Abstract
Considered as the universal language, music has been historically a means of communication and personal expression about the inner and outer world of its creator, it is present in almost every social activity of human beings as in the habitual religious celebration of Christmas across the largely Catholic countries. Therefore, the present paper will provide a descriptive text analysis of ten traditional Latin American Christmas folk songs on the base of the transitivity system informed by the Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics theory. To reach this goal, both a quantitative and qualitative research method approach was applied. Findings indicated that among the six analyzed transitivity process types, the material processes (32%) dominate the construal of the musical pieces, followed by the mental (23%), behavioral (18%), and relational realizations (13%) whereas the verbal and existential processes are relatively low all together representing an overall frequency of 14%. This reveals the singers’ attempt to represent the Christmas season as a nostalgic time leap, an immediate enjoyment, and a rewarding exchange.
Highlights
Every year in every corner of the world where Christmastime is celebrated, radio local stations start playing holiday music 24/7, announcing the beginning of this season and setting a celebratory mood
The present paper will provide a descriptive text analysis of ten traditional Latin American Christmas folk songs on the base of the transitivity system informed by the Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics theory
The corpus selected for the present analysis comprises ten Latin American Christmas folk songs selected from repeating patterns of cooccurring terms regarding the practice of Christmastide
Summary
Every year in every corner of the world where Christmastime is celebrated, radio local stations start playing holiday music 24/7, announcing the beginning of this season and setting a celebratory mood. During Christmastide, most of the songs describe the typical celebratory rituals involving Christmas and New Year’s Eve that mainly include cooking and enjoying food, gift-giving, well-wishing, as well as drinking, singing, and dancing Within this context, a theory of grammar like the one postulated by the Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1978, 1985, 1994, 2003; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, etc.), from its Transitivity system, allows broadening the comprehension of Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature 15 (1) October 2020 59-66 musical compositions (one of the most common text types) to elucidate how individuals portray meaning and represent it as a reflection of their own experiences with the physical, mental, and social world (Fairclough, 2003; Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This paper first introduces the applied theory, it outlines the followed methodology, and offers, in detail, the corresponding outcomes together with a concluding remark
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