Transitivity Theory Media Discourse

28 Figure 2.1 Discourse as text, interaction, and context

5.3. Transitivity Theory

Halliday 2004:181 said that transitivity is a system of a clause, affecting not only the verb serving as process but also participants and circumstances. Halliday 2004:309 also said that transitivity structures express representational meaning: what the clause is about, which is typically some process, with associated participants and circumstances. Gerott and Wignell 1994:54 said that processes are central to transitivity. Processes are realized by verbs. Participants and Circumstances are incumbent upon the doings, happenings, feelings, and beings. Halliday 2004:179-258 said that there are 7 seven different processes. Those processes can be seen below. Social Condition of Production Process of Production TEXT Process of Interpretation Social Condition of Interpretation Context Interaction 29 Table 2.2. Types of Process Material Doing and happening Bodily, physically, materially Behavioral Behaving Physiologically and psychologically Mental Sensing Emotionally, intellectually, and sensory Verbal Saying Lingually and signaling Relational Being Equal to, or some attribute of Existential Existing There exist Meteorological Weathering

5.4. Media Discourse

The role of media in an important case has greatly influenced the way people think of something. Media show their power in influencing the audience on something happening. Fairclough 1995:2 described that the power of media is to influence knowledge, beliefs, values, social relations, and social identities. Media have the power to represent things in particular ways. Media such as mass media or TV shows construct a relationship between reporter and audience or reader. The reporter here is described as someone who knows the fact and someone who has the right to tell it. The audience or reader is someone who knows nothing and need to be told. Therefore, by the power of media, it may decide what news needs to be included and excluded and what to foreground and background. 30 Fairclough 1995:56 defined that there are two essential things in analyzing media discourse; those are analysis of communicative events and the analysis of the order of discourse. The analysis of communicative events has three perspectives which are text, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice. Fairclough 1995:63 positioned media as a mediator between external relations and internal relations in the analysis of the order of discourse.

5.4.1. Communicative Events

As it said before that Fairclough 1995:57 defined the analysis of communicative events is an analysis of relationships between three perspectives; those are text, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice. Text can be written or oral such as from newspaper, radio, and television show. Fairclough defined discourse practice as the processes of text production and text consumption. Sociocultural practice is defined as the social and cultural goings-on which the communication event is a part of.

5.4.1.1. Texts

Talking about text analysis is talking about the analysis of linguistic devices such as vocabulary, semantics, grammar, phonology, and writing system. Despite the analysis on linguistic devices, the analysis of textual organization above the sentence such as cohesion and turn taking is needed when we have to analyze texts. It can be concluded that analyzing texts deals with its meanings and forms. Fairclough 1995:58 said that the three main functions of text are ideational what 31 is going on, interpersonal social relations and social identities, and textual contextual coherence.

5.4.1.2. Discourse Practice

The analysis of discourse practice deals with the process of text production and text consumption. Fairclough 1995:58-59 categorized the process of text production as an institutional process such as editorial procedures. It is about how media produce media texts or television show. Text consumption has been categorized as a discourse process which discussed on the transformations which texts undergo in production and consumption.

5.4.1.3. Sociocultural Practice

Fairclough 1995:62 divided the analysis of sociocultural practice into three different events; those are: immediate situational context, the wider context of institutional practices the event is embedded within, and wider frame of the society and the culture. There are so many aspects which can be found in critical discourse analysis. Fairclough differentiates those aspects into three broad aspects: economic, political, and cultural. Political aspect deals with the issues of ideology and power while cultural aspect deals with questions of value and identity.

5.4.2. Order of the Discourse

The second perspectives of critical discourse analysis of media proposed by Fairclough is the analysis of the order of the discourse. It positioned media as the 32 connector or mediator between public order of discourse as source and private order of discourse as consumer. Fairclough 1995:63 divided the analysis of the order of the discourse into two relations: external and internal. External relation analyzes the relation between the order of the discourse of the media and socially adjacent public and private order of discourse. Internal relation analyzes the relation between its constituent and genres. Depending on those two relations, I can conclude that media can shape the way people think and media can also be shaped by the society.

5.5. News as Discourse