Revisiting a register assumption from SFG perspective: The case of Ghanaian newspaper editorials

This study tests register theory’s position of extensive similarity in the dominant linguistic features of texts with similar contexts in the face of scholarly claims about the existence of significant linguistic differences in the language of state and private newspapers in Ghana. The data comprised of political editorials published in four leading Ghanaian state and private newspapers published over a period of three months. Using the Systemic Functional Grammar’s transitivity as a tool for analysis, the author examined the patterning of the dominant linguistic element as a test of the assumption. The findings indicate that, across state and private newspapers, the Material process formed the dominant linguistic element, and its patterns of similarity extended to the dominance of the Transformative Elaborating Material processes that are mostly Operative Transitive clauses. The study concludes that the editorials of both groups characteristically possess extreme similarities in the patterning of their dominant linguistic features to be considered registers.