From Process to Persuasion: A Transitivity Analysis of 2012 and 2016 Manifestos of the NDC Party.

Abstract

The study analyzed how presidential candidates employed language in the education sections of the 2012 and 2016 NDC manifestos to convey their message and motivate voters to cast ballots. The study's primary focus was an examination of transitivity in the manifestos. As a theoretical framework, Systemic Functional Linguistics by Halliday was utilized, and the qualitative research design was utilized for the textual analysis. The current study employed interpretative textual analysis to explore the linguistic choices made by candidates in their manifestos. In total, 76 and 141 clauses were selected from the education sections of the 2012 and 2016 manifestos, respectively. Thus, 217 clauses served as the study's sample size. The analysis found that material processes have the highest frequencies and percentages (125, 86%); (245, 88.4%) in the education portion of the 2012/2016 manifestos, whereas existential process types are employed insignificantly with a total occurrence of 3.5%. The predominance of material processes suggests that the candidate and his administration have completed a lot of concrete projects in an effort to establish continuity in development and policy direction within the education sector. The study concludes that the material process is predominantly used in the education section to convince voters to cast ballots.