Second Assignment Corpus Linguistics : An Experiential/Ideational Metafunction Analysis on Teacher’s Forum

ENGL 4740
CORPUS LINGUISTICS
AN EXPERIENTIAL/IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTION ANALYSIS ON TEACHER’S FORUM


by:
Muizatul Iman Bte Morsid 0634110
    Nur Sakinah Bt Mohd Khir Johari 0810358
Nabilah Bt Mohd Lokmal 0713498



Dr. Rozina Abd. Ghani




Semester 2 2010/2011
Introduction

            Experiential metafunction is expressed through the system of Transitivity or process type, with the choice of process implicating associate participant roles and configurations. It is through this function that the speaker or writer embodies in language his experience of the phenomena of the real world; and this includes his experience of the internal world of his own consciousness; his reactions, cognitions, and perceptions and also his linguistics acts of speaking and understanding. In other words, this function is to convey new information, to communicate a content that is unknown to the hearer. It reflects the events and experience in both objective and subjective worlds.
The ideational function is mainly represented by the transitivity system in grammar. In this system, the meaningful grammatical unit is clause, which expresses what’s happening, what’s being done, what’s felt and what the state is and so on. The transitivity system includes six processes: material process, mental process, relational process, verbal process, existential process and behavioural process. Material processes are those in which something is done. These processes are expressed by an action verb (e.g. eat, go, and give), an Actor (logical subject) and the Goal of the action (logical direct object, usually a noun or a pronoun).e.g. Hisham is helping his mother.
Mental processes express such mental phenomena as “perception” (see, look), “reaction” (like, please) and “cognition” (know, believe, convince). A mental process involves two participants, Senser and Phenomenon .e.g. Fatimah likes chocolate. Relational processes can be classified into two types: Attributive and Identifying. The former expresses what attributes a certain object has, or what type it belongs to, for example, The temperature is high. The latter expresses the identical properties of two entities. For example, Lily is a girl; The girl is Lily. It is reversible.Verbal processes are those of exchanging information. Commonly used verbs are say, tell, talk, praise, boast, describe, etc. In these processes the main participants are Sayer, Receiver and Verbiage. E.g. I ordered a cup of tea. Behavioral processes refer to physiological and psychological behavior such as breathing, coughing, smiling, laughing, crying, staring, and dreaming, etc. Generally there is only one participant—Behaver, which is often a human. E.g. George sniffed the soup. Existential processes represent that something exists or happens. In every existential process, there is an Existent. For example: There is a girl in the garden.

Literature Review
            A study by Gilbert and Dabbagh, 2005 on “How to Structure Online Discussions for Meaningful Discourse: a Case Study” revealed that facilitator’s guidelines, evaluation rubrics and posting protocol items were the main elements in structuring online discussion, thus, impacted the student’s meaningful discourse in online discussion forums. They agreed with Funaro, 1994 that planning for effective integration of asynchronous communication tools in web-supported or online courses is the most influential variable affecting student learning.
            Qiyun Wang and Huay Lit Woo, 2007 asserted Peterson and Bond,2004 in their study on “Comparing asynchronous online discussions and face-to-face discussions in a classroom setting” that online discussions are the most flexible and practical particularly for post baccalaureate individuals who have to struggle with part-time work and further professional development. They also asserted Hara, Bank and Angeli, 2000 that online discussions offer great flexibility in terms of time and place. A study by King,2001 supported Wang and Woo’s study that online discussions are also known to have associated with distance education to support participants who may not have the opportunity to meet or interact with their learning counterparts. They also confirmed to Lim and Chain, 2004; Marra, Moore and Klimczak, 2004 that with the rapid development of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), online discussions have become more involved in ‘traditional’ classroom setting to promote student’s critical thinking; knowledge construction and learning autonomy.
            Janie Roed, 2001 in her study on “Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment” focused on the communicative behavior in the virtual environment where a groip of Danish students from the University of Edinburgh and University College London participated in the research. The study has shown that communicating online constitute a more relaxed and stress free compared to the classroom learning. The study also proved that communicating online also lowered the level of self-consciousness which would be advantageous in foreign language learning, in this case it was the English language as it would resulted in increased language production.

Analysis
            Teacher’s forum is an online discussion forum for teachers to interact and share ideas about education, classroom management, teaching strategies, and issues related with teaching. So here, we can find that in online discussion or forum, teachers mainly use simple words and short sentences. The language is easy and colloquial. The teachers in this community is usually various, including the rich, the poor, and so on. In order to shorten the distance between them, we can find they tend to use a lot of spoken English.
            From our findings on experiential metafunction analysis, we can see that material processes are used most in their discussion. Mental process ranks the second and then is followed by relational process. So here, we will mainly analyze the first three ones.

 
Material Process

Material process is a process of “doing”. The process is usually indicated by a verb expressing an action, either concrete or abstract. There are usually two participants in the process: Actor and Goal.
Actor
Process
Goal
I
enjoy
teaching
Teachers, We, Our
Receive, get called, attracts,
Median salaries,meeting,women

 From the above table we can see the Actors in the discussion are I and we /Teachers/Our. Material process, as a process of doing, is a good choice in the address to demonstrate what the teachers has achieved, what they are doing and what they will do in different aspects of teaching.


Mental Process

Mental process is a process of feeling, thinking and seeing. Actor is not the real subject of doing, but the feeling. It represents inner experience, such as “perception”, “reaction” and “cognition”. We call the two participants are Senser and phenomenon.
Senser
Process
Phenomenon
I always
assumed
It had something to do with the BS of government

From above examples, we can see that mental process, as a process of sensing, appeals to the reader’s inner heart to connect the teacher’s feelings, ambitions with their expectation, hope in a clear and emphasized way. In this way, it will attract the reader’s to keep going with the reading to know the truth on this topic.

Relational process

Relational process is a process of being. It can be divided into two modes: attributive relation and identifying relation. The first means what properties an object possesses or what category it can be put into. And the other means that an entity and another is uniform. It is used widely in describing people and objects. Look at the following table:
Atrributive
Identifying
Teachers should believe in a society where hard work is rewarded.
I am a teacher
                                                                                                                                                  
 Relational process, as a process of being, is appropriate to explain the complex relationships between some abstract items because it sounds definite. As a result, the process accounts for a large proportion in these addresses to elaborate the relationship between traditional ideals and their beliefs.

Conclusion
            On the basis of the above discussion, we may come to the conclusion.
According to Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar, we can summarize the features of Teachers Online Discussion or Forum. First, they used more simple words and short sentences instead of difficult ones. Their language is easy and colloquial. Thus, it can easily shorten the distance between them and the readers. Second, from transitivity analysis, we can see material process, a process of doing, has been used most in this forum. From this process, it showed us what the teachers have achieved, what they are doing and what they will do. And also we can see that with applying transitivity, the teachers are trying to share with the readers and other teachers the problems that they have to face by being a teacher. And it is not easy being a teacher as people said. And technically they are not complaining about their jobs but they just need some respect.











6:31 PM | |  

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Footer Widget #1

Powered by Blogger.

About Me

My photo
We are the proud fans of the works of the great Malaysian poet, Wong Pui Nam.

Amigos

BloggerStop.Net

Search!

About Me

About Me
My name is Nabilah Lokmal.

:: aLL aBoUT Me ::

:: aLL aBoUT Me ::
Muizatul iman...a name given by my mother.I was born on 24th November 1987 and grown up in Johor.I am a student in a well-known university called IIUM.I'm majoring in Arabic language and minoring in English language.Insyaallah this semester is my final semester in IIUM.

Me, Myself and I

Me, Myself and I
My name is Nur Sakinah, i am taking BENL and majoring in Combination.i am keen to learn new things from this course as i am an enthusiast in every positive thing in this world. As simple as that.