Transitivity: Applications in Language Pedagogy
I will now illustrate how the semantic value of transitivity can be made explicit to language learners through the analysis of short texts
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Among the semantic possibilities realized through the system of transitivity, I will select the idea of intentionality. What is interesting, from a language point of view, is how different grammatical choices realize different types of intentionality.
In order to show how transitivity conveys the idea of intentionality, suitable texts need to be selected and these are likely to deal with controversial topics. This is because the very nature of intentionality entails the fact that someone may have done something wrong to someone else or to something.
Because of this, in choosing the texts it is crucial that (a) their content is not likely to offend the sensitivities of any of the students in any way, and (b) texts with opposing viewpoints are used, as students are more likely to appreciate how the system of transitivity works and, just as important, ideological bias is avoided.
In this regard, it is important to note that the texts used here are only examples and may not be suitable for all classes. Certainly other interesting topics can be profitably used in a similar way.
In the activity proposed here, three texts are used. The first one, a very short extract (one sentence) from a news article from The Guardian newspaper, adopts a seemingly neutral point of view in reporting an event which occurred in Bratislava in 2002, and is useful to show students how the analysis of the system of transitivity can reveal opinions and attitudes that are not obvious on the surface level.
The other two (one from a Palestinian source and the other from an Israeli source) both report a fact that took place in Palestine in 2002. The viewpoints are clearly different, and a comparison of the two texts is useful to show students how the system of transitivity can be used to convey opposite views about intentionality.
Rival fans fought in the streets the night before the match, and two supporters were struck by bullets when private security guards tried to clear a bar. This sentence is an excerpt from an article dealing with an episode of football hooliganism. As a warm-up, the students can be asked to discuss the topic in general, to say what they do or do not know about it, and so on.
Attention can then turn to the extract, and the students can be invited to start thinking about what actually happened in the event reported. One interesting way of doing so is to ask them to suggest a possible title to the article from which the extract was taken. The different versions can then be discussed collectively, while the teacher highlights Actors, Processes, and Goals in the students' titles.
This is particularly useful because the sentence in question does not spell out the actual dynamics of the incident and requires some interpretative and inferencing work by the readers. Who shot the bullets? Were the supporters killed or just wounded? What is especially significant is that this lack of clarity is entirely based on the use of transitivity. This initial analysis will therefore provide the students with a very effective opportunity to begin to appreciate the semantic values of the aspects of grammar being dealt with.
Second, the students' attention can be directed to the language of the sentence in more detail. The concept of transitive and intransitive verbs can be introduced. Rather than as a mechanical (and very inaccurate) ruleverbs that take a direct object are transitive and verbs that do not are intransitivethe concept can be explained in terms of Processes and Goals: when a Process is done to someone/something, the verb is used in a transitive way; when the Process is not done to anyone/anything, the verb is used in an intransitive way. The difference depends on the context, rather than on abstract characteristics arbitrarily assigned to certain groups of verbs. Thus, in the phrase 'Rival fans fought', for example, it is more useful to say that the verb is used intransitively rather than that 'fight' is intrinsically transitive or intransitive.
Transitivity: Applications in Language Pedagogy
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