Systemic Functional Linguistics

Lecture 1

Introduction

IntroductionIntroduction

• Systemic, or Systemic-Functional, theory has its origins in the main intellectual tradition of European linguistics that developed following the work of Saussure. Like other such theories, both those from the mid-20th century (e.g. Prague school, French functionalism), it is functional and semantic rather than formal and syntactic in orientation, takes the text rather than the sentence as its object, and defines its scope by reference to usage rather than grammaticality.

Introduction

• Its primary source was the work of J.R. Firth and his colleagues in London; as well as other schools of thought in Europe. It also draws on American anthropological linguistics, and on traditional and modern linguistics as developed in China.

Introduction

• Its immediate source is as a development of scale-&-category grammar. The name "systemic" derives from the term SYSTEM, in its technical sense as defined by Firth (1957); system is the theoretical representation of paradigmatic relations, contrasted with STRUCTURE for syntagmatic relations. In Firth's system-structure theory, neither of these is given priority; and in scale-&-category grammar this perspective was maintained.

Introduction

• In systemic theory the system takes priority; the most abstract representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms. Syntagmatic organization is interpreted as the REALIZATION of paradigmatic features.

Introduction

• In systemic theory the system takes priority; the most abstract representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms. Syntagmatic organization is interpreted as the REALIZATION of paradigmatic features.

The Theory

• Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language centred around the notion of language function. While SFL accounts for the syntactic structure of language, it places the function of language as central (what language does, and how it does it), in preference to more structural approaches, which place the elements of language and their combinations as central. SFL starts at social context, and looks at how language both acts upon, and is constrained by, this social context.

The Theory

• A central notion is 'stratification', such that language is analysed in terms of four strata: Context, Semantics, Lexico-Grammar and Phonology-Graphology.

• Context concerns the Field (what is going on), Tenor (the social roles and relationships between the participants), and the Mode (aspects of the channel of communication, e.g., monologic /dialogic, spoken/written, +/- visual-contact, etc.).

The Theory

• Systemic semantics includes what is usually called 'pragmatics'. Semantics is divided into three components:

Ideational Semantics (the propositional content); Interpersonal Semantics (concerned with speech-

function, exchange structure, expression of attitude, etc.);

• Textual Semantics (how the text is structured as a message, e.g., theme-structure, given/new, rhetorical structure etc.

The Theory

• The Lexico-Grammar concerns the syntactic organisation of words into utterances. Even here, a functional approach is taken, involving analysis of the utterance in terms of roles such as Actor, Agent/Medium, Theme Mood, etc. (See Halliday 1994 for full description).

History of Systemics

• SFL grew out of the work of JR Firth, a British linguist of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but was mainly developed by his student MAK Halliday. He developed the theory in the early sixties (seminal paper, Halliday 1961), based in England, and moved to Australia in the Seventies, establishing the department of linguistics at the University of Sydney. Through his teaching there, SFL has spread to a number of institutions throughout Australia, and around the world. Australian Systemics is especially influential in areas of language education.

History of Systemics

• SFL teaching and research also continued in the UK, with main proponents including Margaret Berry, Dick Hudson (before moving on), Chris Butler, Robin Fawcett, and many others. Another branch was established in Toronto, Canada, under Michael Gregory (a British colleague of Halliday), and later Jim Benson, Michael Cummings, and Bill Greaves. SFL teaching is now taught around the globe.

Child Language Development

• Some of Halliday's early work involved the study of his son's developing language abilities. This study in fact has had a substantial influence on the present systemic model of adult language, particularly in regard to the metafunctions. This work has been followed by other child language development work, especially that of Clare Painter. Ruquaya Hasan has also performed studies of interactions between children and mothers.

Systemics and Computation

• SFL has been prominent in computational linguistics, especially in Natural Language Generation. Penman, an NLG system started at Information Sciences Institute in 1980, is one of the three main such systems, and has influenced much of the work in the field. John Bateman has extended this system into a multilingual text generator, KPML. Robin Fawcett in Cardiff have developed another systemic generator, called Genesys. Mick O'Donnell has developed yet another system, called WAG. Numerous other systems have been built using Systemic grammar, either in whole or in part.

Communication planes: Language and social context

• From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics the oral and written texts we engage with and produce have their particular linguistic form because of the social purposes they fulfill. The focus is not on texts as decontextualized structural entities in their own right but rather on the mutually predictive relationships between texts and the social practices they realise.

Language and social context

• The form of human language is as it is since it co-evolves with the meanings which co-evolve with the community's contexts of social interaction (Hasan, 1992:24).

• SFL then, treats language and social context as complementary levels of semiosis, related by the concept of realisation. The relationship between language and social context has been represented using the image of co-tangential circles as in Figure 4.1 (Halliday and Martin, 1993:25).

Levels of Social ContextLevels of Social Context

• The interpretation of social context then includes two communication planes, genre (context of culture) and register (context of situation) (Martin,1992:495).

The context of culture can be thought of as deriving from a vast complex network of all of the genres which make up a particular culture. Genres are staged, goal oriented

social processes in which people engage as members of the culture. These genres include all of those routines from everyday experience such as purchase of goods (food,

clothing etc), medical consultation, eating in a restaurant etc to the genres of particular forms of social life

including church services, TV interviews, getting arrested etc.

Of course they also include genres which are valued in schooling. Lectures are genres, as are groupwork and

tutorials etc and written genres such as narratives, reports, explanations, procedures, expositions and many others.

These genres have their own distinctive structures because of the social purposes they fulfill in the culture. They occur in particular situation types and it is the characteristics of

this situation type that influence the forms of language that realize the genre. So the context of situation (register) is the second aspect of social context that influences the linguistic

realization of the genre.

Levels of Social ContextLevels of Social Context

• The context of situation of a text has been theorised by Halliday (Halliday and Hasan, 1985:12) in terms of the contextual variables of Field, Tenor and Mode.

Levels of Social ContextLevels of Social Context

• The FIELD OF DISCOURSE refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place: what is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component?

• Language bridges from the cultural meanings of social context (the social hierarchies and role relationships, the institutional activities, and the related distribution of language use within these) to sound or writing. It does this by moving from higher orders of abstraction to lower ones. These orders of abstraction are organised into three levels or strata - semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology (or graphology).

• Semantics is the interface between language and context of situation (register). Semantics is therefore concerned with the meanings that are involved with the three situational variables Field, Tenor and Mode. Ideational meanings realise Field, interpersonal meanings realise Tenor and textual meanings realise Mode.

• Lexicogrammar is a resource for wording meanings, ie. realising them as configurations of lexical and grammatical items. It follows then, that lexicogrammar is characterised by the same kind of metafunctional diversification discussed above. This takes us back to our discussion in section three where we showed that functional grammar included three separate analyses, each describing the construction of one of three different kinds of meaning which all operate simultaneously in each clause.

• Ideational (experiential and logical) meanings construing Field are realised lexicogrammatically by the system of Transitivity. This system interprets and represents our experience of phenomena in the world and in our consciousness by modelling experiential meanings in terms of participants, processes and circumstances. Resources for chaining clauses into clause complexes, and for serialising time by means of tense, address logical meanings.

• Interpersonal meanings are realised lexicogrammatically by systems of Mood and Modality and by the selection of attitudinal lexis. The Mood system is the central resource establishing and maintaining an ongoing exchange between interactants by assuming and assigning speech roles such as giving or demanding goods and services or information.

• Thus the giving of information or goods and services is grammaticalised as declaratives, questions are grammaticalised as interrogatives and commands as imperatives. Modality is the resource concerned with the domain of the negotiation of the proposition or proposal between the categorical extremes of positive or negative. The negotiation may be in terms of probability, usuality, obligation or inclination.

Textual meanings are concerned with the ongoing orchestration of interpersonal and ideational information as text in context. Lexicogrammatically textual meanings are realised by systems of Theme and Information. Theme selections establish the orientation or angle on the interpersonal and ideational concerns of the clause whereas Information organises the informational status or relative newsworthiness of these concerns.

Systemics in China

• The 1970s

Fang Li, Hu Zhuanglin and Xu Kerong

• From the 1980s up to the present

• Systemics in China• Reasons for the development

Scholars to Sydney University

MA and PhD Programs

Biannual Conferences: Systemics, Text Analysis

Conferences

Collections

Papers

End of Lecture 1