Transitivity Analysis Of Nobel Prize Presentation Speech In Literature

In systematic-functional grammar, Halliday has proposed the three metafunctions of language including ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction. The ideational metafunction of language is mainly realized by its experiential function. Transitivity is a semantic system serves as a way of expressing the experiential function of language, which plays a significant role in expressing people’s experience of the world. Transitivity system consists of six different process types: material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process and existential process, each with their own features and functions. This study mainly discusses the application of transitivity system in the Nobel prizes presentation speeches and the ideational meaning reflected by the various process types based on Halliday’s transitivity theories.The study focuses on solving the following problems with literature review, data analysis and contrastive analysis: first, try to find the distribution of the process types in different content of the speeches; second, analyze the ways of realizing the ideational meaning of the different content in the speeches through transitivity process types; third, obtain the contributions of the transitivity features in construing Nobel prizes presentation speeches.For the studies of transitivity at home and abroad, most foreign scholars focus on the theories and discourses analyses like literature works, technical texts and so on. Besides the theory and its application in grammar and translation, studies on transitivity in China also involve the discourse analyses of advertising texts, various news, medical texts, speech discourses and so on. For the speech discourses, most of them are the political speeches like inaugural speeches, administration speeches or election speeches. This study is an attempt which takes the Nobel prizes presentation speeches as the discourses in the studies on transitivity.According to the analysis in this study, the speaker in the presentation speech will choose different transitivity process types in terms of the content of the speeches in order to complete the introduction of the winners, their works and the presentation motif by taking advantages of the features and functions of different process types, which can bring the audiences information about the winners, enlightenment and consensus.The study consists of six parts in all. The first part is the introduction, which gives a detailed explanation of the research significance, research motivation and research problems. The second part is about the literature review, which expounds previous studies on the application of transitivity system in discourse analysis at home and abroad and the limitations of the precious studies. The third part is concerned with the theoretical framework including the explication of Halliday’s viewpoints on systematic-functional grammar, the three metafunctions of language and six transitivity process types. The fourth part deals with the research methodology concerning with samples selection, data collection and data analysis. The fifth part is the specific analysis of the selected speeches from different content of the speeches: opening introduction, introduction to writers and introduction to works. The sixth part is the conclusion. It mainly includes the major findings, limitations and suggestions for further studies.