The Holy Communion as Case Text in Grammatical Transitivity in Religious Discourse

Abstract

This article examines grammatical transitivity in religious discourse through Halliday's grammatical system of transitivity under the ideational metafunction - one of the three metafunctions that together characterise the passage of discourse in systemic functional linguistics. Halliday's transitivity theory provides a useful linguistic framework for uncovering the main linguistic features of religious discourse because given meanings inhere in given structures. The data for the analysis is the communion service with Pastor Chris in April 2013. The paper contributes towards an understanding of how the grammatical system of transitivity can be used extensively to clarify features and meanings in any religious discourse whether the patterns are conventional or non-conventional. The analysis reveals that the three main process types in this paper in order of hierarchy are material, verbal, and relational in the Holy Communion as against Halliday's three principal processes of material mental and relational in any discourse.