employed as actors. Contrary, in their ISoT counterpart, the latter outnumber the former. The analysis also finds that goals in the material processes of ISoT in comparison with its ISoRA counterpart still lack previous findings. Overall, the representation of actors and goals in the material processes of ISoT still needs lexical resources that underpin the process of knowledge building. This has been confirmed by the tendency of actors and goals of ISoT to represent its study undertaken, compared with its ISoRA counterpart focusing more on previous related studiesKeywords: actors, goals, material process, transitivity system, ISoT, ISoRA

‘Verbs’ in Thesis and Journal-Article Introductions: A Comparative Functional Approach

“…The study of Farnia and Barati (2017) implies that non-native writers, in constructing the introduction sections as the basis of RA knowledge building, put their priority on themselves as current researchers rather than on previous researchers or related studies that have generated the state of the art of knowledge building. This phenomenon is also confirmed by the analysis of Manar et al (2020), finding that student writers tended to represent themselves instead of previous researchers as the actors in the material process of building research basis.…”

“…This is due to the demand for taking a decision on the types of background issues to include, their sufficiency, as well as the stance to take. Due to its characteristics as the basic and problematic part of RAs, the introduction section has become one of the foci of genre-based academic studies for the past two decades (Chahal, 2014;Farnia & Barati, 2017;Fitriati & Solihah, 2019;Lakic, 2010;Manar et al, 2020;Martínez, 2001;Mirahayuni, 2013;Nivales, 2011;Safnil, 2013;Samraj, 2002;Zheng et al, 2014). It has been argued that the scrutiny of the structure and linguistics features of introduction sections is necessary for favour of improving researcher's understanding of their characteristics as well as in favour of helping student writers how to frame their introduction sections functionally (Gupta, 1995, cited in Safnil, 2007.…”

“…To illustrate, the comparative corpus-based transitivity study ofManar et al (2020) has revealed that students' data sets were inclined to represent student researchers instead of previous researchers as the frequent actors of knowledge building. For comparison, the journal data set tended to employ previous researchers.…”