Beiras Ximena, García Giménez Agostina

1) Provide theoretical explanations about each of the following topics.

2) Illustrate with examples.

1) THE TEXT

To Systemic Functional Linguistics, a text is a semantic unit, that is to say a unit of

meaning. It is a unified whole which arises from the language in use, as a product of social

interaction, conveyed and encoded in a particular situation, and realized by sentences,

communicating a collection of meanings in a harmonic way. Thus, a text is always

understood in a particular linguistic context.

It can be considered a passage of whatever length, written or spoken, not a

grammatical unit, but one that carries meanings, expressed by a set of choices the speaker

does, which ones are determined by the social and cultural context. For example, some

aspects of context, such as field, tenor and mode, are defined by the immediate linguistic

and social environment and are clear examples of elements that vary according to the

speaker’s choices.

Field is what is being talked about, the topic of a text; tenor is the relation

established among the participants involved in the interaction, the social distance or

hierarchy, the role relations of power; and mode is the symbolic organization of a text,

how the text is transmitted (the channel of communication), and the role of language

according to the context.

Texture is an important element that let us distinguish a text from non-text. Texture

is what gives unity to a text, by holding the clauses together. Texture includes two

components that are closely related: cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is the internal

organization of a text, whereas coherence is established by the interaction between the

external context and the text itself. A text cannot have texture if there is no reference. The

reference refers to how the writer/speaker introduces topics and participants and keeps

track on them along a text.

Beiras Ximena, García Giménez Agostina

Language can be described as a semiotic system because it encodes meanings which

are socially conveyed, i.e: it involves sets of choices or oppositions conveyed among the

participants with a specific aim during the social interaction. Thus, as a semiotic system,

language has three levels: semantic, lexico-grammar and phonological-graphological.

Within the semantic level, the relation among the text and its internal context, and with

the external one, there are three types of meanings: the experiential meaning is

expressed by the content words of the clauses; the verbs show action, the nouns show

participants and circumstances, the adjectives qualify nouns or noun phrases, etc.; the

interpersonal meaning is shown by the types of clauses and modality used according to

the relation between the interactants; and the textual meaning which is provided by the

sequential implicativeness, the linear sequence in which each fragment of a text creates

the context within which the next bit or chunk of the it can be interpreted.

The lexico-grammar level is the responsible of turning the meanings into words

organized into grammatical structures; and the phonological-graphological one, is the one

in charge of the realization of the text into sounds (phonology), or into graphemes

(graphology).

2) “The Happy Prince”, a short story written by Oscar Wilde was chosen to illustrate

examples to back up the theoretical content developed above.

Firstly, we can say that this tale is a text but to make this assertion, it is necessary to

know if texture is present in this piece of writing, since it is the element that differentiates

text from non-text. To know if “The Happy Prince” has texture, it has to be cohesive and

coherent.

We can say it is coherent because despite the context of the tale was built by the

author, it can be understood due to the similarity with reality, since it is invented with

elements of our real context, creating the own environment in which the story occurs,

which means that coherence is present in it.

Beiras Ximena, García Giménez Agostina

It is also cohesive, because it presents and internal organization of it that conveys

meanings and gives sense to the story, the elements are joined together forming a unified

whole.

Besides, this short story arises as a product of social interaction, from the necessity of

the writer to transmit meanings to the other interactants, to the readers, and is

determined by the writer’s choices of what he wants to communicate and the social and

cultural context. For example, in “The Happy Prince”, we will analyse such aspects of

context as field, tenor and mode, which are defined by the reasons mentioned above.

Field: The topic of this text is a moral of how valuable is to make good deeds for

others, even when we sacrifice ourselves and our own lives, in favor of helping others,

because God, will reward in the eternity of Heaven.

Tenor: The participants involved in this interaction are the writer, who tells the story,

and the readers, especially children, for whom Wilde wrote this short story. There is social

distance, because the writer narrates a tale that the public doesn’t know, he has the

information and he decides to share it with the readers, and he did that by telling it in a

form a short story.

Mode: The channel of communication is written, is a narrative text presented in the

form of a short story.

So, on the whole we can assert that this tale is a text, because texture is present, and

results from a social interaction, determined by aspects of context and the set of choices

the writer does to transmit it.

From page 15, in the short story, we took a fragment of a dialogue between the two main

characters, the Happy Prince and the Swallow to develop the concept of sequential

implicativeness.

Here is the fragment:

-“Who are you?” he said.

-“I am the Happy Prince”.

-“Why are you weeping then?” asked the Swallow; “you have quite drenched me”.

Beiras Ximena, García Giménez Agostina

From this extract, we can assume various things from the context, for example that

the Happy Prince, despite being called happy is crying and feels sad and hopeless, because

of the question of the Swallow, “why are you weeping then?”. In fact, going back in the

text, before this dialogue, it is said “the eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears”.

So, the meaning of this sentence creates the context within which the next one can be

understood.

Another example we found from this conversation is when the Swallow said to the

Happy Prince “you have quite drenched me”, which gives us a hint that probably the

Swallow was stood below the statue of the Prince because he got all wet due to the tears.

This is also an example of sequential implicativeness, because going back several

paragraphs; we found the sentence that gives sense to what the Swallow said: “So he

alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince”. Once again, this sentence creates the

context within which the expression of the bird, “you quite drenched me” can be

comprehended.