The ideational realization of the grammatical category of subject in light of Systemic Functional Linguistics: a case study based on editorials from the newspaper O Globo

Abstract

This article analyzes the ideational realization of the grammatical category Subject in two editorials published in the newspaper O Globo in August 2025, both centered on issues related to the Amazon in the context of COP30. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the study investigates how lexico-grammatical choices concerning Subject vary according to the context of situation, the editorial genre, and the degree of controversy associated with the problem situations addressed. The study is grounded on the hypothesis that there is a continuum between forms of high referential specificity and strategies of erasure or attenuation of semantic responsibility for the processes represented in the clause, especially in passages of greater argumentative density. Anchored in the assumptions of Systemic Functional Grammar, particularly the ideational metafunction and the transitivity system, the analysis demonstrates that the lexico-grammatical configuration of Subject constitutes a strategic resource for guiding the reader’s interpretation and for discursively managing the institutional positioning of the editorial. The findings show that different lexico-grammatical structures of Subject realization contribute to conveying varying degrees of agency and responsibility, allowing the text to sustain evaluations and judgments with different levels of enunciative commitment. The study also demonstrates the productivity of the theoretical and methodological apparatus of Systemic Functional Linguistics for the critical analysis of discursive phenomena associated with clause organization in argumentative genres of the journalistic sphere.