A Transitivity Analysis of the Messages about Tax on Twitter

Abstract

This research studied the ideational metafunction of the language in the messages about tax of Thai people on Twitter using transitivity analysis. The sample consisted of 1,447 tweets about tax between 2019 and 2020. The transitivity analyses of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, 2014) and Klaisingto (2021a) were applied in data analysis.The results revealed that the most frequent type of process found was material, with 6,329 verbs (59%) because the messages were about tax connected with situations that happened in society, especially the working of the government, followed by mental, with 1,212 verbs (11%), existential, with 1,004 verbs (9%), relational, with 991 verbs (9%), verbal, with 624 verbs (6%), and behavioral, with 620 verbs (6%) respectively. In addition, the results of the research reflected that there were three ideas about tax, namely. - (1) tax and citizen (2) tax and government, and (3) tax and government official. This transitivity analysis reflects the thoughts, experiences, attitudes, or ideology of Thai people about tax.

Keywords

• transitivity
• messages
• tax
• twitter
• language function
• communication