Systemic Functional Grammar Analysis of News Reports of Li Wenliang Incident
Kang Lihan*
Three Gorges University, No.8 Daxue Road, Xiling District, Yichang City, Hubei Province, China
Corresponding Author: Kang Lihan, E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Based on a report on Dr. Li Wenliang in the British mainstream BBC media under the epidemic
of Covid-2019, this paper analyzes from three perspectives guided by Halliday’s Systemic
Functional Grammar: transitivity, mood and personal pronoun. It is found that the material
process appears most frequently which shows that the news reports mainly reproduce the event
process. The second is the verbal process, which shows that news reports are good at making use
of multi-channel speech sources to enhance the authority and objectivity of reports. The third is
the relational process and psychological process, which reects the subtlety of news report
content and the concealment of attitude. This paper reveals the ideological direction implied in
the news reports through seemingly neutral and objective reports, aiming at providing reference
for readers in the process of reading Chinese and foreign political discourse.
INTRODUCTION
With the continuous spread of the Covid-2019 epidemic,
such reports in foreign media are also increasing. Because of
the information asymmetry between netizens and the media,
the media in the Internet age has the ability to “manipu-
late the truth”. In this paper, Halliday’s Systemic Func-
tional Grammar theory is used to analyze the BBC report
on Dr. Li Wenliang, to be specic, from transitivity, mood
and person pronoun. After the exploration of the news report
from these three perspectives, this thesis attempts to ana-
lyze the attitude of BBC, it will help readers nd out the
discourse features of English political news and then avoid
being manipulated by English ideologies. More importantly,
the analysis of news report will improve people’s language
awareness, enable the public to have their own independent
and critical views on certain discourse or events and enjoy
public discourse such as news reports.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Halliday (1973) pointed out that language is structured
through the meanings it realize, which is composed of
three kinds of meanings: interpersonal meaning, ideational
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Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.11n.5-p.12
meaning and textual meaning. In terms of these three kinds
of meanings, he divided the functions of language into
three meta-functions: interpersonal meta-function-ide-
ational meta-function and textual meta-function. These three
meta-functions form the core of Systemic-Functional Gram-
mar, which in Halliday’ s view, consists of systemic gram-
mar and functional grammar. The former aims to explain the
internal relations in language as a system network, or mean-
ing potential. The latter aims to reveal that language is a
means of social interaction (Halliday, 1994). Huang Guowen
(2001) put forward that Halliday’ s Systemic-Functional
Grammar provides the theoretical basis for analyse both on
spoken and written discourse, which means this theory plays
an important role in discourse analysis.
DATA COLLECTION
The corpus used in this paper comes from a news report
titled “Li Wenliang: Coronavirus Killings Chinese Whistler
Blower Doctor” published by BBC (British Broadcasting
Corporation) on February 8, 2020. This news is a report
about the doctor Li Wenliang’s incident. As the British
Broadcasting Corporation is the largest news broadcaster in
Britain and one of the largest news broadcasters in the world,
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
ISSN: 2203-4714
www.alls.aiac.org.au
ARTICLE INFO
Article history
Received: July 22, 2020
Accepted: September 08, 2020
Published: October 31, 2020
Volume: 11 Issue: 5
Advance access: October 2020
Conicts of interest: None
Funding: None
Key words:
Li Wenliang,
News Report,
Systematic-function Grammar,
Transitivity,
Mood,
Personal Pronoun
Systemic Functional Grammar Analysis of News Reports of Li Wenliang Incident 13
it enjoys a high reputation at home and abroad. The selected
news events are international issues that are closely related
to China. The BBC has always maintained a rigorous and
fair image in front of the world public, so the selected news
report is also objective, fair and credible. This paper attempts
to analyze news discourse from three aspects: transitivity,
mood and personal pronoun.
ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
Scholars who study systemic functional grammar hold that
language is the product of human social activities. As a tool of
human communication, it has important functions. Halliday
divides these functions of language into three categories: con-
ceptual metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual
metafunction. Conceptual function, also called experiential
function, refers to the expression of people’s experiences in
the real world expressed through language, which is mainly
realized by transitivity and voice. Transitivity belongs to a
semantic system, whose function is to divide people’s real
experiences in real experience into several processes. Halli-
day holds that human experience can be divided into mate-
rial process, mental process, relational process, behavioral
process, verbal process and existential process. Voice can be
divided into active voice and passive voice. The starting point
of active voice is the sender of action, while the subject of pas-
sive voice is the receiver of action. In general, passive voice
is more objective. In addition to the above conceptual func-
tions, language also has the functions of expressing the speak-
er’s position, attitude, identity, motivation and his judgment
and evaluation of things. This function of language is called
“interpersonal function”. Through this function, the speaker
participates himself in a specic context, expresses his own
attitude and tries to inuence others’ attitude and behavior.
DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Transitivity
Transitivity is a semantic system whose function is to divide
what people see, hear and do in the real world (including the
inner world) into several kinds of “processes”, and to identify
the “participants” and “environmental components” related
to various processes (Haliday, 2000). In other words, peo-
ple use language to talk about their experience of the world,
including their inner world, and use language to describe
events, states and the things involved (Thompson, 2008).
Transitivity system can best embody the conceptual function
of language, and transitivity analysis can help readers better
understand the deep meaning of speeches by analyzing the
language skills used by speakers. Relational process, existen-
tial process and mental process are used to express descrip-
tive signicance, while material process represents narrative
signicance (Huang GuoWen, 2001). This news report about
Dr. Li Wenliang uses a great deal of material processes,
accounting for about 51.6% of all articles. For example:
1. On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in
a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing
to avoid infection.
This sentence describes Dr. Li’s care and reminder to
other colleagues when he rst mentioned Covid-2019
through the material process. At the same time, it can
be seen that Li Wenliang did not exaggerate harm of the
virus, which added objectivity to Li Wenliang’s reaction
when he rst saw Covid-2019’s report.
2. Four days later he was summoned to the Public Security
Bureau where he was told to sign a letter.
3. In the letter he was accused of “making false comments”
that had “severely disturbed the social order”.
4. He was one of eight people who police said were being
investigated for “spreading rumours”.
In the above three examples, “sign”, “disturb” and
“investigate” are verbs to indicate actions. This news
report uses the small sentences in the material process
to describe the initial image of Dr. Li in front of the pub-
lic——A man who spreads rumors. At the same time, it
also adds objectivity to the fact that people made voices
after the death of Dr. Li, which is more convincing.
5. A wave of anger and grief ooded Chinese social media
site Weibo when news of Dr. Li’s death broke late on
Thursday.
6. Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang and apology.
In these two clauses, “ood”, “broke” and “owe” are
words that express strong emotions, and describe the
feelings of the public who want to stand up for Li Wen-
liang. However, the BBC report exaggerated the fact that
the police just only warned Li Wenliang and the eect
of Li Wenliang warning people about Covid-2019. It
does not reect the bad inuence brought by him, and
it does not have a positive guiding role for readers to
understand and interpret objective facts.
7. When the BBC searched Weibo on Friday morning,
hundreds of thousands of comments had already been
wiped.
The BBC report uses “wipe” which is interpreted by the
Oxford English-Chinese Advanced Bilingual Dictionary
as “to remove information, sound, images from a com-
puter tape or video; to deliver forgotten an experience
because it was unhappy or embarrassing”. It shows that
what BBC report wants to express is that the Chinese gov-
ernment’s attitude towards this matter is to cover up the
facts and the irony of the Chinese government’s actions.
Verbal process refers to the process in which people
exchange information through speech. The participants
involved are “speaker”, “hearer” and “speech content”.
Common verbs are say, tell, talk, pray, scare, describe
and so on. News discourses often increase the objec-
tivity and persuasiveness of reports by quoting the
statements made by parties or authorities (Cen Yue,
Wu Wenhao, 2014). From the corpus analysis, a certain
number of verbal processes are guaranteed, accounting
for about 22.6% of all clauses. In news reports, verbal
process is an important way to express the author’s
views and position, and the choice of speakers and pro-
cess verbs is of profound implications. For example:
8. In the letter he was accused of “making false comments”
that had “severely disturbed the social order”.
14 ALLS 11(5):12-16
In this example, to quote the Chinese ocial police, the
verb uses the derogatory word “accuse”, which shows
that the Chinese ocial police disapprove of or even
oppose Dr. Li Wenliang’s practice. The police sum-
moned Dr. Li Wenliang to the police station and warned
him. It can be seen that the attitude of the Chinese ocial
police towards Dr. Li Wenliang and the police’s view of
Dr. Li Wenliang’s behavior is that he was “severely dis-
turbed the social order”. The quotations are mainly used
to express attitude and make evaluation, not to describe
facts. Therefore, whether it is indirect speech or direct
speech, the narrator can easily to implant his attitude
and evaluation into other people’s words, thus confusing
the reader’s sight and imposing his own views on the
reader. The BBC report quoted this sentence to express
that Dr. Li Wenliang is in an incomprehensible predica-
ment and wants to arouse the sympathy of readers.
9. He was one of eight people who police said were being
investigated for “spreading rumours”.
This quotation has a tendency. News reports have
their own consciousness bias, but the BBC’s prejudice
against the Chinese police will lead to readers’ prejudice
against news content. The BBC report quoted the words
of the police indirectly, which indicated that the reporter
thought their words are credible, and leads readers to
accept their position and believe the authenticity of
the report. In this way, on the one hand, it increases
the credibility of the report. On the other hand, it also
avoids responsibility.
10. Local authorities later apologised to Dr Li.
This clause quotes the words of other speakers. In addi-
tion, the spokesman is an authoritative organization in
China, and his attitude towards Dr. Li Wenliang has
changed from opposing to support.
Mental process is used to describe some psycholog-
ical phenomena, such as “see, look”, “like, reaction”
and “know, believe, convince”. Mental process has
some words of subjective majolica, which is a subjec-
tive description of people’s inner world. Some mental
processes are also used in this news report about Dr.
Li Wenliang, accounting for 9.7% of all clauses. For
example:
11. The 34-year-old had notice seven cases of a virus that he
thought looked like Sars - the virus that led to a global
epidemic in 2003.
In this news report, mental process is mainly used for
Dr. Li Wenliang’s cognition of Covid-2019. Dr. Li Wen-
liang noticed the existence of coronavirus and compared
it with the SARS in 2003. However, the BBC report did
not mention that Li Wenliang was an ophthalmologist,
nor was a professional researcher on the SARS virus.
The danger of the SARS virus is well known, which is
the reason why the police are worried that Dr. Li Wen-
liang’s remarks will cause public panic, and it is also the
reason why they warned Dr. Li Wenliang.
12. We want freedom of speech.
This clause uses the word “want” to express strong sup-
port, which has the meaning of complaining for Dr. Li
Wenliang. The public tends to support Dr. Li Wenliang’s
behavior, and at the same time, it has the signicance of
condemning authority’s behavior.
Besides, in this news report, some clauses in the rela-
tional process are used to express opinions. Relational pro-
cess is used to describe the background of news and people’s
reaction and discussion to news. Many explicit and implicit
information can be extracted through relational process
(Juan Li, 2010). Relational process refers to the process
of reecting the relationship between two dierent things,
which is a description and judgment of the object. By ana-
lyzing the relational process in news discourse, we can nd
the focus of the narrator when reporting events, and then
identify the trend of news. The BBC media called Dr. Li
Wenliang “spreading rumors”, which objectively showed
the role of Li Wenliang in the whole event. The previous
theoretical part introduces that people’s experience can be
expressed in six processes, but there is no behavioral process
in this news text. Because the topic of this report does not
need to express some physiological behaviors, this process
does not occur.
Through transitivity analysis, this paper nds that BBC
report highlights the tragic experience of Dr. Li Wenliang
from some material and verbal processes and tries to arouse
the anger and injustice of the public. The actual purpose is
to denigrate the Chinese government. It inspires readers not
to be guided by the media, but to watch news with their own
eyes. Transitivity analysis helps us to improve our reading
ability.
Mood
Interpersonal meaning is dierent from conceptual mean-
ing, which expresses the author’s attitude and judgment
and creates and maintains social relations (Gerot, Wignel,
1994). Tenor is further recognized as power, contact and
inuence, and realized through mood and modality. In
terms of interpersonal function, the mood system mainly
includes subjects and qualiers, which are closely related
to the components of mood. The mood components are
subdivided into three kinds of mood: declarative sentence,
interrogative sentence and imperative sentence, which are
used to exchange information. In this paper, 13 sentences
are intercepted by BBC report, among which 13 sentences
are all declarative sentences, accounting for 100%. Declar-
ative sentences play a dominant role in this news report.
The BBC report rst described the story of Dr. Li Wenliang
and Covid-2019, and then described the reaction of Chinese
people to this event. By using a large number of statements,
the reporter provides enough information to the readers
which makes the contents of news reports appear objec-
tive and persuasive.
Personal Pronoun
Li Zhanzi (2000, 51) argues that personal pronouns also
have the function of realizing interpersonal meaning. There-
fore, this paper counts the number of personal pronouns in
this news report, and the distribution is as follows:
Systemic Functional Grammar Analysis of News Reports of Li Wenliang Incident 15
Pronoun Number Percentage
he 10 77
his 3 23
total 13 100
In most cases, “he” appears frequently in the news.
“He” is the third person which shows the objectivity, Dr.
Li Wenliang. Through the use of third-person pronouns, the
image of Li Wenliang is mainly established. Therefore, the
distance between the doctor and the reader is shortened, and
the attention of readers can be attracted more.
13. Two days later he was in hospital.
Obviously, the use of third-person pronouns can arouse
readers’ sympathy, highlight the focus of public atten-
tion, and exert pressure on the Chinese government.
CONCLUSION
Based on the transitivity system theory and interpersonal
function theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this
paper makes a transitivity analysis and interpersonal func-
tion analysis on the report of Dr. Li Wenliang by the BBC.
Through systemic functional grammar analysis of BBC news,
the author found that BBC is critical of Li Wenliang incident.
It is found that BBC media reports use a large number of tran-
sitivity processes, dierent transitivity processes also play
dierent roles in the expression of attitudes. A large num-
ber of material processes to describe the events experienced
by Dr. Li Wenliang and reappear the specic incident of Dr.
Li Wenliang. It shows the BBC’s close attention and unre-
lenting attitude. The verbal process mainly provides readers
with multi-angle thinking through dierent speech sources
and expresses the media’s subjective thoughts on this matter,
thus arousing people’s resonance and make the whole report
more convincing. The relational process mainly reects the
tension between the small social components, and reects
the in-depth and opposition attitude of BBC report. The
mental process borrows Dr. Li Wenliang’s ideas to express
the BBC’s sympathy and opposition. Secondly, the interper-
sonal function of this report is mainly reected in mood and
personal pronouns. The declarative mood is frequently used
because of its function of providing information and enhanc-
ing the objectivity of reports. In addition, personal pronouns
are often used between reporters and readers to shorten the
distance. This paper reveals the ideological direction implied
in the news report through seemingly neutral and objective
report. Non-political news reports also take views of politics.
Generally speaking, people tend to think that the position of
news reports should be neutral. However, based on the anal-
ysis of sample texts, it does not seem to be the case. Ideology
also plays an important role in economic report. In order to
achieve this goal, many language means are skillfully used
to convey ideology. The words used in the discourse are not
random, but carefully chosen to ensure the transmission of
ideology. Therefore, it is easy for readers to be inuenced
by ideology in the process of reading. Moreover, there
are also some enlightenments for English readers. It reminds
readers to read news critically, improves readers’ ability
to discover hidden ideological information and enhance their
own critical thinking ability.
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16 ALLS 11(5):12-16
APPENDIX 1
Li Wenliang: Coronavirus Kills Chinese Whistleblower Doctor
BBC 7 February 2020
What is Li Wenliang’s Story?
Dr Li, an ophthalmologist, posted his story on Weibo from a hospital bed a month after sending out his initial warning. The
34-year-old had noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like Sars - the virus that led to a global epidemic in
2003. On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing to avoid
infection. Four days later he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter. In the letter he
was accused of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order”. He was one of eight people who
police said were being investigated for “spreading rumours”. Local authorities later apologised to Dr. Li. In his Weibo post
he describes how on 10 January he started coughing, the next day he had a fever and two days later he was in hospital. He
was diagnosed with the coronavirus on 30 January.
How has China Reacted?
A wave of anger and grief ooded Chinese social media site Weibo when news of Dr Li’s death broke late on Thursday.
The top two trending hashtags on the website were “Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang and apology” and “We want
freedom of speech”. Both hashtags were quickly censored. When the BBC searched Weibo on Friday morning, hundreds of
thousands of comments had already been wiped.
APPENDIX 2
Table 1
Type of process Number Percentage
mental process 3 9.7
relational process 4 12.9
verbal process 7 22.6
behavioral process 0 0
material process 16 51.6
existential process 1 3.2
Total 31 100
Table 2
Pronoun Number Percentage
he 10 77
his 3 23
total 13 100
