Agency and Processes in Religious Discourse: A Transitivity Analysis of the Sermon on the Mount

Abstract

Employing the transitivity framework of the ideational metafunction, this study explored the language of the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew chapters 5-7, from the perspective of grammar. To ascertain the predominant process types that were used and the participants that roles were assigned to, the study used two out of the three grammatical components that the framework proposes which are the process types and the participants. This was done to show how the grammatical choices made by Jesus, in His principal sermon to His followers reveal His experience of the world around and within Him. The analysis illustrates that the predominant participants are the goal-participants; the participants affected by the action of the verb. The predominant process type is the material process. The distribution of the process types also reveal that the verbal process can be considered as a major process type. On the whole, the world of the text that was revealed through the data was a world characterised by social issues such as marriage, peaceful coexistence, divorce and adultery; religious issues such as prayer, giving, trusting, a world of the knowledge and practice of the old law and a world of suffering and social vices such as murdering, violence and persecution. To be able to achieve the communicative purpose of persuading, Jesus exhibited His knowledge about these issues and as a result addressed them in the sermon and made some promises to persuade the followers to change their bad ways for the better.