Abstract:
This research studied the meta function of the language that appears in the messages about tax posted by Thai people on Twitter. The objective of this research was to analyze the system of Theme, the system of Attitude, the system of Transitivity, and linguistic strategies. The samples consisted of 1,447 tweets about tax from 2019 to 2020. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was applied in the data analysis. The result of the system of Theme indicated that the Topical theme occurred at the highest rate with 984 tweets (68.00%) followed by the Interpersonal theme, with 309 tweets (21.36%), and the Textual theme, with 154 tweets (10.64%) respectively. The material process was found most often in the Topical theme. It reflected that the writers used verbs in the Theme by the omission of subjects or actors that the writers and the readers had mutual awareness of. Moreover, the result of the system of Attitude showed that Judgement occurred at the highest rate, with 704 utterances (41.98%) followed by Affect, with 532 utterances (31.72%), and Appreciation, with 441 utterances (26.30%) respectively. Mostly criticisms of the capacity of public officials. Additionally, the result of the system of Transitivity revealed that the most frequent type of process was Material, with 6,329 verbs (58.71%) followed by Mental, with 1,212 verbs (11.24%), Existential, with 1,004 verbs (9.32%), Relational, with 991 verbs (9.19%), Verbal, with 624 verbs (5.79%), and Behavioral, with 620 verbs (5.75%) respectively. The messages about tax were linked with situations that happened in society, especially the work of the government or public officials. In addition, the result of the linguistics strategies included lexical choice, representing people, presupposition, metaphor, modality, negation, verbal irony, intertextuality, and rhetorical questions. Furthermore, the result of analyzing the messages about tax by SFL reflected the ideology about tax 2 ideologies which were 1) taxation and citizen and 2) taxation and government or public officials. Besides, the government or related organizations can use the results of this research to promote the image. To build confidence and show taxpayers the benefits they receive from their taxes in a more concrete way.