Transitivity System and Meaning in Presidential Election Discourse in Selected Nigerian Online Newspapers (2011- 2019)

Language is an instrument of communication usually deployed by speakers to express their worldview and opinions on every issue, politics not an exception. This study is designed to investigate the representation of public opinions on the Nigerian presidential election results in Nigerian online newspapers, with a view to determining the extent to which meaning is construed and understood in political discourse, especially in presidential election results in Nigerian online newspapers. The ideational meta- function, an aspect of Halliday’s (1985) Systemic Functional Grammar that treats the transitivity process is adopted in this study. Six widely read Nigerian online newspapers (Vanguard, Punch, Nigerian Tribune, The Nation, Leadership and The Guardian) published between February and April of the election years in 2011 – 2019 were purposively selected and subjected to linguistic and qualitative method of analysis. The analysis revealed that aspects of the material, mental, and verbal processes feature luxuriantly in explicating opinions and attitudes of people towards the presidential election results in Nigeria.