Transitivity In Introductions And Conclusions Of Environmental Texts

This research is designed to compare introductions and conclusions in environmental texts through the analysis of the transitivity system. The originality lies in a functional comparison and contrast of the newly touched texts—environmental texts. At the same time, it is another attempt on the application of Systemic Functional Grammar developed by M. A. K. Halliday in the early 1960s to text analysis to prove its applicability and usefulness.The author intends to find answers to these questions:1. What types of processes, participants and circumstantial elements exist in introductions and conclusions? What is the percentage of those different process types in these two parts?2. Is there any difference in processes, participants and circumstantial elements between introductions and conclusions? If any, what is it?3. How does the transitivity system in introductions and conclusions realize the authors'purpose?4. Through comparison, what conclusions can be reached? Is it meaningful to guide the writing of environmental texts?Through the transitivity analysis and statistical calculation of the percentage of different processes, participants and circumstantial elements in introductions and conclusions of environmental texts, it is obvious that a great difference really exists between them. Two types of transitivity processes make up the majority: material and relational processes, among which material process occupies the most prominent position. All of the processes except behavioral processes appearing in introductions and conclusions of environmental texts fully show the importance of transitivity in this type of texts. At the same time, the distribution gets influenced by the genre and the theme of environmental texts. Moreover, the percentage of goal, actor, matter and angle shows that environmental texts have their own characteristics. The underlying factors, which help to affect the distribution of the transitivity system in introductions and conclusions of environmental texts, are the nature of environmental texts and the authors'writing purpose.