On the Effect of Disciplinary Variation on Transitivity: The Case ...

On the Effect of Disciplinary Variation on Transitivity:
The Case of Academic Book Reviews

Esmat Babaii
University for Teacher Education, Tehran
&
Hasan Ansary
Islamic Azad University, Tehran

Keywords: academic book reviews, transitivity, disciplinary variation.

Abstract
The purpose of this study was twofold. First, an attempt was made to systematically
characterize Book Reviews (BRs) as an academic written genre in terms of the
elements of transitivity system. Secondly, the effect of disciplinary variation on the
lexico-grammatical features of this genre was explored. To this end, a corpus of 90
academic BRs from discipline-related professional journals (physics, sociology, and
literature) were randomly selected and analyzed. Significant differences were
observed in terms of both the type and frequency of processes and participants. This,
it seems, points to a difference in the semantic configuration of BRs peculiar to each
discipline, although they all seem to fulfill a similar communicative purpose—
evaluating knowledge production in the academic milieu. To be more specific, the
observed features indicate that BRs in physics journals, as compared to their
counterparts in sociology and literature journals, appear to carry a higher
percentage of passive construction, non-human concrete participants, and of
relational and existential processes, together with a lower percentage of specific
human participants; hence, leading to texts heavily laden with grammatical
metaphor and impersonality.

1. Introduction

To date, (critical) discourse analysts have extensively studied the important role of
the transitivity system in revealing and/or concealing ideological orientations and positions
(see, e.g., Fairclough, 1989, 1995; Hodge & Kress, 1996, Stubbs, 1996) Transitivity has
also been analyzed in scientific texts and academic settings (cf. Halliday & Martin, 1993;
Eggins, Wignell & Martin, 1993; Martinez, 2001, Young & Nguyen, 2002). Fulfilling the
communicative purpose of “evaluating knowledge production” (Motta-Roth, 1996) in
academic settings, BR seems to be a clear instance of “evaluative” discourse that can act as

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a “sounding board” to make the interplay between the specific elements of the transitivity
system more apparent.


BRs are, it seems, of great value to the academic community. Firstly because, if it is
true that the function of BRs usually found on the last pages of a journal is to evaluate
knowledge production, it should then be very useful in the process of the acquisition of
academic literacy. Secondly, familiarity with the lexico-grammatical features of this genre
may enhance reading/writing ability of ESL/EFL users and can equip them with certain
strategies to help them read/write BRs critically or give them certain critical insights into
the very process of reading and writing BRs. Furthermore, learning more about the
structure of BRs can also help scholars create more acceptable and accountable instances
of BRs by developing sensitivity to and awareness of the subtle interplay between the
elements generating this genre, i.e., discourse structures, linguistic encoding, etc.


Seen from a different angle, disciplinary variation, from the early days of ESP/EAP
scholarship, has remained a controversy from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.
Some scholars (cf. Widdowson, 1979; Trimble, 1985) give credence to the subject- and
language-independent or, in a word, the universal nature of scientific and/or academic
discourse, still others (e.g., Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens, 1964; Halliday, 1988) believe
in linguistic variations resulting from functional variations inherent in different disciplines.
Besides, empirical data have not yet resolved the controversy, either. While some studies
document variations in the discoursal and linguistic features of the same genre across
disciplines (Holmes, 1997; Williams, 1999; Samraj, 2002; to name but a few), others
provide evidence for the universality of academic discourse (e.g., Paltridge, 1993;
Thompson, 1994). The existing controversy, therefore, warrants further investigation in
this particular area.


In light of the above contentions, the express purpose of this study was (1) to
identify prototypical generic textual features of BRs at the lexico-grammatical level within
the transitivity system in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and (2) to investigate
whether or not the lexico-grammatical features of BRs vary across disciplines. To the best
of our knowledge, this research is the first study which systematically investigates the
clusters of elements of the transitivity system in BRs.


That is to say, this study essentially utilizes the transitivity system in Systemic
Functional Linguistics (SFL) to identify the lexico-grammatical elements that are
meaningfully selected by text producers to shape and realize the structure of this genre. An
SFL-referenced analysis fundamentally uses lexico-grammar to characterize a genre by
providing an explanation, not a mere description, of linguistic elements, their role and
meaning in context and the relationship among them. As also pointed out by Halliday
(1988, p. 163), one should attempt to find a “prototypical syndrome of features” that may
characterize a genre. Besides, the features should be studied together as clusters rather than
each in isolation. And, analysts should be prepared to explain and rationalize the observed
configuration. Very much in line with these arguments, to venture on this slippery but
much discussed area, the present study incorporated these micro-elements in its design in
order to provide, to the extent possible, a richer and a more rationalized description of BRs.

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In what follows some background information on the SFL perspective is provided in order
to put this study in its proper theoretical perspective and help clarify the points that will be
discussed later in this paper.

2. The Transitivity System in SFL
The SFL approach to genre analysis is simply known as ‘systemic’ theory. As articulated
by Halliday (1985, p. xiv),


systemic theory is a theory of meaning as choice, by which a language, or any other

semiotic system, is interpreted as networks of interlocking options: ‘either this, or

that, or the other’, and so on. […] it means starting with the most general features

and proceeding step by step so as to become ever more specific: ‘a message is

either about doing, or about thinking , or about being; if it is about doing , this is

either plain action or action on something; if acting on something it is either [… ]



It is believed here that this type of grammar which is functional in its
approach— “it is based on meaning” (ibid) — and semantic in its orientation, “with the
grammatical categories as the realization of semantic patterns” (ibid), can provide useful
insights into the meaning and effectiveness of a text and may nicely relate a text to the
non-linguistic universe of its situational and cultural environment. In other words, SFL
holds that the relation between the meaning and wording is not arbitrary and the form of the
grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded.


‘Clause’ rather than ‘word’ or ‘sentence’ is the unit of analysis in SFL. And the
function of a clause is analyzed in terms of: (a) Subject, Finite, Predicator, Complement,
and Adjunct (SFPCA), (b) Theme and Rheme; (c) Given and New, and (d) Process and
Participant or transitivity system. SFPCA captures syntactic niceties of the text.
Theme-Rheme and Given-New indices deal with the way a text is packaged and the way
information in a text is structured in a clause. However, a Process and Participant analysis
of text reveals the way language users manipulate language to represent their perceptions
of reality (cf. Bloor & Bloor, 1995, pp. 107-109).


In this theoretical model, it is, in fact, the transitivity system (Process, Participants
and Circumstances) which “specifies the different types of processes that are recognized in
the language, and the structures by which they are expressed” (Halliday, 1985, p. 101). By
definition, the term ‘process’ refers to the ‘goings-on’ in reality: doing, happening, being,
etc. The entities involved in every process are referred to as ‘participants’, and
‘circumstances’ refer to certain conditions associated with a process. Process, participant
and circumstance are generally realized as Verb, Noun, and Adjunct, respectively (cf.
Halliday, 1985; Bloor & Bloor, 1995; Thompson, 1996). And, the processes are of the
following types: (1) material, (2) mental, (3) relational, (4) verbal, (5) existential, and (6)
behavioral (Halliday, 1985; Bloor & Bloor, 1995; Thompson, 1996; Halliday & Martin,
1993; Halliday, 1994).


Material Process or the process of ‘doing’ involves some physical action and shows
that something is going on in the external world. Mental Process, however, indicates that

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something goes on in the internal world of the mind. This process necessitates the
involvement of a conscious participant, i.e., a human agent who will be considered
‘Senser’ and another entity—‘Phenomenon’— which is to be sensed or experienced.
Relational Process, on the other hand, does not involve an action or require some entity to
act upon another. Essentially, it is a process of ‘being’ and it is concerned with the
relationship set up between two things or concepts. Verbal Process indicates the process of
‘saying’ but as Halliday (1985) reminds us, “‘saying’ has to be interpreted in a rather broad
sense; it covers any kind of symbolic exchange of meaning” (p. 129). Existential Process
shows that something exists or happens. And finally Behavioral Process refers to the
process of human physiological and psychological behavior. Table 1 below displays the
possible configurations in SFL of these lexico-grammatical categories.

TABLE 1
Process Types, their Meanings, and their Relevant Participants in SFL

Process Meaning
Participant

Material Doing
Actor,
Goal,
Beneficiary

Mental
Sensing
Senser,
Phenomenon

Relational
Being
Carrier,
Attribute, Identified, Identifier
Verbal
Saying
Sayer,
Receiver,
Verbiage

Existential
Existing Existent
Behavioral
Behaving
Behaver






The presence, absence or high/low frequency of these processes and/or participants
may have different implications. In the following section, an array of studies utilizing an
SFL model of analysis is presented.

3. Previous Studies
In an attempt to develop a systemic-functional description of the discourse of history and to
investigate how language is used to represent and teach “the story of people”, Eggins,
Wignell & Martin (1993) analyze high school history textbooks with an eye to the systemic
linguistic realizations of grammatical metaphor. Specifically, they examine the following
types of participants in the texts: (1) Human/specific; (2) Human/generic, (3)
Non-human/time and place, (4) Non-human/metaphorical, and (5) Non-human/concrete.
They find a high incidence of non-human metaphorical participants, e.g., nominalizations,
and a scant presence of human participants, especially specific human actors. Their
findings suggest that, far from being a dynamic account of people and events, when history
gets written down, it is neither a story nor is it about people. Using grammatical metaphor,
people are effaced, actions become things, and sequence in time is replaced by frozen
setting in time. In short, the discourse of history seeks, it appears, to maximize the distance
between what people actually did and how it gets written about.


Analyzing lexico-grammatical features of two geology textbooks, Love (1993)
finds grammatical metaphor (cf. Halliday, 1985) a marked feature in the expression of

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geological information. Specifically, she finds a high incidence of relational and existential
process verbs, with nominalized geological processes acting as their main participants,
especially in the subject position of sentences, whereas material process verbs that seem to
be the most congruent verbs to describe geological processes as events in time are quite
infrequent. She then argues that the use of grammatical metaphor by employing
nominalizations of actions in relational and existential processes are tools of
generalizations and classifications in scientific inquiry; hence, understanding this feature
seems to be necessary for advanced geology studies.


Besides, from the same systemic-functional perspective, Gosden (1993) examines
the choices of unmarked theme, i.e., Grammatical Subjects (GSs) in scientific Research
Articles (RAs). Gosden (1993) allocates GSs to one of the following four domains: (1)
Participant (e.g., I, we, or other persons), (2) Discourse (e.g., nominalized items and
discourse processes such as argument, explanation, etc.), (3) Hypothesized and
Objectivized (e.g., scientific naming and classifying that turn common-sense knowledge
into scientific, organized knowledge such as ‘solid waste’ to include office paper, domestic
waste, plastic sheeting, raw material packaging, etc. the terms that may not be transparent
for non-technical readers), and (d) Real-World (e.g., real-world processes and entities such
as beam, switch, vibration,…). These domains, it is reported, represent a horizontal
continuum from where the writer is most visible (Participant domain) to where the writer is
least visible and topic-based themes replace interactional themes (the Real-World domain).
The results of the study reveal that 67.2% of sentences in scientific RAs contain unmarked
theme which are distributed among the mentioned domains: Participant (9.2%), Discourse
(6%), Hypothesized and Objectivized (7.6%), and Real-World (77.2%). The analysis also
reveals how the changing discourse roles of subjects throughout scientific RAs, especially
the overwhelming domination of Real-World themes, strongly characterize this genre.


Replicating Gosden’s (1993) study, McKenna (1997) allocates GSs to the same
four domains to investigate how engineering writers linguistically convert real-world
entities and processes into non-real-world concepts. McKenna (1997) tracks authorial
presence in three engineering reports. Results reveal that more than two thirds of sentences
in engineering reports contain unmarked themes which are distributed among the
mentioned domains: Participant (4.11%), Discourse (5.87%), Hypothesized and
Objectivized (36.20%), and Real-World (53.82%). The findings lead McKenna (1997) to
conclude that the difference between a layperson account and an engineer report is not just
due to verbal sophistication but it is mostly the result of the linguistic reconstrual of natural
phenomena into scientific concepts and principles.


Martinez (2001) reports on the ways in which impersonal constructions, encoded in
the transitivity structure, are used in experimental research articles (RA), thus allowing
writers to strategically distance themselves from the information they present. The study
focuses on the features of the transitivity structure in the corpus of 21 experimental
research articles in the fields of physical, biological and social sciences. The distribution of
material, mental, verbal, relational and existential processes in different sections of the RA
points to a relationship between the characteristic process types and the function of the

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sections. The analysis reveals a tension between the need to present findings objectively
and the desire to persuade readers of their validity in an appropriate style.

Young and Nguyen (2002) compare two modes of presenting the same scientific
topic: (1) in a physics textbook and (2) in an interactive teacher talk. They report that both
the textbook and the teacher talk use verbs of action to represent scientific processes, but
the teacher talk constructs the teacher and students as active participants in these processes,
while the textbook constructs the readers as distant observers. The textbook contains, it is
reported, more grammatical metaphors, which are frequently left unpacked, whereas in the
teacher talk grammatical metaphors are always unpacked. Both the textbook and the
teacher talk show similar thematic organization but while this is explicit in the textbook, in
the teacher talk it is interactionally constructed. They conclude with a discussion of the
implications of these findings for the socialization of students to science discourse through
different instructional modes.

4. Data Collection Procedures and Methodology
A random sample of 90 BRs published in professional English journals between the years
1998-1999 on (a) sociology (N=30), (b) physics (N=30), and (c) literature (N=30) served
as the corpus of the study. To appreciate the rationale behind this sampling, the following
points should be borne in mind.


Firstly, as there are multitudes of scientific, nonscientific, and interdisciplinary
fields that form the totality of human knowledge, a selection seemed necessary to make.
Therefore, a corpus of BRs in the fields of ‘physics’ and ‘sociology’ as two branches of the
physical and social sciences respectively, and in the field of ‘literature’, as a branch of the
fine arts (in contrast to the ‘hard sciences’) was taken to serve as data. These fields are
assumed to be ‘different’ both epistemologically and intuitively. And, discoursal and
linguistic variations are expected to be more detectable in these fields than in presumably
closer disciplines.

Secondly, a large pool of professional and academic journals related to the mentioned areas
of inquiry, available at the time at the libraries of the universities in Tehran, was tracked
down and inspected. Altogether, 336 book reviews [physics (N = 119), sociology (N =
108), and literature (N = 109)] were collected. Of this primary cluster, a secondary corpus
of 90 BRs [physics (N = 30), sociology (N = 30), and literature (N = 30) with a purposeful
air was randomly selected. For the number of cases in the sample to be representative of the
characteristics of the population, 30 cases from each discipline were selected. Because, for
30 or more samples with 30 or more cases per sample, the sampling distribution will be
normally distributed (cf. Hatch & Farhady, 1982, p. 98).


And, finally, in order to avoid the possible influence(s) of generational and
diachronic changes in transmissional style of this genre, only BRs published over a span of
two years (1998-1999) were included in the sample

4.1 Methodological Framework for the Analysis of BR Texts
To analyze the transitivity system and its linguistic manifestations in BRs, first, the BR
texts were sectioned into clauses. Secondly, the frequencies and, in turn, the percentages of

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categories in all 90 BR texts and then, separately, in each discipline-specific corpus (30
BRs) were calculated.


In this study, the classifications of processes and participants introduced by
Halliday (1985) and Eggins et al. (1993) were used as the analytical frameworks for the
study of BR texts. Specifically, employing Halliday’s (1985) categorization of Processes,
their definitions and instantiations (cf. Halliday, 1985, pp. 101-144), an attempt was made
to locate the material, mental, relational, verbal, existential, and behavioral processes in the
corpus. And, the model for the analysis of Participant types was basically that of Eggins,
Wignell and Martin (1993) consisting of: (1) Human/specific; (2) Human/generic, (3)
Non-human/time and place, (4) Non-human/metaphorical, (5) Non-human/concrete. This
model was, however, expanded to account for the subcategories of the first, second, and
fifth categories as well:

(1) Human—specific
Human—specific: The author(s)
Human—specific: The reviewer
Human—specific: The other(s)

(2) Human—generic
Human—generic: The reader(s)
Human—generic: The other(s)

(3) Non-human—time/place

(4) Non-human—metaphorical

(5) Non-human—concrete
Non-human—concrete: The Book under review
Non-human—concrete: The other(s)

4.2 Reliability of the Analyses
In order to vindicate the reliability of the analyses, of the already-available pool of data, 15
texts (five from each discipline) were randomly selected and two independent judges, who
were trained beforehand in a joint training session, were asked to codify them unaided.
Then, Kappa coefficient (k) as an appropriate non-parametric measure to index the degree
of agreement between the judges was used to calculate the inter-coder reliabilities.
Application of Kappa procedure produced acceptable degrees of agreement (cf. Crookes,
1986) across the coders on process types (k = 0.95) and on participant types (k = 0.92).

5. Results
The findings of this study are presented below under three separate subheadings for ease of
reference.

5.1 Passive Voice Construction in BR Texts

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The frequencies and percentages of passive voice constructions were computed (see Table
2 below). As it can be observed in Table 2, of the total number of clauses (8302) in 90 BR
texts, 1214 (14.6%) employed passive constructions. It appeared that all discipline-specific
BR texts carry almost similar percentages of this construction in their textures. However,
physics BRs as compared to sociology and literature BRs tended to utilize rather more
passive structures.
TABLE 2
Distribution of Passive Voice Construction in the Corpus





No. of clauses
Passive
Physics (N = 30)

2181
348 (15.9%)
Sociology (N = 30)

2659
386 (14.5%)
Literature (N = 30)

3462
480 (13.8%)
Total


8302
1214 (14.6%)



5.2 The Analysis of Process Types
The frequencies and percentages of different types of processes were also computed (see
Table 3). In percentage terms, the processes appeared in the following order: Material
(37.9%), Relational (24.8%), Verbal (17.4%), and Mental (17.3%). Besides, Existential
and Behavioral types of processes in texts appeared quite inconspicuous. In fact, the
percentage of Behavioral process was so low that it could be neglected in the final analysis.
This is congruent with the results of Martinez’ (2001) study of RAs. That is to say, it
appears that academic writing does not use Behavioral process clauses frequently. In
addition to this overall pattern, different discipline-specific texts showed differences in
percentages of each process. Compared with literature and sociology BRs, physics BRs
showed a greater tendency to employ Existential and Relational processes (cf. Table 3
below).

TABLE 3
The Distribution of Process Types in Discipline-Specific BRs



Discipline






Physics
Sociology
Literature
Total





Material 772 (35.4%) 1019 (38.3%) 1363 (39.4%) 3154 (37.9%)

Mental
358 (16.4%) 495 (18.6%) 585 (16.9%) 1438 (17.3%)

Relational 612 (28 %) 632 (23.8%) 818 (23.6%) 2062 (24.8%)

Verbal
369 (16.9%) 445 (16.8%) 631 (18.2%) 1445 (17.4%)

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Existential 61 (2.8%) 42 (1.6%) 47 (1.3%) 150 (1.8%)

Behavioral 9 (0.4%) 26 (0.9%) 18 (0.5%) 53 (0.6%)

Total
2181 2659 3462 8302



Further examination of this cross-disciplinary variation through Chi-square tests of
significance revealed significant differences between physics BR and the other two
disciplines in terms of the processes used to structure texts (cf. Table 4). However, the
difference between literature BRs and sociology BRs did not appear to be significant.

TABLE 4
Results of Chi-Square Tests (Process by Discipline)

χ2
df



Physics vs. Sociology
28.316
5
*
Physics vs. Literature
32.241
5
*
Sociology vs. Literature
9.751
5

p<.01

5.3 The Analysis of Participant Types
A statistical ‘participant’ analysis was also revealing. As it can be seen in Tables 5 and 6,
more than half of the main participants in three discipline-specific BR texts are
metaphorical. And, time and place as the non-human categories of participants seem to be
the main participants in only 1% of the observed cases. Regarding other types of
participants, nevertheless, considerable marked differences were observed. Specifically,
literature BRs seemed to accommodate more human-specific participants whereas
sociology BRs carried more human-generic participants. Physics BRs were, however,
laden with the non-human, concrete category of participants. Besides, application of the
Chi-square tests of significance indicated that disciplinary variations are clearly significant.
(see Table 7 below).
TABLE 5
The Distribution of Participants in Discipline-Specific BRs




Discipline





Physics
Sociology
Literature
Total





H-S
394 (11.7%) 544 (13%) 1200 (21.5%) 2138 (16.3%)

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H-G
504 (15%) 733 (17.4%) 826 (14.8%) 2063 (15.7%)

NH-T/P 28 (0.8%) 50 (1.2%) 60 (1%) 138 (1%)

NH-M 1748 (52%) 2377 (56.5%) 2782 (49.9%) 6907 (52.5%)

NH-C 689 (20.5%) 506 (12%) 711 (12.7%) 1906 (14.5%)

Total 3363
4210
5579
13152

Note. H-S = Human—Specific, H-G = Human—Generic, NH-T/P =
Non-Human: Time/Place, NH-M = Non-Human: Metaphorical, NH-C =
Non-Human—Concrete.

TABLE 6
The Distribution of Subtypes of Participants in Discipline-Specific BRs




Discipline





Physics
Sociology Literature
Total





HS-A
241 (7.1%) 416 (9.8%) 606 (10.8%) 1263 (9.6%)

HS-R
99 (2.9%) 75 (1.7%) 52 (0.9%) 226 (1.7%)

HS-O
54 (1.6%) 53 (1.5%) 542 (9.7%) 649 (4.9%)

HG-R
54 (1.6%) 24 (0.5%) 62 (1.1%) 140 (1.1%)

HG-O 450 (13.3%) 709 (16.8%)764 (13.6%) 1923 (14.6%)

NH-C-B 333 (9.9%) 360 (8.5%) 332 (5.9%) 1025 (7.8%)

NH-C-O 356 (10.5%) 146 (3.4%) 379 (6.7%) 881 (6.7%)


Total
3363 4210
5579 13152

Note. HS-A = Human—Specific: the Author, HS-R = Human—Specific:
the Reviewer, HS-O = Human—Specific: the Other(s), HG-R =
Human—Generic: the Reader(s), HG-O = Human—Generic: the
Other(s), NH-C-B = Non-human—Concrete: the Book, NH-C-O =
Non-human—Concrete: the Other(s).

TABLE 7
Results of Chi-Square Tests (Participant by Discipline)

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