Ideational Metafunction in a Pakistani English Textbook: A Transitivity Study of the Punjab Textbook Board’s Grade 9 Content

Abstract

This study explores how the Punjab Textbook Board’s Grade 9 English textbook employs transitivity structures to realize the experiential meanings, focusing on process types, participants, and circumstances within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The study explores the ideational metafunction in textbook discourse. It examines how linguistic choices reflect ideological and pedagogical orientations. A mixed-methods approach analyzed 868 transitivity elements from the selected lessons. The material process was dominant( 17.6%), followed by relational (7.6%) and mental (2.4%) processes. Participants (51.4%) and circumstances (19.1%) were frequent, with actor, goal, and carrier as key roles. The textbook prioritized factual description over introspective or interpersonal meanings. These results suggest the need for more balanced experiential representations in educational content and expose the underlying pedagogical and ideological orientations contained in the textbook.