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CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION
A. Research Background
Systemic Functional Linguistics abbreviated as SFL was developed by M.A.K Halliday in 1960s. SFL is a part of social semiotic approach to language. It
views language as a foundation of the building of human experiences and as a system of meaning. There are three general meanings that are constructed in each
text; ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning. Those systems are known as metafunctions which work in lexicogrammar rank. In the
social context, it has general functions such as; to enact our social relationships, to represent our experiences to each other, and to organize our enactments and
representation as meaningful text Martin Rose 2003: 6. Ideational meaning is one of three systems realized in the metafuctions.
Ideational meaning functions to construct mental picture in the people ’s mind
about the reality of what is going on. It is classified into two, experiential meaning dealing with the experiences as inter-related part of a whole and logical meaning
used to connect the experiences. In clause rank, experiential meaning is represented by the transitivity systems. Meanwhile, logical meaning can be
analyzed through the clause systems and group systems Halliday, 1994: 101.
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Experiential meaning is used to understand the reality by construing the events or happenings. In the context of situation, experiential meaning focuses on
the institutional activity which is done by the people. It means that it works in ‘field’ area of the context of situation. It figures three participants or elements
which construct the happenings or events. The first one is processes which happen, the second one is participants who are involved in the happenings, and the
last one is circumstances which encase the happenings. Since the experiential meaning is used to understand the social events or
happenings in the reality, we examine the processes which occur in text which are produced by the people as a semiotic approach to language. The term of text here,
in the Systemic Functional Linguistics SFL, it is not only written text in the small sense, but also spoken text. The term text is used in linguistics to refers to
any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole Halliday and Hasan, 1976.
As stated above a text can be analyzed by transitivity system, the researcher is interested in using transitivity system to analyze the experiences
represented in the texts which are taken from Barack Obama’s speeches. The
reason why the researcher took Barrack Obama ’s speeches is due to those
speeches are phenomenal. Many people assume that his speeches have huge impact and get much attention in social life of the world. Hence, the researcher
would like to find out the experiential aspect which is applied in the Barack Obama’s speeches. The researcher would like to know the processes applied in
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the speeches, how the processes are employed and why the processes are employed.
B. Problem Statement
