摘要
This article examines transitivity in the mediatised discourse of social transformation in Nigeria.Data for the study comprises texts on aspects of social transformation campaigns in Nigeria in the context of democracy,anti-corruption crusades,insecurity,and domestic violence.The data was drawn from speeches,radio commentaries,jingles,printed texts,interviews,tweets,and online newspaper comments about government actors and non-government actors covering the period between March 2013 to March 2018.This five-year span was informed by a wide gamut of negative realities in the nation which led to increased mediatisation of social transformation messages.The analysis of data is hinged on the transitivity system espoused in Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis by Fairclough(1989;revised 2015)and Machin and Mayr(2012).Data analysis revealed that the different participants in the discourse deployed material processes,relational processes,and mental processes to negotiate the social transformation challenge and agenda in Nigeria.The presentation of the agents in relation to the processes in the discourse reflected positive in-group representation and negative-other representation for legitimation and manipulation.The study concludes that transitivity is a veritable tool in the discourse that primarily serves in foregrounding social problems in Nigeria while also affording social participation.
