TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF SENATOR HAWLEY AND PROFESSOR BRIDGE’S GENDER IDENTITY DEBATE

Abstract

Using Halliday’s transitivity concept, this paper analyzes the debate between Senator Hawley and Professor Bridges conducted on July 12, 2022. The debate focuses on the topic of people with a capacity for pregnancy, which led to views of gender identity. The way individuals identify their gender has become a social phenomenon, as the idea of gender has broadened to the point that it is seen as a spectrum. The creation of new words outside the two polarizations (i.e., man and woman) could create acknowledgment for the minority group of people with lesser-known gender identities. Using Halliday’s (1994) Transitivity Concept in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study analyzes the clause structures of both Senator Hawley and Professor Bridges to examine the distribution of the six transitivity processes and their relation to the clauses chosen to represent each participant's ideology regarding their views on gender. The different approaches in their arguments regarding gender identity also show the different ideological beliefs of their parties, which are the Republicans and the Democrats. Senator Hawley dominantly uses mental processes consisting of the desideration process, cognition process, and emotion process. In comparison, Professor Bridges shows a high use of relational processes consisting of the attribution process and identification process. Professor Bridges' relational processes point out Senator Hawley's rigid idea of gender by identifying and valuing the variety of genders. The many clauses stated by Professor Bridges also affirm her liberal belief that views gender as more than just two polarizations while also supporting equality in the idea of abortion rights as something that is needed for women and other groups of genders. Senator Hawley counters Professor Bridges' allegations using mental processes by seeking clarification to align their awareness of gender, which reveals his gender polarization. The use of clauses mentioned by Senator Hawley is done to showcase his implied Republican ideology, which does not find significance in the topic of people with the capacity for pregnancy leading to transphobia.