Based on Halliday’s transitivity theory (Halliday 1967a, 1967b, 1968, 1985, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen 2004, 2014), this study constructed a new transitivity system for discourse analysis, and this new system has been used to analyze texts of different genre, including academic and non-academic texts. After analyzing process types of the English academic and non-academic (eg. news texts) texts both quantitatively and qualitatively, this study finds: 1) in academic texts, relational process, mental process and action process cover 47%, 29% and 24% respectively while in news texts, action process, relational process and mental process cover 46%, 30% and 24% respectively; 2) for academic texts, relational process shares nearly half (47%) of all processes while for news texts, action process shares nearly half (46%); 3) further study shows that the same is approximately true of Chinese academic and non-academic texts. These findings reveal that the duty of scientific research is to explore the attribute and state of entity, and the correlation of entities, while the major task of news media is to offer a reportage of events such as goings-on and happenings. Contrastive analysis of texts of different genres with the aid of transitivity system can help learners and writers better understand the characteristics of academic and non-academic texts.
 

transitivity theory,academic text,contrastive study