Transitivity analysis of news texts on the Saudi ministry of health website: An investigation of health guidelines during COVID-19

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the awareness-raising activities and the health guidelines for protection from new coronavirus during this pandemic reported on the Ministry of Health website in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this aim, the study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Halliday’s theory of transitivity process types adopted as a framework of news text. Literature showed that discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary area of investigation and an increasingly popular domain strategy for scholars in different fields. However, such a strategy has been little adopted by healthcare researchers. To analyze the transitivity process types (namely material, mental, verbal, relational, behavioral, and existential), quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to get a better understanding of transitivity process types related to the news texts. Like other studies, the findings revealed that the material process type (60%) highly dominated the discourse in the two news texts. This implies the powerful role of events and actions to be undertaken. Unlike the first news text, the second news text however contains the behavioral process to meticulously highlight public awareness and action. Investigating participants’ roles as well as circumstances components may offer more data appropriate for further research.