This research’s content is the analysis of biography texts about Elon Musk taken from Britannica, BBC, Business Insider, and Investopedia websites using the combination of SFL’s transitivity and Leeuwen’s social actor representation approach. The aims of this research are (1) to find the portrayal patterns of the social actor using social actor approach, (2) to find the linguistic evidences of the patterns using transitivity, (3) to xplain the portrayal of the social actor based on the patterns found, and (4) to compare the results with the context and genre of biography.
This research is categorized as a descriptive-qualitative research by using transitivity and Leeuwen’s social actor approach. Spradely’s method of domain, taxonomy, omponential, and cultural context analysis is used to collect and analyze the data. The data sources for this research are four biography texts about Elon Musk taken from four different websites. The sources are chosen by applying several criteria as follows: (1) the texts are taken from news websites in English, (2) the texts are classified as biographies, and (3) the texts are focusing on the figure of Elon Musk.
The research produced several results as follows: (1) the writers portrayed the social actor using various social actor representation patterns in order to convey their intention and stance in relation with the social actor, (2) transitivity used to identify the processes contained in the texts, and then the processes are analyzed to figure out the social actor representation patterns, thus providing the linguistic evidences, (3) social actor representation patterns that are the most consistently occurring are: activation, passivation (subjection and beneficialization), determination, nomination, functionalisation, and instrumentalisation.
These patterns can be deduced as the obligatory patterns that are necessary in biography texts, and (4) the texts analyzed are relevant and in accordance with the qualities of a biography text.
Keywords: social actor representation, transitivity, biography, Leeuwen, Elon Musk
