“And Jesus began to teach”: A Transitivity Analysis of The Parable of the Sower

Abstract

Religious discourse offers significant value for linguistic analysis. Functional analysis of religious texts provides a lexico-semantic approach to interpreting these discourses, though it remains underexplored in the literature. To fill this gap, the study undertook a functional analysis of the Parable of the Sower within the framework of transitivity. A mixed-method approach was employed. The text was taken from the Modern English Version (MEV) (Mark 4:1-20). The process types and their participants and the worldview of the parable were analysed within the framework. The material process type dominated the text, occurring 42 times. This was followed by the relational, mental, verbal and behavioural process types. The actor participant dominated the data. The text is highly action-oriented with the world of the text concerned with happenings, movements and tangible actions. The worldview of the parable could be described as: the nature of Christians upon receiving the word and instructions towards bearing fruits. Enthusiasm, materialism, double-minded and being stressed characterize the nature of Christians upon receiving the word while commitment, focus, steadfastness and faithfulness represent the instructions towards seed bearing. The textual and interpersonal metafunctions of language should be employed to consolidate the findings presented in this paper.