Systemic functional analysis of newspaper headlines in Ghana

Abstract

A great deal of studies have been conducted using Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) particularly the Ideational Metafunction. Nevertheless, few of them have adopted Systemic Functional Grammar to investigate the syntax of newspaper headlines (Ansary, 2005; Ong„onda, 2016; Abdulameer, Noor and Nasser, 2019)). The Ideational Metafunction of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) by Halliday (1994) is employed to examine 60 Ghanaian Newspaper Headlines from 5 newspaper agencies. The purposive sampling technique was used to sample the data from the year 2018 to 2019. The analysis is situated within the general research paradigm of qualitative research approach which is applied to identify the structural types of Newspaper Headlines which are sentential (30 declarative, 4 imperative, 2 interrogative, 5 ellipted and 6 passivized) and 13 phrasal newspaper headlines. Based on a type of the six-transitivity processes whether Material, Mental, Verbal, Relational, Existential or Behavioural, the clausal elements and their functions were identified in the sentential newspaper headlines; the structure of the phrasal newspaper headlines together with the words that make up the structure and functions have been analyzed. Though the Declarative Newspaper Headlines reported education, finance, international news among others, they dominated political news items. The Imperative Newspaper Headlines were adopted by religious and political leaders to admonish and motivate the citizenry and congregants. To help create suspense and arouse the interest in sporting events, the Interrogative Newspaper Headlines were employed. The Phrasal Newspaper Headlines dominated political news. As part of Block Language, the Elliptical Newspaper Headlines omitted elements such as auxiliary verbs, articles, the dummy there with the verb be, noun group with relational auxiliary or relational processes in clause complex and part of the embedded clause (adjectival clause). The Passivized Newspaper Headlines, the Agentless Passive as against the Agentive Passive reported criminal cases which were undergoing investigations and arbitration of which the newspaper agencies could not pronounce judgment ahead of the police and judicial systems since such cases are generally based on allegations.