In a fiction, the author has to communicate their message to the readers in the discourse situation. The author may have many purposes such as informing,
asking, ordering or persuading, but typically their purpose is informing Leech and Short, 2007. The problem is that in the written form, the author and the
readers do not see each other to communicate. They only assume that there is an author and the reader. That is why there will be the implied author and implied
reader. Then, to narrate the story, the implied author uses his or her character named the narrator. Furthermore, since there is also an assumption that the
narrator is talking directly to the readers, they will be called as the interlocutor. However, the message from the author and the readers can be delivered not only
from the direct communication between the narrator and the interlocutors but also from the conversations between characters.
2.2 Transitivity System
The transitivity system concerns with the ideational function of language experiential meaning. The transitivity pattern of language deals with how our
experience is represented through language. It concerns with “how we talk about actions, happenings, feelings, beliefs, situations, states, and so on, the people and
things involved in them, and the relevant circumstances of time, place, manner and so on” Lock, 1996: 9. Simpson 2004, 22 states that “transitivity refers to
the way meanings are encoded in the clause and to the way different types of process are represented in language”. The transitivity system has three
components those are processes, participants, and the circumstances. The processes in transitivity system can be grouped into six types which are explained
as below.
The first type of transitivity is the material process. This process shows the changes of the participants in some sequences of events using some inputs of
energy Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004. What did X do? is one of the questions that can be used to test the material process Downing and Locke, 2006. For
example, in the sentence I bought some candies, the verb bought will answer the question What did I do? Thus, the verb belongs to the material process.
Furthermore, the question Who bought the candies? can be used to test the actor. Nevertheless, such question will not appropriate for the sentence his cat died last
night . It does not mean that the verb died does not belong to the material process.
The question to test such kind of sentence should be What happened to X? Downing and Locke, 2006. The former is the question to test the process of
‘doing’ while the later is to test the process of ‘happening’. The material process consists of the process of ‘doing’ action and
‘happening’ event. The participant of the process of ‘doing’ can be actor agent, goal, recipient, and beneficiary, and the verbs in ‘doing’ are always in the form of
transitive verbs Lock, 1996, e.g. she buys them some cookies. The participants in the process are she as the actor, them as the recipient and some cookies as the
goal. However, if the sentence is changed into She buys some cookies for them,
the role of them becomes the beneficiary. Next, the participants of the process of ‘happening’ can be causer and affected, but the verbs in ‘happening’ can be
served as both transitive and intransitive Lock, 1996. When they are transitive, the participants are causer and affected, but when they are intransitive, the
participant is only affected. In other words, the analysis of ‘happening’ is the
ergativity analysis. For example, the verb broke can appear as both transitive and intransitive verbs.
1 I broke the window. 2 The window broke.
3 The window was broken by me. The second type is the mental process. It deals with the contact between the
mental and the world Downing and Locke, 2006. Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 197 add that it is concerned “with our experience of the world of our own
consciousness. They are clauses of sensing: a ‘mental’ clause construes a quantum of change in the flow of events taking place in our own consciousness”. Lock
1996 says that in the mental process, the participants are the senser and phenomenon, e.g. I know that it is just a joke. I in that example is the senser, and
that it is just a joke is the phenomenon. However, the direction of the senser and
phenomenon is not always senser – process – phenomenon. It can be in the form of phenomenon – process – senser. The former pattern is called ‘like’ type while
the later is called ‘please’ type Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004. 4 They enjoy the performance ‘like’ type.
5 The performance amuses them ‘please’ type. The mental process consists of four types of sensing. Halliday and
Matthiessen 2004 and Lock 1996 say that it involves the perception perceptive process, the affection emotive process, the volition desiderative
process and the cognition cognitive process. The perception process includes seeing, hearing, noticing, feeling, tasting,
and smelling, e.g. we see them in the park
. The affection process consists of liking, loving, admiring, missing, fearing and hating, e.g. she loves him. The volition process consists of wanting, needing,
intending, desiring, hoping and wishing, e.g. I want some biscuits, and the last, the
cognition process includes thinking, believing, knowing, doubting, remembering and forgetting, e.g. he knew the rules.
In addition to the various types of sensing, the mental process has three types of phenomenon. Halliday and Matthiessen 2004 and Eggins 2004 list
them as thing phenomenal, act macro-phenomenal and fact meta- phenomenal. The thing is realized by a nominal group while the act is realized by
non-finite imperfective and the fact can be realized both by finite and non-finite perfective. In brief, the summary of the phenomenality based on Halliday and
Matthiessen 2004 and Eggins 2004 can be illustrated as follow. Table 2.2.1. Types of Phenomenality
Types of Phenomenality
Forms Examples
Thing Phenomenal
Nominal group I need a dictionary.
Act Macro-phenomenal
Non-finite: imperfective I saw the birds flying to
the south.
Fact Meta-phenomenal
Non-finite: to + perfective He wanted us to finish it as soon as possible.
Finite She realized that she had
made a mistake .
The third type is the behavioral process. This type of process is the interface between material and mental process Simpson, 2004. It includes verbs like
breathe, cough, sigh, cry, laugh, stare, dream and worry. The participant in this
process is behaver. On the hand, Lock 1996 describes this type of mental-action process rather different from Simpson 2004. He simply calls it mental-action
process and the verbs in here are like thinking, listening, tasting and watching. Downing and Locke 2006 consider this process as dynamic volitional process.
The fourth type is the verbal process. The participants in this process can be sayer and addressee receiver, and what is said is called saying verbiage, e.g.
I’ve told her that the exam will start at 9 o’clock. In the example above, she is the
sayer, her is the addressee, and the exam will start at 9 o’clock is the saying Lock, 1996. Another participant that can occur in the verbal process is target. It
is the one who is “acted upon verbally” Gerot and Wignell, 1994: 62, e.g. he has insulted them
. In that example, them is the target. The fifth type is the relational process. Lock 1996 breaks up this process
into ‘being’ and ‘having’. There are two types of ‘being’. The first one is ‘attributive’ process. It has attribute and carrier as the participants, e.g. she is
smart . She is the carrier and smart is the attribute. The second one is identifying
process. It has identified value and identifier token as the participants, e.g. she is the winner
. In the identifying process, the identifier cannot be in the form of adjective groups. It should be in the form of noun groups or nominal clauses. The
participants in identifying process can also be reversed. As for the ‘having’, the participants in this type of process are possessor and possessed, e.g. she has many
friends . She is the possessor, and many friends is the possessed. The relational
process especially the attributive one can explicitly show the inner experience when the attribute has the sense of emotion attitude, cognition probability or
desideration obligation Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004. The last type is the existential process. This process only has one
participant, the existent. The sentence of this process usually can be identified by
the presence of there, e.g. there are some references. In the sentence above, some references
is the existent Lock, 1996. In addition to the processes and the participants, the transitivity system
also covers the circumstances. Circumstances have variety of meanings Downing and Locke, 2006. In sentences, they may appear as adverbs or prepositional
phrase. The most frequent circumstances are place and times. Both of them can show location, source, path, direction, goal, extent, extent and goal, relative, and
distributive. The other circumstances are manner manner, means, comparison, instrument, instrument, contingency cause, purpose, reason, concession, behalf,
condition, accompaniment togetherness, additionality, modality possibility, probability, certainty, degree emphasize, attenuation, role capacity, matter and
evidence.
2.3 Mood and Modality System
