Material Process Types Research Articles

Pushing, standing and bringing to light: How medical trainees conceptualise professional resistance.

Much of the literature on harm and injustice in medical education focuses on the impact of oppression rather than trainees' efforts to create change. To acknowledge and make visible these efforts, medical education professionals must grasp how trainees perceive resistance and their role in effecting change. Employing functional linguistic and 'everyday' resistance theories, this critical qualitative study aims to understand trainees' conceptions of resistance practices and their representational choices in moments when they talked about and conceptualised resistance. Gathering participants through professional networks and snowball sampling, this study employed in-depth interviews to explore the conceptualisations of resistance among North American medical trainees (9 medical students, 9 residents and fellows). With the use of an applied functional linguistic analysis framework, we analysed the representational metafunction in trainees' conceptualisation of their resistance efforts against social injustice. We began with open coding for 'everyday' acts of resistance and then shifted to focused coding on verbal process types in participants' language to characterise their conceptualisations of resistance. Participants conceptualised their resistance practices in three distinct ways: first, an almost physical pushing back, drawing largely on material process types (doing); second, an embodied standing up and being present, based predominantly on material and relational process types (being); and third, an epistemic bringing to light, grounded mostly in mental and verbal process types (thinking). These processes of resistance reflect participants' conceptualisations of their efforts to challenge the status quo around inequity, harm and injustice in medical education. This study builds on resistance literature, offering a potential typology of resistance practices as pushing back, being and bringing to light. Because these are 'everyday' acts of resistance, these are tactics available to everyone, including faculty; we all have the power to resist, whether it is in teaching and learning or interacting with larger structures in medicine.

Exploring Transitivity in Speeches of President Joko Widodo Using UAM Corpus Tool

This research investigates the transitivity system as a part of systemic functional linguistics theory together with the UAM Corpus Tools 3.2, developed by Donnel (2008) in the presidential speeches of the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo (hereafter JW). It focuses on analyzing processes, participants, and circumstances. The research is a descriptive qualitative study. The speech transcripts of President Joko Widodo in 2015 and 2018 are stored in a text file (.txt) with UTF-8 encoding. The findings of this research showed that material process types were found more than other process types in 2015 and 2018. This indicates that, by using material clauses, JW strongly desires to emphasize real work or action work in his speech. In terms of the participants, Actor and Goal were the most dominant in 2015 and 2018. In terms of Circumstance, Location, Cause, and Manner were the most dominant in 2015 while in 2018, Cause, Manner, and Location were the most dominant. Location is again one of the most dominant circumstance features in the text. This can be considered as consistency in JW’s speeches. On the other hand, the fact that JW utilizes the same elements from the speech from three years prior means that this might not be regarded as a breakthrough.

An SFL perspective on EFL textbooks and its pedagogical implications in language teaching

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) offers a framework for analyzing EFL textbooks by considering three metafunctions of language: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This study aims to explore how SFL can provide insights into the linguistic features and discourse patterns that contribute to establishing these metafunctions in EFL textbooks, focusing on the pedagogical implications for language teaching. Specifically, the study investigates the transitivity pattern, mood system, and nominal group analysis, focusing on two selected EFL textbooks from different publishers. For the convenience of the research process, the researcher selected dialogue samples from the textbooks through convenience sampling and transformed them into clauses for analysis. The findings revealed that material process types were the most frequently employed, while interrogative forms predominated among the clause types. Additionally, the analysis of nominal groups indicated that the most common were nominal group types Thing (T) and Noun and Thing (NT). These findings shed light on the linguistic features of EFL textbooks and suggest that a closer examination of the metafunction of language can enhance our understanding of how language is utilized to achieve learning objectives. Consequently, to support students' language learning and proficiency development, EFL teachers should incorporate instructional focus, contextualized language teaching, integration of SFL concepts, promotion of language awareness, and differentiated instruction.

“And Jesus began to teach”: A Transitivity Analysis of The Parable of the Sower

Religious discourse offers significant value for linguistic analysis. Functional analysis of religious texts provides a lexico-semantic approach to interpreting these discourses, though it remains underexplored in the literature. To fill this gap, the study undertook a functional analysis of the Parable of the Sower within the framework of transitivity. A mixed-method approach was employed. The text was taken from the Modern English Version (MEV) (Mark 4:1-20). The process types and their participants and the worldview of the parable were analysed within the framework. The material process type dominated the text, occurring 42 times. This was followed by the relational, mental, verbal and behavioural process types. The actor participant dominated the data. The text is highly action-oriented with the world of the text concerned with happenings, movements and tangible actions. The worldview of the parable could be described as: the nature of Christians upon receiving the word and instructions towards bearing fruits. Enthusiasm, materialism, double-minded and being stressed characterize the nature of Christians upon receiving the word while commitment, focus, steadfastness and faithfulness represent the instructions towards seed bearing. The textual and interpersonal metafunctions of language should be employed to consolidate the findings presented in this paper.

It is all about clauses: Speech analysis using systemic functional linguistics theory

Text and context are tightly related. Although previous studies have revealed the benefits of employing Systemic Functional Linguistics theory (SFL) in revealing the language functions, the specific examination of text ideational or experiential focusing on transitivty process type analysis is lacking. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the transitivity process type of a text. To achieve this purpose, Joe Biden’s victory speech was chosen and analyzed. In this respect, to make the analysis easily done, the speech text was changed into some sentences and clauses and thereafter analyzed following the aim of the study in question. The result of analysis has shown that the the material process type appears at most, which indicates the action of the participants involved in the speech. In addition, by means of transitivity analysis, interpersonal and power relation might be revealed as the existence of pronouns linking to verbs used in clauses of the text. As a conclusion, different language patterns might signify different concerns of the experintial or ideational functional category. Future research studies, by means of different ways of analysis, might be of benefit to examine the effectiveness of Systemic Functional Linguistics theory (SFL) in a text analysis.

Enhanced mechanical stability and scratch resistance of mesoporous aluminosilicate thin films

Mesoporous coatings are widely used in industries such as optics, display technologies, photovoltaics, and bioengineering, due to their attractive properties such as high surface area to volume ratio and excellent mass and electron transport characteristics. While structural parameters and material composition can be routinely tailored to the respective applications, improvements in their mechanical properties and robustness, essential for their long-term performance, remain a challenge. Herein, we provide a comprehensive study on the relationship between the degree of porosity, type of material processing and resulting mechanical properties for the use case of mesoporous aluminosilicate thin films that were co-assembled via a sacrificial block copolymer structure-directing agent. Several routes, including the introduction of chelating agents on the precursor solution, a two-step calcination process, and a variation over the aluminium content were explored with the objective of improving the scratch resistance and mechanical properties of the final mesoporous thin film. Pencil hardness tests were combined with atomic force microscopy analysis to investigate the macroscopic scratch resistance, i.e. plastic deformation. Ellipsometric porosimetry served to determine the elastic deformation of the nanoscopic architecture via measurement of the Young's modulus. Our comparative investigation highlights the promising role of organic chelating agents in the sol-gel formulation to slow down the hydrolysis of the aluminium precursor, which facilitated improvements in the mechanical performance close to industrial standard.

Transitivity analysis of news texts on the Saudi ministry of health website: An investigation of health guidelines during COVID-19

The aim of this study is to investigate the awareness-raising activities and the health guidelines for protection from new coronavirus during this pandemic reported on the Ministry of Health website in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this aim, the study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Halliday’s theory of transitivity process types adopted as a framework of news text. Literature showed that discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary area of investigation and an increasingly popular domain strategy for scholars in different fields. However, such a strategy has been little adopted by healthcare researchers. To analyze the transitivity process types (namely material, mental, verbal, relational, behavioral, and existential), quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to get a better understanding of transitivity process types related to the news texts. Like other studies, the findings revealed that the material process type (60%) highly dominated the discourse in the two news texts. This implies the powerful role of events and actions to be undertaken. Unlike the first news text, the second news text however contains the behavioral process to meticulously highlight public awareness and action. Investigating participants’ roles as well as circumstances components may offer more data appropriate for further research.

Analysing Meaning Potential in Verbal Art: A Discourse-functional Perspective on Faiz Ahmad Faiz

This paper aims to explore the construal of socio-political meanings in Faiz Ahmad Faiz with a focus on his artistry work titled ‘mujh se pahli si Mohabbat’ to help unfold higher patterns of organization at the level of transitivity choices to reflect the underlying perspective.Drawing on the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) for the transitivity analysis (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014) the study highlights the meaning potential encoded through the process types. As referred above, the selected poem comprises twenty-nine clauses that were written originally in Urdu language but for the ease of the readership, the transliterated text is adopted from Hasan (2009). She (ibid) proposes a theory of verbal art that extends the higher level of linguistic patterns to encode sublime meaning potential. The analysis shows that apparently, the poem appears to express the plight of circumstances but it is a tragic tale of misery and despair propounded at the crossroad of love and revolution. The findings also reveal that the dominant process type in the poem is the existential one with the male protagonist narrating the tale of socio-cultural agonies and the subsequent is the material process type which posits the significant meaning potential regarding inflicting pain in apolitical turmoil.

A Transitivity Analysis on Epic Rap Battle of Presidency Song

The aim of this research is to analyze the Transitivity System of Epic Rap Battle of Presidency, a song by SkinnyIndonesian24, which was popular in 2019. To reveal the constituents of Transitivity System, it was considered to use theory by M.A.K. Halliday about Systemic Functional Linguistics in the branch of Ideational Metafunction, and the data were analyzed by using composite qualitative descriptive method where numbers and percentage were also involved. This research shows that the song is dominated by Material Process type for about 37 occurrences (40.2%) and it is followed by 33 Relational (35.9%), 12 Mental (13.0%), 7 Behavioral (7.6%), 2 Verbal (2.2%), and 1 Existential Process (1.1%). The dominance of Material Process indicates that the Epic Rap Battle of Presidency song is on the state of Material Process where the song is mainly talk about action and event.
 Keywords:Transitivity, Material Process, Systemic Functional Linguistics

Pemaknaan Naratif Pengalaman dalam Cerpen Melayu/Narrative Experiential Meaning-making in Malay Short Stories

The experiential meaning-making in narrative can be studied by applying the Ideational Metafunction theoretical framework as introduced by Halliday. According to Halliday, the meaning-making can be realized by means of three Transitivity main elements found in clauses which are process, participants and circumstances. A study was conducted on three Malay short stories entitled ‘Catatan di Meja Makan’, ‘Anita’ and ‘Meneruskan Perjalanan’ by Zurinah Hassan to analyse the experiential meaning-making of narrative using Transitivity analysis from Systemic Functional Linguistics as the analytical framework. The findings of the Transitivity analysis on Malay short stories show that material process types are mostly found and followed by mental processes. This results in the most found participants are actors for material process types, whilst participants for mental processes are sensors. The findings also show that the participants for material processes can be living or non-living entities. The writer usually conveys the meaning of short stories in active forms, by which means active processes are used to illustrate the actions of participants in Malay short stories. The findings of this study are a contribution to the field of Malay language studies using the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, of which studies on Malay language using this theory are still lacking.

TRANSITIVITY SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH FOR VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL (SMK) OF SOSORGADONG TEXTBOOK FOR GRADE X AND ITS RELEVANCE TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

There are two problems proposed in this paper, i.e. about (1) the transitivity systems elements that characterize English for SMK 1 Textbook for Grade X, and (2) the relevance of transitivity elements (Process and Circumstance) with the English teaching and learning processes. By using the theory of SFL, it can be described (as qualitative descriptive method of research), that in all Units of reading texts in the English textbook there were 238 clauses selected methodologically to be analyzed. In these clauses, all Process Types can be found with varieties of the usage. It is found that in all units of reading texts, Material Process types was the dominant type used, i.e. (48.6%), followed by Relational Process type (27,2%), Mental Process (18.6%) Verbal Process type 8,4%, and Behavioral and Existentional 7.0% each respectively. Related to the circumstance, the dominant one is Circumstance of Location (Time and Place = 37.7%). For the participant, it is related to the process exists in the text, i.e. Actor for Participant 1 and Goal for Paticipant 2.Keyword: Transitivity Systems Analysis, Textbook, Vocational High School

Discrimination of particulate matter emission sources using stochastic methods

Abstract Particulate matter (PM) is one of the criteria pollutants which has been determined as harmful to public health and the environment. For this reason the ability to recognize its emission sources is very important. There are a number of measurement methods which allow to characterize PM in terms of concentration, particles size distribution, and chemical composition. All these information are useful to establish a link between the dust found in the air, its emission sources and influence on human as well as the environment. However, the methods are typically quite sophisticated and not applicable outside laboratories. In this work, we considered PM emission source discrimination method which is based on continuous measurements of PM concentration with a relatively cheap instrument and stochastic analysis of the obtained data. The stochastic analysis is focused on the temporal variation of PM concentration and it involves two steps: (1) recognition of the category of distribution for the data i.e. stable or the domain of attraction of stable distribution and (2) finding best matching distribution out of Gaussian, stable and normal-inverse Gaussian (NIG). We examined six PM emission sources. They were associated with material processing in industrial environment, namely machining and welding aluminum, forged carbon steel and plastic with various tools. As shown by the obtained results, PM emission sources may be distinguished based on statistical distribution of PM concentration variations. Major factor responsible for the differences detectable with our method was the type of material processing and the tool applied. In case different materials were processed by the same tool the distinction of emission sources was difficult. For successful discrimination it was crucial to consider size-segregated mass fraction concentrations. In our opinion the presented approach is very promising. It deserves further study and development.

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Marine Engineering and Maritime Legal Regulation English

Grammatical metaphor is one of the language phenomena introduced by Halliday (2004) in the framework of functional grammar. This paper used Halliday’s metafunctional framework in marine engineering and maritime legal regulation English discourses under Prichard’s category (2003) of English for occupational purposes and English for academic purposes respectively. The analysis of data was conducted through a description of English occupational and academic texts, based on grammatical metaphor. The researcher conducted some statistical analysis, including frequency and percentage of ideational grammatical metaphor and its different processes of transitivity in both genres. Finally, two genres of English texts were compared statistically to show in what aspect they are significantly different or similar. The results obtained indicate that the two genres bear more similarities than differences in terms of using the nominalization of ideational grammatical metaphor. In other words, while indicating genre differences, the study proves their functional similarities in using the material process types more than other process types to convey meaning, however marine engineering English applies a little less frequency of material and relational process. Some behavior process types were found in marine engineering English texts but no behavior processes were found in marine legal English. Maritime legal English applies small amount of existential process and mental process while in marine engineering English these two types of process were not found. Both genres apply ideational metaphor to condense the information and increase the complexity of sentence structure.

Persuasive Style and its Realization Through Transitivity Analysis: A SFL Perspective

Leech & Short (2007) claim that examining the language of a literary text can lead to a fuller understanding of the text and thus appreciation of the writer's artistic achievement. Accordingly, this paper explores the relationship between linguistic structures and socially constructed meaning in a literary text. Drawing on Halliday's transitivity framework rooted in Systemic Functional Linguistics, the paper particularly attempts to reveal the persuasive style of the short story entitled ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell (1945) from a semantic-grammatical point of view. In effect, it seeks how the persuasive style is realized through the process types (material, mental, verbal, existential, relational, and behavioral) which are part of the ideational function. To this end, the verbal phrases (process types) of this story were analyzed and the results indicated that the material process was the most frequent one among the processes. The mental, verbal, existential, behavioral, and relational processes respectively followed the material process; although, as far as frequency was concerned, a drastic difference was observed between the material process and the rest of the processes. Following the persuasive style of this story, the characters were assumed to be convinced to choose some actions and avoid others. The high frequency of the material process types revealed that they certainly did what they were told to; in other words, their persuasion was expressed through acting upon what they were asked to. The conclusion drawn is that to persuade others, confronting them with the possibilities and expanding their understanding of themselves and their lives via asking them to act upon the advice and make the changes themselves (the material process) prove to be effective than involving their emotions (the mental process) and pushing certain words into their minds (the verbal process).

Deverbal Nominalisations across Written-spoken Dichotomy in the Language of Science

Scientific language has always been both a source of difficulty for the students of science and, in the recent decades in particular, a theme for speculation for the scholars seeking to describe and analyse language as it is used and conceived. The language of science has always been presumed to be more difficult than the language used in other fields. Scientific concepts and their sophistication are one source of its difficulty. The writing style and dynamics preferred by writers in the fields of science is commonly considered another source of such difficulty. Nominalisation, the use of derivative nouns of verbs and adjectives, which is more prevalent in the language of science compared with the language used elsewhere, is another feature attested to by many scholars. The present study aimed at comparative investigation of the phenomenon of deverbal nominalisations (nominalisations with verb origin) across written and spoken scientific language. The spoken samples were chosen from BBC’s programs in the genre of science and the written samples from science textbooks and credited science magazines (different issues). The samples in each modality included 400,000 words (for each modality) amounting to 800,000 words as the total size of the corpora considered. The findings showed a higher frequency of verbs in spoken modality and of nominalisations in written. Another interesting point was the highest frequency of material process type in both verbs and deverbal nominalisations. (The typology of processes from the Hallidayean systemic functional grammar framework was the basis for classification of verbs and their respective nominalised editions.) Relational process type which claimed the second highest frequency among verbs showed a much lower frequency among nominalisations. The consideration of the slots accommodating the nominalisations in the sentences also revealed insightful points about possible differences between spoken and written language (of science) in terms of the concentration of semantic and lexical density.

Social Power and Textual Strategies

Language is a crystal being shaped by the society and the rules in a society are mostly under the control of power. Language is a complex system having lots of choices for negotiating meaning which are motivated by the social rules specifically by power. According to Hudson (1980) and Wardhaugh(1986) power can directly be embodied in the choice of pronouns (tu vs. vous) , address forms (name only, title and last name) and some other choices from lexicogrammar. The way power is reflected in everyday use of language is crucial and this study attempts to underscore some of the methods the speakers manipulate to express themselves hinting their degree of power to their addressee(s). In order to find the interrelationship between social power and textual strategies this study tries to examine a novelette entitles" The short happy life of Francis Macomber" written by Earnest Hemingway on the basis of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar (1994) and observe the number and length of utterances and turns. In detail the novelette is analyzed according to the number of special process types, the preferred mode type and the length of turns each character with varying degree of power interacts in the story. The analysis shows that the dominant character manipulates more material process type and imperative mode types, makes utterances and takes longer turns than the dominated one. Key Words: Power- Negotiation of meaning- Halliday's Systemic_ Functional Grammar- Ideational function- Interpersonal function – Material process- Imperative mode

Material Processing Using Microorganisms. An Investigation of Microbial Action on Metals.

The possibilities for developing a new type of material processing using a microbiogenic function are investigated with a microbial corrosion test of metals under the sea. The behavior of microorganisms in the corrosion of metals (mild steel, copper and aluminum sheets) is examined, and their action on these metals is discussed. As a result, three processing methods (biomachining, biodeposition and biorecycling) are proposed and discussed.

Material Processing Using Microorganisms. An Investigation of Mierobial Action on Metals.

Seeds of developing a new type of material processing using a microbiogenic function are searched with a microbial corrosion test of metals under the seawater. The behavior of microorganisms on corrosion of metals (mild steel, copper and aluminum sheets) is examined, and their action on these metals is discussed. As a result, three processing methods (biomachining, biodeposition and biorecycle) are proposed and discussed.

Transitivity and ergativity in 'The Lotos-Eaters'

This article argues that Bakhtin's repeated assertions that poetry, unlike the novel, is inherently monologic can be questioned in the light of a clear case of dialogism in Tennyson's 'The Lotos-Eaters'. A discussion of its dialogism is formalised by an analysis of grammatical function-structures of the Experiential component of the Ideational function of clause structure, following Halliday (1985), in the tradition of Systemic Functional Linguistics. In particular, the paper discusses the significance of the instantiation of transitivity and ergativity. It incorporates modifications suggested by Davidse (1992a) to the analysis of Material process types and argues that these modifications are useful for foregrounding the different worlds construed by the poem. The analysis reveals three worlds or voices in the poem: (1) the transitive:effective, or Deed and Extension paradigm of the outside world; (2) the transitive:middle/ergative, or Instigation of Process paradigm of lotos-land; and (3) the Behavioural/ Mental:Perceptive paradigm of the mariners-in-Lotos-land. It is argued that the mariners oppose (1), wish to ally themselves with (2), but settle for (3) as a strategy.