SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL

LINGUISTICS

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41st INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL CONGRESS

X LATIN-AMERICAN SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL CONGRESS

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CUYO, FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS,

MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

TODAY

ISFL CONGRESS: theme, speakers.

VISION OF LANGUAGE.

“HEROES & VILLAINS”.

CONCLUSIONS.2

THE CONGRESS ITSELF

Systemic Functional Linguistics and Language

Education:

Novel applications of well-established and

evolving lines of enquiry to language education

theory and practice

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THE CONGRESS ITSELF

MAIN THEMES OF THE CONFERENCE

Language education and language in education

Child language development

Language typology

SFL and translation studies

Multilinguistic studies

Register and genre theory

(Critical) discourse analysis

Multimodality and multimodal literacy

Appraisal

Language and knowledge

Computational linguistics

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PLENARY SPEAKERS

Ann Borsinger

Cecilia Colombi

Susan Hood

James Martin

Karl Maton

Teresa Oteíza

Caroline Coffin

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PLENARY LECTURES

COFFIN , CAROLINE (The Open University, UK)

A LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL SEMIOTIC APPROACH

TO TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HIGHER

EDUCATION.

approach put forward: LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL

SEMIOTIC (LASS) to teaching and learning.

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LEARNING LANGUAGE, LEARNING THROUGH

LANGUAGE & LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGE

(Halliday, 2004/1980)

PLENARY LECTURES

Susan Hood ( Australia)

THE LECTURING BODY AND LEARNING TO

MEAN IN THE UNCOMMON-SENSE WAY OF

DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES.

the opportunity for students to participate in live

lectures- declining.

Discourse dichotomising : the old as bad with the

new as good.

Body language of lecturers- interaction. 7

PLENARY LECTURES

Len, Unsworth.

ELEVATING EMPATHY IN ANIMATED MOVIE

ADAPTATIONS OF PICTURE BOOKS:

EXPLORING MEDIA-SPECIFIC ORIENTATIONS

TO FOCALIZATION, SOCIAL DISTANCE AND

ATTITUDE.

Interaction of social distance, horizontal, vertical

angle – a means of inscribing the audience

viewpoint.8

PLENARY LECTURES

MARY MACKEN-HORARIK (Australia)

DEVELOPING A GRAMMATICS “GOOD ENOUGH”

FOR SCHOOL ENGLISH: four proposals and

some data.

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MARY MACKEN-HORARIK

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MARY MACKEN-HORARIK

JIM MARTIN

University of Sidney.

REVISITING FIELD: “ SEMANTIC DENSITY” IN

ANCIENT HISTORY AND BIOLOGY DISCOURSE.

“semantic gravity”, “contextual dependency”

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FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

HALLIDAY

Functional →in the sense that it is designed to

account for how the language is used:

everything in it can be explained by reference to

how language is used.

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FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

THE FUNDAMENTAL COMPONENTS OF

MEANING: are functional components.

All languages are organized around two

main kinds of meaning, two “METAFUNCTIONS”

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FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

METAFUNCTIONS

they are the manifestations in the linguistic system

of the two very general purposes which underlie all

uses of language:

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THE IDEATIONAL or “reflective”: TO UNDERSTAND THE

ENVIRONMENT.

THE INTERPERSONAL or “active”: TO ACT ON THE

OTHERS IN THE ENVIRONMENT.

Combined with these is a third

metafunctional component: THE TEXTUAL:

which breathes relevance into the other two.

WHY SYSTEMIC ?

SYSTEMIC THEORY: a theory of MEANING AS CHOICE, by which a language, or any other semiotic system, is interpreted as networks of interlocking options: “either this , or that, or the other”. Whatever is chosen in one system becomes the way into a set of choices in another.

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES EXPLAINED AS THE

REALIZATION OF SEMANTIC PATTERNS.

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TODAY

ISFL CONGRESS: theme, speakers.

VISION OF LANGUAGE.

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FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGE

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Form – Use

→Communication: communicative competence, participants, context.

Language: sentences, structures→ printed text, speech.

iceberg

• Ideology.

• Power.

• Identities.

- LANGUAGE ↔CONTEXT.

- LANGUAGE ↔SOCIETY.

THE HOW

Critical Discourse Analysis - CDA.

Language social practice.

Use intention.

Visible connections.

Constructive effect of discourse.

Specific discursive acts ↔ socio-cultural

context.

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THE HOW

SFLDISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH

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TODAY

ISFL CONGRESS: theme,

speakers.

VISION OF LANGUAGE.

“HEROES & VILLAINS”.

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CONSTRUCTIVE DISCOURSE

Wodak (1999): discourses - identities → four social

macrofuntions:

production.

construction.

maintenance.

transformation and destruction.

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DISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH

Socio-historical context.

Content: analysis of discursive construction of identities.

Strategies:

- macro: construction & destruction.

- micro strategies: positive self-representation.

Negative: the others23

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Macro strategies construction →micro strategies→ destruction →”we” – distancing & exclusion of the other.

“Us” & “ The others” constitute a standardised relational couple : use one of the pair – invoking the other (Leudar 2004).

- Images: “ a language that

evokes in the reader’s

mind a physical sensation

produced by one of the

senses “. (Kirszner

&Mandell 1994,p. 654).-

- Shared History, common

origin.

Destroying to construct Shared culture (bonds, ties)-

togetherness

CONTEXT OF CULTURE

Each text has its environment; the

“context of situation” in Manilowski’s terms the overall language

system has its environment,“Context

of culture”.

The context of culture

determines the nature of the

code.

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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

HEROES & VILLAINS :

THEIR DISCURSIVE

CONSTRUCTION BY BUSH

AFTER 9/11

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THE CITY UPON THE HILL

“For we must consider that we shall be as

a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people

are upon us. So that if we shall deal

falsely with our God in this work we

have undertaken… we shall be made a

story and a by-word throughout the

world" (John Winthrop 1630, p. 47)

Light, example for the rest of the world.

Common past, construction a present & political futures.

Cultural shared values & ideologies → national unity

→legitimization.

Internal Cohesion →external threat→ enemy.27

USE OF SYMBOLS “LIGHT" &

“DARKNESS"

LIGHT

(the Americans)

DARKNESS

(the enemy)

The way to defeat that ideology

is with an ideology of light.

They’ve got an ideology, but it’s

and ideology that is dark and

dismal.

The day they feared has

arrived. And with it has come a

moment of great clarity.

This enemy plots in shadows.

We’ re the brightest beacon for

freedom and opportunity in the

world. And no one will keep

that light from shining.

The darkness of terror will be

defeated.

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CONCLUSIONS

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Analysis of processes of construction.

National identity ↔ enemy’sidentity.

“US ” vs “ THEM”.

Equilibrium/ desequilibrium.

Construction/confrontation.

QUESTIONS.

To strenghthen national

identity?

Audience?

Legitimization?

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FOR LISTENING!