Universität Salzburg
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
VO: Functional Linguistics: Focus on Lexicogrammar
WS 2000/01, 9th Semester

Transitivity, Mood, Theme / Rheme and Lexical Density /
Grammatical Metaphors in Newsweek Magazine Articles

by: Martin Payrhuber

1 Introduction 1

2 Material Chosen  1

3 Methods 2

4 Results 3

4.1 Analysis of Theme / Rheme 3
4.2 Analysis of Mood  3
4.3 Analysis of Transitivity  4
4.4 Analysis of Lexical Density and Grammatical Metaphors  4

5 Conclusion 5

References:  6

A P P E N D I X  7

1 Introduction

The main reason for Michael A. K. Halliday, the “father” of systemic functional linguistics – and this report is based on functional linguistic analyses – to develop a new kind of grammar was that he saw the need to have a linguistic system that is more sociological in orientation. While Noam Chomsky, the most prominent of the so-called formal linguists, saw linguistics only as a means to describe the limits of language, Halliday and his fellow functional linguists are concerned with relating language to society, they try to figure out how the ways in which language is used have shaped its structure.

My goal in this analysis was to relate language to society in a practical example, I have tried to explore the differences between two journalistic articles of the same magazine, but taken out of different departments as far as the content is concerned. My question was, “Are there substantial differences in language between these articles?”

2 Material Chosen

I have chosen two articles from Newsweek magazine, February 14th 2000, on a completely arbitrary basis. The only criterion for the sections of the articles chosen for analysis was that they had to contain about 100 words, for reasons of better comparability. The articles chosen are “Austria’s Power Player” , starting on page 14, and “Smooth as Santana”, starting on page 64. The first one is about Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party’s participation in the Austrian government while the latter one deals with the guitarist Carlos Santana’s continuing success in the world of Rock ‘n’ Roll. These articles stem from completely different sections in the magazine, one is about politics, the other one about show business. Thus, both articles are utterly suitable for an analysis of the language of different (lexical) fields.

3 Methods

The methods I have chosen for analysis are based on systemic functional linguistics theory and follow the analyses made in Martin et al. 1997, Working with Functional Grammar.

The first part of my analysis consists of exploring the basic categories of every research based on functional linguistics, the perspective of transitivity (experiential perspective), of mood (interpersonal perspective) and of theme / rheme (textual perspective). The second – and most important – part deals with a more specific part of functional grammar: the notions of lexical density and grammatical metaphors. In this respect, both articles were analysed according to three different methods of assessing the extent of lexical density:

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