Experiential Meaning In Selected Newspaper Editorials

The study identified and categorised the features of the process, participant and circumstantial options in the selected newspaper editorials and interpreted the content expressed by the options. The options were then compared to the opinions expressed in the text. These were done with a view to investigating experiential meaning in selected newspaper editorials from the International Corpus of English (ICE) Nigeria. Each editorial was broken down into sentences, but only the main clauses in the sentences were analysed. The selected editorials were later read and analysed in order to locate the features of process, participant and circumstantial options in them, and the identified options were also categorised. In addition, the contents presented by the options were interpreted and related to the opinions expressed in the texts.The findings revealed that relational processes were dominant in most of the texts, followed by material process, while verbal process, existential process, mental process, and behavioural process were sparingly used. The study concluded that the experiential meta-function in systemic functional linguistics helped to highlight the features of editorials.

Autorentext

Olusegun Jegede is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Lead City University, Ibadan, Nigeria. His research interests include Applied Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Syntax. He's currently working in the area of Grammatical Metaphor and Information Structure.