Transitivity Analysis of AJ Hoge’s Short Story “Day of the Dead”

Abstract

This study analyzes a short story created by AJ Hoge, a well-known English Materials creator of effortless English learning with his short story. It aims to reveal how meanings are constructed and what characterizes the story. Transitivity system, a framework of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), is used as an analytical tool. The data are gathered from the short story entitled “Day of the Dead”. This study employs qualitative descriptive analysis incorporating SFL into the methodology and Transitivity system analysis. This study finds that the creator employs all six Process types of Transitivity i.e., Material, Mental, Relational, Behavioral, Existential, and Verbal Processes. In constructing meanings, the six Processes are manifested in the three elements of the story: orientation, sequence of events, and reorientation. The employment of the six Processes is as an effort to expose learner to the clause as representation completely, that is to provide learners with all possible represented experiences through Processes that may happen in the world. The dominant Process of Material becomes the characteristic of the text and meets the linguistic features of recount text.