A corpus-based comparative ideational meta-functional analysis of Pakistani English and UK English newspaper editorials on COVID-19

Abstract

This comparative study examines Pakistani English and UK English newspaper editorials regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The systemic functional linguistic (SFL) model of Halliday is used as a theoretical framework. From the SFL model, the transitivity analysis of ideational meta-function is studied, and newspaper editorials are used as research material taken from the famous newspapers of Pakistan and the UK. The two separate corpora of Pakistan and the UK newspaper editorials were designed. In order to find out transitivity, a quantitative research methodology is used. Clauses play the primary role in transitivity analysis; that is why the clauses are selected from newspaper material. This study investigates COVID-19 and its influences on the lives of individuals and the society of Pakistan and the UK. For analysis, a corpus-based software UAM is used. The transitivity process and its types were closely examined, including the participants, circumstances, and configuration of the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK. The results show that the material process is the highest transitivity process in newspaper editorials. The writers have used the material process to show the catastrophic conditions of Pakistan and the UK due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the study reveals how writers of both newspapers vary in constructing their ideologies and social meanings linguistically in the discourse of newspaper editorials. The present study can help understand the transitivity process and examine various texts by analyzing them with the ideational meta-functional model of SFL.

Keywords:

• clause
• COVID-19
• ideologies
• newspaper editorials
• SFL
• social meanings

1. Introduction

Mass media play an exciting part in moulding the experience of the world (Brennen, 2021; Castells, 2002). Recently, all of the mass media have been full of coronavirus news. COVID-19 is a global pandemic affecting the lives of almost every single person worldwide. Print and electronic media are playing their significant roles in this critical time. People share their opinions, thoughts, and stories about their survival, their frights, and the difficulties they face through different media and social media platforms. Newspaper editorials efficiently serve this purpose by using language adeptly. Television, newspapers, and even internet websites are packed with COVID-19 news. Rafi (2020) estimates that millions of stories on COVID-19 have been published worldwide. A great source of publication is the newspaper. Newspapers, more explicitly, the editorials, despite the development and inescapability of electronic and social media, play a significant role as a place for the public discourse. The proceeding ubiquity and impact of newspapers are imminent, and readers regard newspapers as the most credible and reliable source of information (Doghudje, 1985; Giri & Maurya, 2021). In a public investigation of “middle Australia”, it was found that for political and economic issues, the majority of the people reliably positioned newspapers as the most potent source (Zhang et al., 2020). Also, editorials have played a role as a forum for public opinions for an extended period and are famously seen as a vital foundation in knowing the public’s perspective (Xiang, 2022; Young, 2022). Editorials portray the public’s perspective and help shape the public’s views, so the language used in editorials is an exciting phenomenon to examine.

Language has a significant part in human existence. It is a means through which humans correspond; by language, each individual can trade knowledge and express feelings, convictions, opinions, thoughts, and wishes. Eggins (2004; as cited in Herman, 2015) suggests that language is considered a human and non-instinctive technique for imparting thoughts, feelings, and desires through voluntarily producing a system of symbols. The model of Systemic functional grammar (SFG), which is used in the present study, proposes that all languages have formed into three summed-up implications: ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings (Gebhard & Accurso, 2020; Hao, 2020; Schwarz & Hamman-Ortiz, 2020). It conceptualizes human discourse as a semiotic instrument personally associated with the arrangement, development, association, and re-development of human experiences (Martin et al., 2021; Sameer & Al Dilaimy, 2020). It demonstrates that human linguistic decisions lead to the comprehension of social settings in an organized way. In this origination, language is a significant asset of meaning-making. It is simultaneously “a part of reality, a shaper of reality, and a metaphor for reality” (Halliday, 2009, p. 8). At this point, while several linguistic theories manage language as mental practice, SFL intently identifies it with human society and culture. Halliday’s custom, as an outline, is more inspired by how language is used in social settings to accomplish a particular objective (Sembiante & Tian, 2021). SFL does not address the representation or processing of language in the human brain; instead, it prefers to look at the text created in the written or oral language and what it contains. Through the three meta-functions, SFL gives a logical depiction of how language obliges the interior association of the language being utilized and the external relations related to the phenomenon being studied (Halliday et al., 2013; Monbec, 2020). Each of the three meta-functions deals with a different aspect of the world in a broader sense, as shown in Figure 1. Halliday (2009) opines that “function” is the main asset of a language, and its functional basis is semantically grasped in ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings, where clause, in ideational meta-function, is explained as representation; clause, in interpersonal is explained as exchange; and clause, in textual is explained as a message (Mushtaq et al., 2021).

Figure 1. The three meta-functions of language (Halliday, 1970).

The ideational meta-function deals with the ideas presented in a language; utilizing the idea, readers have discernments about the phenomenon. Sembiante and Tian (2021) express that ideational meta-function is communicated through the content of a language. The ideology of “showing themselves” exists in the structure of transitivity. Transitivity incorporates the processes [in the verbal group], the participants (human/non-human) who are involved in this process [in the noun group], and the context wherein the processes happen and when, where, and how they happen [in the prepositional sentence and adverbial group] (Mushtaq et al., 2021). Halliday (2009), in the transitivity process, also refers to a situation where the process happens; it deals with how certain things occur and answers the questions of where, when, and why. The transitivity process contains six functional processes: material, mental, relational, verbal, behavioral, and existential.

In this paper, the systemic functional grammar is applied to the COVID-19 editorials of Pakistani English and British English newspapers by focusing on ideational meta-function. The paper aims to compare and contrast the language used in the COVID-19 editorials of the two nations. There are many studies on editorials, but there is a lack of corpus-based comparative studies on COVID-19 editorials published worldwide and studies through the SFL lens. The current study strives to fill the gap and has developed a representative corpus of 10 COVID-19 editorials from British English and Pakistani English newspapers to be utilized in this research.

2. Literature review

Noel (2020) suggests that reporting style in the newspapers is quite a bit different from other types of languages because of the limitations of using specific languages regarding time and space. The data, which is present in columns or charts, need a limited space. The needs of fundamental interests should be catered to and sustained using dramatic and short headlines, broad-type paragraphs, and different sentences that are concise (Marques & Mont’Alverne, 2021; Osisanwo, 2021). Maintaining the public interest can affect vocabulary and grammar use in different ways.

Halliday (1985) points out that in linguistics, we can interpret language as a pattern or system of meanings with different forms that allow the sense to be realized. Halliday (2007) identifies three meta-functions of language. Ideational is the first, which deals with language and content. In contrast, the role of interpersonal functions is to build and maintain social relations and show the communicators’ role (Halliday, 2002).

Some key elements in the context of systematic functional grammar are known as meta-functions. The conceptual components, according to Halliday (1985), are the ideational part of meta-functions, interpersonal meta-functions, and also the third one is textual meta-functions. It is further augmented that it is because of the interpersonal meta-functions that the people create and undertake their different specific positions in social relationships and it is specifically concerned with clauses as interchange (Don, 2021; Lagu, 2021). The interpersonal importance of research deals with the basic definition of speech which is the provision of information, the provision of goods and services, and the demand for goods and different services (Halliday, 1994)

Ferguson and Thomson (2008) proposed four types of meta-functions:

1. We always use language when we want to talk about our life experiences of the world and that perception of the world present in our mind to describe different kinds of events and entities.

2. We use the medium of language to interrelate, create and uphold relationships with others, affect behavioral actions, speak for ourselves views and elicit or change theirs about things in the world.

3. Using language tools, we arrange and connect our messages in different ways that specify how they fit with the other messages surrounding them and the broader specific context in which we speak or write.

4. “Complex-clauses associated with logic and semantic relations to form sequences, in the use of languages” (M. A. Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).

Grammar is not a theory, but it is our social connections, both of which define society, our role, and our immediate dialogic situation. Grammar is our social relationship and an interpersonal meta-function through which language builds up our social, communal, and personal being (Bakuuro & Diedong, 2021; McCabe, 2017). It can also be said that there is a significant role of interpersonal in establishing and preserving social relations and indicating the role of communication participants (Halliday & Webster, 2009).

Halliday and Matthiessen (2013) propose that three main elements—the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual meta-function, are the general representative categories for the linguistic descriptions used in SFL. Van Dijk (2020) argues that “an ideology is the function of the social representations shared by a social group” (p. 34). Ideational meaning is related to the system of transitivity processes, and it makes us able to interpret the world by different kinds of interpretations and our experiences by specific and limited sets of processes which are material, mental, behavioral, verbal, and existential (Liu & Chang, 2021; Martin, 2016). According to Almurashi (2016), transitivity is the effect of the action expressed by the verb, which passes over from an agent to the patient, basically a goal. The fundamental analysis of the transitivity process of clause of a particular piece of the text deals with the known phenomenon of how ideational function is constructed in terms of the processes, participants, and surrounding environment.

3. Research questions

1. What transitivity processes are used in the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK, and which occur frequently and why?

2. How does transitivity process analysis help in developing meanings and ideologies in the discourse of newspaper editorials?

3. What are the impacts and influences of COVID-19 on the people and society, and how is that represented in the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK?

4. Research methodology

The present study uses a quantitative approach as a research design to analyze and compare the language of Pakistani and British newspaper editorials on COVID-19 using the ideational meta-functional approach of SFL (Halliday, 1995). The paper uses the SFL model due to its accentuation of the sociological part of a discourse. It deals with the perspective of resources as opposed to the perspective of the rule and is intended to show the general arrangement of grammar instead of just fragments (Halliday et al., 2014). For the analysis, the clause is decided as the unit. The ideational meta-function considers the clause as representation. The analysis of the two corpora is performed using the UAM software. UAM corpus tool is an advanced and sophisticated software for linguistic studies. It helps to annotate a single corpus or corpora containing different types of texts. The annotations can be done semi-automatically or manually. It provides many different functions to code documents. It also helps to process the language statistically. UAM software can be accessed through the following link http://www.corpustool.com/.

The selected texts of editorials were collected and combined in a single file in each country’s newspapers. Two separate corpora of Pakistan and UK editorials were developed in this way. This corpus-based examination was explored manually to forestall any ambiguities. The results are portrayed by the graphical representation given by the software analysis. The tables were downloaded and designed to present the findings and results of ideational meta-function through UAM.

4.1. Material

Pakistani and British newspaper editorials on COVID-19 were collected using purposive sampling. For the current study, two corpora were created for the comparative analysis. The corpus of Pakistani newspaper editorials on COVID-19 was created from five selected editorials extracted from famous English newspapers like The Express Tribune https://tribune.com.pk/story/2277004/the-brutal-impact-of-coronavirus, DAWN https://www.dawn.com/news/1577135, The Nation https://nation.com.pk/27-Dec-2020/the-new-variant, Pakistan Today https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/13/beating-a-pandemic/, and Daily Pakistan https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/23-Apr-2020/the-blessings-of-coronavirus-for-pakistan. The selected newspaper editorials. The corpus of British newspaper editorials on COVID-19 was created from five selected editorials from different British newspapers such as The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/04/coronavirus-care-central-society-politics, Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8995863/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-mass-shutdown-defies-logic-Prime-Minister.html, Metro UK https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/02/a-different-world-is-possible-how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-has-impacted-the-environment-13677468/, The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/there-are-lessons-to-learn-from-the-class-of-covids-difficult-start-to-student-life-8nxfkm38z, and The Sun https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13527589/coronavirus-strain-nightmare-before-christmas/.

5. Findings and discussion

The following section reports and discusses the results of the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meta-functions that the language of editorials is operating in the newspapers of Pakistan and the UK. At first, both corpora have a frequency table of important lexemes. Then, comparative tables of transitivity processes are presented to analyze and compare both corpora in detail. In the end, a figure of the chart of the whole transitivity process is inserted.

5.1. Lexical choices

The corpus of Pakistani newspaper editorials that are compiled for this study consists of 5 editorials, 6640 words, and 288 sentences, while the corpus of UK newspaper editorials consists of 5 editorials, 5648 words, and 246 sentences, presented in Table 1. In Pakistani newspaper editorials, the average word length is 4.95, and the average sentence length is 23.0; on the other hand, the average word length is 4.92, and the average sentence length is 22.9 in the UK newspaper editorials. The primary text stats of the corpora show that the lexical density is higher in UK newspaper editorials than in Pakistani newspaper editorials. The lexemes per sentence ratio is 12.1, and the lexemes percentage of text is 53.09 in UK newspaper editorials, but in the Pakistani newspaper editorials, the lexemes per sentence ratio is 11.5, and lexemes percentage of text is 49.89. It portrays that the UK newspaper editorials convey more information than the Pakistani ones.

Table 1. Frequency of important Lexemes

Token	Total	Pakistani Editorials		UK Editorials
	Frequency	Frequency	Percentage	Frequency	Percentage
is	101	79	2.07%	22	0.74%
we	60	32	0.84%	28	0.94%
are	42	29	0.76%	13	0.44%
it	40	29	0.76%	11	0.37%
be	40	28	0.73%	12	0.40%
that	29	23	0.60%	6	0.20%
was	28	20	0.52%	8	0.27%
what	26	19	0.50%	7	0.24%
they	23	17	0.45%	6	0.20%
this	21	14	0.37%	7	0.24%
also	19	12	0.31%	7	0.24%
when	18	15	0.39%	3	0.10%
have	16	12	0.31%	4	0.13%
been	16	13	0.34%	3	0.10%
which	15	13	0.34%	2	0.07%
how	15	11	0.29%	4	0.13%
said	14	12	0.31%	2	0.07%
the pandemic	13	7	0.18%	6	0.20%
people	12	10	0.26%	2	0.07%
need	11	7	0.18%	4	0.13%
the government	10	7	0.18%	3	0.10%
lost	10	8	0.21%	2	0.07%
themselves	7	3	0.08%	4	0.13%
infections	6	2	0.05%	4	0.13%
requires	6	1	0.03%	5	0.17%
COVID-19	5	3	0.08%	2	0.07%
suffer	4	3	0.08%	1	0.03%
increased	4	2	0.05%	2	0.07%
declared	4	2	0.05%	2	0.07%
change	4	3	0.08%	1	0.03%

The frequency of important lexemes is also analyzed through the software of UAM in both corpora. The token “is” is the most frequently occurred lexeme in the entire data and the Pakistani newspaper editorials. As the selected newspaper editorials is a coronavirus, the pandemic that the whole world is facing in the current period, the token “is” (which is the present tense of “be”) has occurred frequently in the newspaper editorials. The second highly occurred token is “we” in the actual data and the Pakistani editorials. The usage of this lexeme indicates that the writers of the newspaper editorials were creating a sense of relation and union with their audience or readers by including them in the pronoun “we”. There are other essential lexemes in the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK that helps the readers to catch the complete picture of editors’ ideas regarding the current global pandemic, as seen in Table 1.

6. The ideational meta-function

In systemic functional linguistics (SFL), the prime focus is on the functions that language performs than the structure of language (Salama, 2014). The ideational meta-function is one of the three functions in SFL that language performs to fulfill social purposes.

6.1. Transitivity analysis

Halliday (2009) presented the transitivity analysis model of language, focusing on three essential elements: “ participant, process, and circumstances”. A corpus-based model was stressed to examine language’s experiential or representational meta-function (Mcenery & Hardie, 2011; Suwandi & Thoriqussuud, 2021). In this study, the analysis of the ideational meta-function assists in the process of meaning-making to point out newspaper editors’ views and ideas regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the UAM software, the corpora are analyzed quantitatively, and their grammatical ranking is presented in Figure 2. It shows that participants, process, and circumstance are present in both corpora of newspaper editorials. The total frequency N of Pakistani editorials is 3815, contributing 91.43% of the whole corpus.

Figure 2. Grammatical ranking of transitivity process.

Conversely, the total frequency N of UK editorials is 2978, making 90.53% of the entire corpus. The percentage of “participants” is higher in Pakistani editorials, that is 25.79%, but the percentage of “process” and “circumstance” is higher in UK editorials, that are 28.88% and 21.93%. It indicates that the UK newspaper editorials have more verbs, adverbial groups, and prepositional phrases than Pakistani editorials.

7. Transitivity process types

The types of clauses, their frequencies, and percentages in both corpora are presented in Figure 3. The results show that the material process is the most used clause type in both corpora. The relational process type is the second-highest occurred clause type in the entire dataset. Then, the mental process type (1.91%) takes third place, followed by the verbal process type (1.34%) in the Pakistani newspaper editorials. However, in UK newspaper editorials, the verbal process type (1.01%) is in the third place, followed by the mental process type (0.74%). These clauses having transitivity process types contribute 20.21% of the whole corpus of Pakistani editorials and 10.55% of the corpus of UK newspaper editorials. The clauses and their types play a significant role in making sensible meanings in the texts of editorials and presenting the views and opinions of the writers of Pakistan and the UK about the disastrous influences of COVID-19.

Figure 3. Types of clauses in the transitivity process.

7.1. Material process

Material process type is the highest clause-type in the corpora of the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK, as shown in Figure 3. The material process includes the process by which some change occurs due to the material action of the participants. So, the participants play an essential role as agents or actors. This process type is indicated by the doing and happening clause (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p. 224). The process of doing can be probed by “what did x do?” and the process of happening can be probed by “what happened to x?” The frequency (N) of the material process is 452 (11.85%) in the corpus of Pakistani newspaper editorials and 197 (6.62%) in the corpus of UK newspaper editorials. These material verbs show the expressiveness in the language of Pakistani and UK writers. By using this material process in the editorials, the writers are expressing the issues, difficulties, tragedies, and challenges that the people of Pakistan and the UK are facing due to COVID-19 and how they are facing it. Due to the high proportion of material process in the editorials, the objectivity and clarity of the texts have been increased.

The material process has four types: intransitive, mono-transitive, ergative, and ditransitive. As Figure 4 shows, the percentage of all the types of material process are higher in Pakistani newspaper editorials except for the ergative verb type with 0 frequency. These all types of material processes contribute a significant part to the transitivity analysis as they are the most suitable process for the writers to express the effects of COVID-19 on the societies of Pakistan and the UK.

Figure 4. Frequency and types of material process.

In Table 2, the examples of clauses are taken from the corpora of newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK. In these clauses, the material process is used by the writers. In example 1, the Pakistani writer used “Corona” as an actor as it changes the writer’s life in the first clause. Due to coronavirus, his wife suffered and lost her life, making him suffer for the rest of his life. In the same way, the clauses 2, 3 and 4 in Pakistani editorials, the verbs “compared, “lost”, “produce”’ are expressing material process of doing something abstract in nature. In clause 3, “many” is used as an actor/agent to show that the coronavirus has influenced people on a large scale. COVID-19 affects not only people’s health but many other social aspects of life, including education, business, jobs, etc. So, many people have lost their jobs and faced financial troubles in Pakistan. In contrast, in clause 5, “we” is used as an actor, and the goal is “the work of care” taken from UK newspaper editorials. By using “we” the writer refers to the entire UK nation facing the coronavirus. The writer criticizes that we as a nation are deprived of the virtue of caring; we do not take care of other people, especially the marginalized group of society. In UK editorials, the clauses 6 and 7 are denoting material process in the form of some abstract actions through verbs like “start” and “encompass”. Similarly, in clause 8 of UK editorials, the verb “died” is stating material process while indicating a physical progression.

Table 2. Examples of material process

Newspaper editorials of Pakistan
No.	Actor	Process	Goal	Circumstance
1.	Corona	took	the life of my wife	who was my partner for 58 years
2.	I	compared	our social sector allocations	to those in the developed world
3.	Many	have lost		jobs or income
4.	The virus	did not produce	the kind of fatalities	here
Newspaper editorials of the UK
5.	We	have undervalued	the work of care	always
6.	This	starts		with expanding public health awareness
7.	That	encompasses	all the economic and ecological challenges feeding	into it
8.	Community leaders	have died		as a result

7.2. Relational process

According to Halliday (2009), relational processes are “processes of being” (p. 119). It also includes states of having. In a relational process, a relationship is set up between two separate entities, but without suggesting that one entity affects the other in any way (Halliday, 1994). Figure 3 shows the percentages of the relational process of both corpora that are higher in Pakistani newspaper editorials (4.30%) than in UK editorials (1.81%). It is possible to classify them as to whether they are used to categorize something or to allocate something to a quality. Identity-building processes are called identification processes, and processes that assign quality are called attributive processes (Gerot & Wignell, 1994). The circumstantial method represents the position of the relevant entity (Wang, 2010). The possessive relational mechanism applies to the entity’s ownership.

As Figure 5 shows, the frequencies of circumstantial and identifying relational processes in both corpora of newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK are zero. So, there are no identifying and circumstantial processes used by the writers from both countries in the newspaper editorials. The Pakistani editorials have a higher frequency (N) of attributive (141) process and possessive (17) process than UK editorials, which have 48 frequency of attributive process and 6 frequency of possessive process.

Figure 5. Frequency and types of relational process.

Table 3 shows the examples of relational processes that clauses carry in the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and the UK. In clause 1 of Pakistani editorials, the auxiliary “is” is a relational process of being something as attributive. In clause 2, “Who was my partner for 58 years,” the attribute “my partner for 58 years” shows possession, making it a possessive relational clause. In clause 3, “We are not completely out of danger,” the attributive relational process is used as the attribute “not completely out,” working as a quality of the carrier “we”. The clause 4 is relating the carrier “Pakistan” with the attribute “not alone” by denoting the auxiliary “is” as an attributive relational process. From the UK editorials, clause 5, “our economic health is in a parlour state with businesses … .” is an attributive relational clause as the quality in the carrier “our economic health” is brought by the attribute “in a parlour state”. The clause 6 of UK editorials is also stating an attributive relational process by using auxiliary “are”. In clause 7, “people are getting angry,” is an attributive relational clause in which the attribute “angry” is qualifying the carrier “people”.

Table 3. Examples of relational process

Newspaper editorials of Pakistan
No.	Carrier	Process	Attribute	Circumstance
1.	The coronavirus pandemic	is	a complication that doesn’t seem like it will be washed away with just a vaccine.
2.	Who	was	my partner for 58 years
3.	We	are	not completely out	of danger
4.	Pakistan	is	not alone	in seeing its COVID-19 curves flatten out so rapidly
Newspaper editorials of UK
5.	Our economic health	is	in a parlour state	with businesses going to the wall every day
6.	Both	are	disastrous	for the overall health of the nation
7.	People	are getting	angry

7.3. Mental process

Simple functional description of a verb as “a doing word” does not by any means fit to all processes, which suggest that it is needed to establish other categories apart from material process because people are not always talking about concrete processes of doing. They often talk about what they think or feel. Halliday (Mushtaq et al., 2021, p. 21) states that “mental processes or process of sensing are processes of feeling, thinking, and seeing.” These processes differ from Material ones, they are mental, covert kinds of goings-on. There are clear differences between something that goes on in the external world and something that goes on in the internal world of the mind; and there are many verbs which refer to these mental processes, of thinking, imagining, liking, wanting, seeing, etc. And the participant involved in mental processes is in a doing sense, as sensing-having feelings, perceiving or thinking. Thus, for the two participants in a mental process is termed as Senser and Phenomenon. The senser is the conscious being that is feeling, thinking or seeing. The phenomenon is that which is “sensed”- felt, thought, or seen. Figure 3 shows that the mental process contributes more to the transitivity processes of Pakistani newspaper editorials (1.91%) than UK newspaper editorials (0.74%). Four forms exist: affective or reactive (feeling), cognitive (thinking), disposition, and perceptive (feeling) (perceiving through the five senses).

In Table 4, the examples are taken from the corpora of newspaper editorials designed for this study. From the Pakistani newspaper editorials, clause 1 shows the writer’s tragic situation due to his wife’s death. As he is using the pronoun “I” in the mental clause “I suffer until the years that I live” as a senser that senses the suffering due to the coronavirus. In clauses 2 of Pakistani editorials, the verb “thought” is mental process of thinking something which shows cognition. In clause 3, the writer uses “we” as a senser and the perceptual mental process “believe” on which the senser acts. By using this clause, “We believe many of us lost a lot of opportunities in this pandemic,” the writer is portraying the image of the disruptions that COVID-19 created in the lives of the Pakistanis. The clause 4 is expressing the cognitive mental process that the senser is acting on, by the verb “think”. The writer is giving his opinion on the miserable effects of COVID-19 on Pakistani society, by utilizing the pronoun “we” in order to include other people of Pakistani nation who are sharing the same thoughts about COVID-19. In clause 5 of UK editorials, the mental process of “feeling” is expressed which represents affection by the verb “feels”. In clause 6 of UK newspaper editorials, “We see no pay increase, better conditions or reduced working hours”, the usage of “we” by the writer is referring to the entire population of the UK, including himself/herself. The perception clause “see” is used as the mental process. The clause 7 is denoting cognitive mental process by denoting verb “thought”. In clause 8, “I hope everything will go back to normal”, the writer is presenting his mental thought by using the affective process “hope” for the senser “I”.

Table 4. Examples of mental process

Newspaper editorials of Pakistan
No.	Senser	Process	Phenomenon
1.	I	suffer (feeling)	until the years that I live
2.	I	thought (cognition)	the public outcry over a health emergency would be too much for a system
3.	We	believe (perceive)	many of us lost a lot of opportunities in this pandemic
4.	We	think (cognition)	people will survive the pandemic but not the hunger
Newspaper editorials of UK
5.	Everyone	feels (feeling)	the suppression of their voices
6.	We	see (perceive)	no pay increase, better conditions or reduced working hours
7.	They	thought (cognition)	to be more vulnerable to COVID-19
8.	I	hope (affective)	everything will go back to the normal

7.4. Verbal process

The saying process is verbal. “Saying” conveys some sort of symbolic exchange of meaning, as the report reveals an accident is taking place. On the continuum between conceptual and emotional operations, the verbal mechanism occurs. It displays human consciousness through words, such as speech, and meaning (Thompson, 2000). Figure 3 clearly shows that Pakistani newspaper editorials have 1.34% of the verbal process, but the UK newspaper editorials have 1.01% verbal process in the text

Processes of speaking, or symbolically signaling, are verbal processes. Two different clauses most often realize these: a signal source (Sayer) and a signal (Verbal Process) are encoded by the projecting clause, and the other (projected clauses) realize what has been said. Sayer, Process, Addressee, and Verbiage are the participants. Sayer is the signal source, Addressee is the one to whom the verbalization is addressed, and Verbiage is a name for the verbalization itself.

The samples from Table 5 show that many clauses in both corpora have a verbal process. In clause 1 of Pakistani editorials, “Prime Minister says this is done to lower the corona cases”, the writer has given more power, dominance, and authority to the sayer in the verbal clause who is the prime minister of Pakistan while “is done to lower the corona cases” is the Verbiage in the clause. In clause 2 of Pakistani editorials, the verb “reported” is an example of verbal process of saying something. The clause 3 is stating the verb “said” as verbal process to report the concerns and fears of some people. In clause 4, the writer has used verbal process in order to quote some other person “He told people to avoid gatherings in order to … ” and used “he” as the sayer who has more information by which he can control the addressee “people”. In this clause, “to avoid gatherings” plays the role of Verbiage. However, in clause 5 of UK newspaper editorials “We wrote The Care Manifesto to highlight … .” the writer is giving authority to himself and the other co-writers of the addressee “The Care Manifesto” by using the sayer “we”. Similarly, in clause 6 of UK editorials, the verb “mention” is used as verbal process of speaking or saying without referring to any addressee and narrating “public is losing faith” as Verbiage. In the seventh example, the writer is reporting about some interviews regarding the influences of COVID-19 on the environment; that is why he used “the reporter” as Addressee and “Professor” as sayer to convey the verbalization of the clause “that coronavirus has several mixed effects”. The clause 8 of UK editorials is expressing verbal process of speaking by the verb “says” and reports what Mr Ortiz said about indigenous people of UK.

Table 5. Examples of verbal process

Newspaper editorials of Pakistan
No.	Sayer	Process	Addressee	Verbiage	Circumstance
1.	Prime minister	says	this	is done to lower the corona cases
2.	Pakistan	reported			the highest number of deaths during the second wave of COVID-19
3.	Some	said		people were afraid to be tested positive
4.	He	told	people	to avoid gatherings	in order to prevent more cases
Newspaper editorials of UK
5.	We	wrote	the Care Manifesto	to highlight just how uncaring our society has become
6.	He	mention		public is losing faith
7.	Professor	replied	the reporter	that coronavirus has several mixed effects	on the environment
8.	Ms Ortiz	says			indigenous people notice themselves surrounded by even more fire

7.5. Existential process

The existential process reflects existing and developing systems. It communicates an entity’s nature without predicting anything else about it. It is on the boundary between the process of relationality and the process of materiality. Figure 3 shows that the existential process contributes a minor portion to the overall transitivity analysis of the Pakistani newspaper editorials (0.39%), while the UK newspaper editorials have only (0.07%) of the existential process. It is easy to identify the existential process since the sentence pattern typically begins with “there” or with the verb “exist” (Halliday, 1994). Other verbs signify this phase, such as “be, happen, arise, flourish,” etc. Only one participant labeled “Existent” in the existential process refers to the entity or event said to exist. Any phenomenon, such as a person, entity, organization, action, or case, maybe the current one, is based on existence. The Existent can be any phenomenon, such as a person, object, institution, action, or event.

Due to the lower percentages of existential processes in both corpora, there are fewer examples, as can be seen in Table 6. In clause 1, “There were cases that need to be revisited”, the writer is telling about the existence of volatility in the health of recovered patients of COVID-19 in Pakistan. In clause 2, “In terms of fatality rate, there are 88 countries … .”, the writer of the editorial is trying to lower the fright in the readers that there are many countries where the pandemic situation is more complex than in Pakistan. In clause 3, the auxiliary “is” is expressing the existential process as it indicates existence of non-seriousness or carelessness of the authorities. The writer is criticising that there is no serious attempt taken to fight the pandemic. In the UK newspaper editorials, the writer, in clause 4, is expressing that coronavirus cases have increased rapidly in the UK despite the lockdown and other precautionary measures. In clause 5, “There exists great fright among UK citizens”, the writer is making the readers aware that great fright exists in the citizens of the UK due to the deaths from COVID-19. It makes people more depressed and anxious in these challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Table 6. Examples of existential process

Newspaper editorials of Pakistan
No.	Circumstance	Process	Existent
1.	There	were	cases that need to be revisited
2.	In terms of fatality rate, there	are	88 countries that have fared better than Pakistan
3.	There	is	no serious attempt at getting rid of this pandemic
Newspaper editorials of UK
4.	There	are	many cases in UK despite the lockdown
5.	There	exists	great fright among UK citizens

8. The overall transitivity process

The overall transitivity process is presented in Figure 6. The figure shows the overall process, including the types of transitivity: material, mental, relational, verbal, and existential. It shows the percentages of both datasets of newspaper editorials of Pakistan and UK as set 1 and 2. It includes the percentages of the entire ideational model of SFL calculated through UAM of both corpora of newspaper editorials of Pakistan and UK. The diagram presents the percentages of the elements involved in the grammatical rank that are participants (25.79%) and (13.90%), process (24.67%) and (28.88%), circumstance (19.11% and 21.93%), and configuration (21.86%) and (25.82%). These values indicate that except for participants, the rest of the elements have higher percentages in the newspaper editorials of UK than in Pakistani. It means the UK newspaper editorials present more information than Pakistani.

Figure 6. Overall transitivity process.

As discussed above, the writers of Pakistan and the UK mostly used the material process of transitivity in their newspaper editorials. They used material verbs to maintain the material process in their writings because there is always some intention or influence involved in the doer’s actions. Using these material verbs, they are portraying the picture of their societies that collapsed due to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. They are narrating the stories of people who lost their loved ones, their pains, and sufferings. They are giving words to the untold miseries, sorrows, and challenges people face in these times of survival. Also, the disruptions due to COVID-19 in the daily routines and people’s plans regarding future gatherings, education, meetings, etc. As the material process of transitivity identifies the actions and happenings of the participants in the clauses, is why the writers of Pakistani newspaper editorials wrote, “Corona took the life of my wife.” UK newspaper editorials’ writers have used words such as “Community leaders have died”. These examples show that the process affects the actor under some circumstances in the presence of other entities such as COVID-19 influences dramatically affects the lives of individuals and the whole societies of Pakistan and the UK. As Figure 5 shows, there are four types of material processes in the transitivity model: ergative, mono-transitive, ditransitive, and intransitive. The material process and its four types contribute (11.85%) to the corpus of Pakistani newspaper editorials and (6.62%) to the corpus of UK newspaper editorials.

Figure 6 shows that the mono-transitive clause material process presents the highest percentage in both corpora of newspaper editorials of Pakistan (7.63%) and UK (3.66%). On the other hand, the relational process, which frequently occurred in the entire dataset after the material process, contains (4.30%) and (1.81%) of the whole transitivity process in Pakistani and UK newspaper editorials. The relational process has four types: identifying, attributive, circumstantial, and possessive. Only the types of the relational process occurred in the data that are attributive (3.70%) and (1.61%) and possessive (0.45%) and (0.20%) in the newspaper editorials of Pakistan and UK, respectively. Then, the mental process and verbal process follow the relational process. Both processes have two primary types type 1 and type 2. Mental type 1 consists of three types cognition, perception, and reaction, which shows no percentage (%) in both datasets. Mental type 2 consists of two types mental active (1.49%) and (0.64%) and mental passive (0.42) and (0.10%). Similarly, the verbal type 1 (addressee-oriented and not-addressee-oriented) presents no contribution in the transitivity process analysis, while verbal type 2 consists of verbal active (1.13%) and (0.91%) and verbal passive (0.21%) and (0.10%). The existential process is the one that contributes the least portion (0.39%) and (0.07%) in the whole transitivity process. As a consequence of all the above transitivity process analyses, it is evident that this ideational meta-functional model of SFL provides a deep understanding of the meanings and ideologies behind the text and assists in understanding the discourse of newspaper editorials.

9. Conclusion

The analysis of the comparative study of the newspaper editorials of Pakistani English and UK English reveals that writers of both newspapers differ linguistically in constructing ideologies and social meanings in newspaper editorials’ discourse. To build their point of view, the UK writers used more lexemes to convey more information than the Pakistani. Also, the percentage of “participants” is higher in Pakistani editorials. Still, the percentage of “process” and “circumstance” is higher in UK editorials, indicating that the UK editorial writers use more verbs, adverbial groups, and prepositional phrases than Pakistani editorial writers for constructing ideologies and social meanings. The study further shows that the material process is the most used clause type in both editorials. The relational process type is the second highest, and then the mental process type takes the third place, followed by the verbal process type in the Pakistani newspaper editorials. However, in UK newspaper editorials, the verbal process type takes the third place, and the mental process type takes the fourth place. The Pakistani editorials have more clauses having transitivity process types, whereas the corpus of UK newspaper editorials has fewer clauses having transitivity process types. The most used transitivity process in both editorials is the material process, implying that both Pakistani and UK writers are linguistically more expressive. Writers of both countries have used material processes in the editorials to express the issues, difficulties, tragedies, and challenges that the people of both countries are facing due to the pandemic. In addition, the high proportion of material process in both editorials indicates that their text is unambiguous and objective. Using material verbs, writers of UK and Pakistani editorials try to portray the picture of their societies that collapsed because of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. They used transitivity processes to narrate the stories of people who lost their loved ones, their pains, and sufferings. Thereby, they are giving words to the untold miseries, sorrows, and challenges that people of both countries have faced in these times of survival. Also, the disruptions that occurred due to COVID-19 in the daily routines and people’s plans regarding future gatherings, education, meetings etc. As the material process of transitivity identifies the actions and happenings of the participants in the clauses, the writers of Pakistani newspaper editorials wrote, “Corona took the life of my wife.” UK newspaper editorials have used words such as “Community leaders have died.” These examples show that the process affects the actor under some circumstances in the presence of other entities such as COVID-19 influences dramatically affects the lives of individuals and the whole societies of Pakistan and the UK. The present study can help understand the transitivity process to examine various types of texts by analyzing them with the ideational meta-functional model of SFL. Further, the future researchers may investigate the experiential or representational elements of editorial and other media discourse.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Fazeel Ghani

Fazeel Ghani is currently enrolled as an M.Phil scholar at the Department of English, University of Central Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. His research interest includes Syntax, SFL, and Bilingualism.

Tahir Saleem

Tahir Saleem is serving as Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of Central Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. Dr. Tahir’s research interest includes Syntax, Semantics, Bilingualism, and L2 Pragmatics.

Sonia Majeed

Sonia Majeed is currently enrolled as an M.Phil scholar at the Department of English, University of Central Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. Her research interest includes Syntax, Morphology, and SFL.

Rabia Batool

Rabia Batool is currently working as a Lecturer in English, at English Language Center University of Central Punjab Lahore Pakistan. Her research interest includes Corpus Linguistics, Bilingualism, Pragmatics and SLA.

Muhammad Aslam

Muhammad Aslam is serving as Assist. Professor at University of the Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. His areas of research expertise and interest include SFL in Language Teaching, Genre Analysis.