Ideational Meta-Functional Analysis of Letters to the Editor of The Times

Abstract

Objectives: Letters to the editor are linguistic texts in which the letter writer expresses a specific type of discourse related to a previously addressed issue, requiring clear interpretation by both the editor and the third-party reader. The study aims to investigate the discourse function of verb nominalizations used in letters to the editor throughout the research. 
 Methods: The study sheds light on the function of transitivity and its variants in the act of communication. To convey the communicative value of transitivity utilised in letters to the editor, which represent a kind of written discourse, of The Times, the study adopts Halliday and Matthiessen’s model (2014) to present a statistic of transitivity processes which reflect the ideational meta-function. 
 Results: The study presents variant percentages of transitivity processes utilized which reveal the communicative value of transitivity in the selected letters-to-the-editor. Material process occurs with 35% which is the highest percentage while other processes; relational, mental, behavioral, verbal and existential with 25%, 19%, 14%, 3% and 1% respectively. 
 Conclusions: The discourse functions of transitivity processes realised in the selected samples of letters to the editor are variant, depending on the ideological significance, social power and text type.