Page 244 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

TRANSITIVITY

main verb in the clause. For English, four fundamental types of process
may be distinguished (for a more complete and complex treatment see
Fawcett, 1980 and Halliday, 1985):
. material: ‘John broke the lock’;
. mental: ‘She understood immediately’;
. verbal: ‘Michael said he was hungry’;
. relational: ‘The main course is excellent’.

Material action processes (realised by verbs such as ‘break’, ‘wipe’, ‘dig’,
‘unbolt’) are associated with inherent roles such as an agent
(someone or something to perform the action), and an AFFECTED
(ENTITY) (someone or something on the receiving end of the
action). Thus:

John | broke | the lock
agent | process | affected

There need, of course, be no necessary correspondence between the
participant role AGENT and the syntactic element ‘subject’. The
passive makes possible one obvious kind of non-congruence:
The lock | was broken | by John
affected | process | agent
Subject | Predicator

The passive thereby allows the topicalisation or thematisation of the
AFFECTED.
It also allows the deletion or non-statement of the AGENT:
The lock | was broken
affected | process

Mental processes (realised by verbs such as ‘know’, ‘feel’, ‘think’,
‘believe’) are associated with inherent roles such as SENSER (the one
who performs the act of ‘knowing’, ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’) and
PHENOMENON (that which is experienced by the SENSER).
Thus:
James | considered | the problem
senser | process | phenomenon
Mary | understood | the message
senser | process | phenomenon

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