The Morphosemantics of Complex Numbers

Abstract

Gender-based violence, which includes domestic abuse, sexual assault, and femicide, persists as a pervasive issue in Nigeria. This study aims to investigate the transitivity system and the embedded ideology in news headlines reporting instances of gender-based violence in the country. Grounded in Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) Ideational Metafunction of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the research employs a content analysis method, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyze data. A purposive selection of 20 news headlines from each of two prominent mainstream Nigerian media outlets, The Punch and Nigerian Tribune, published between May and August 2022, constitutes the dataset, totalling 40 news headlines. The analysis of the transitivity system in The Punch online news reveals the utilization of thirty (30) processes in the selected twenty (20) news headlines portraying crimes against women in Nigeria. Notably, twenty-nine (96.7%) of these processes are material, with the remaining one (3.3%) being behavioural. The prevalence of material processes is similarly reflected in the news headlines from the Nigerian Tribune, where twenty-five (25) processes are observed across the selected twenty (20) headlines. Here, material processes constitute twenty-four instances (96%), while verbal processes appear only once (4%). The consistent use of material processes allows both media houses – The Punch and Nigerian Tribune – to articulate various physical and violent actions perpetrated against Nigerian women, as well as actions taken by law enforcement agencies to seek justice for the victims. The analysis further uncovers a representation of gender roles and power dynamics, highlighting that all material processes related to violence, such as ‘rape’, ‘shot’, ‘abducts’, ‘kills’, and ‘punches’, are associated with males. Consequently, men are portrayed as the perpetrators of violent crimes, while women are depicted as the victims—vulnerable, subject to gang rape, rape, shooting, killing, and stabbing. Additionally, the study reveals that women, along with related entities, are frequently assigned the participant role of the goal in news headlines, implying an ideological representation that positions women as susceptible targets of violent crimes. In conclusion, this study asserts that Nigerian media outlets predominantly utilize material processes and assign goal participant roles within the transitivity system to present an amplified and sensational portrayal of various physical and aggressive actions inflicted upon women and young girls in Nigeria.