Was taken from : Hand Book “An
introduction systemic functional
linguistics by Suzzane Eggins”
 Overview: introduction
 The systemic approach is increasingly being
recognized as providing a very useful
descriptive and interpretive framework for
viewing language as strategic, meaningmaking resource.
Twenty one possible applications of systemic
theory:
2. Theoretical concerns: to understand the
nature and functions of language
3. Historical concerns: to understand how
language evolve through time
4. Developmental concerns: to understand how
a child develops language, and how language
may have evolved in the human specifies
5. Educational concerns: to help people learn
their mother tongue…foreign languages
•
 Authentic products of social interaction
(texts), considered in relation to the cultural
and social context in which they are
negotiated.
 To understand the quality of texts: why a
text means what it does, and why it is valued
as it is
Four main theoretical claims about language:
2. That language use is functional
3. That its function is to make meanings
4. That these meanings are influenced by the
social and cultural context in which they are
exchanged
5. That the process of using language is a
semiotic process, a process of making
meanings by choosing
•
1.
2.
Because it asks functional questions about
language: systemicists ask how do people
use language?
Because it interprets the linguistic system
functionally: systemicists ask how is
language structured for use?
1. Can we differentiate between types of
meanings in language? i.e. how many
different sorts of meanings do we use
language to make?
2. How are texts (and the other linguistic units
which make them up, such as sentences or
clauses) structured so that meanings can be
made? i.e how is language organized to make
meanings?
 Having purpose (clear, pragmatic purpose or
less tangible, but equally important,
interpersonal purpose)
 Complete text (not single isolated sentences)
 Involving at least two communicative moves
 Context is in text
 Evidence of the language/context
relationship: we can deduce/predict context
from text
 Language use is sensitive to context
 Simply not possible to tell how people are
using language if you don’t take into account
the context of use
Yea, I brought some French reds
b. French reds: red wine
c. Friends
d. Let’s both of us start drinking the red wines
•
Exactly what dimensions of context have an
impact on language use. Since clearly not every
aspect of context makes a difference to language
use (e.g. the hair color of the interactants is
usually irrelevant), just what bits of the context
do get “into” the text
• Which aspects of language use appear to be
effected by particular dimensions of the context.
For example, if we contrast texts in which the
interactants are friends with texts where the
interactants are strangers, can we specify where
in the language they use this contextual
difference will be expressed?
•
Register theory describes the impact of
dimensions of the immediate context of situation
of a language even on the way language is used.
• Three key dimensions of the situations are
identified as having significant and predictable
impacts on language use.
c. The register variables of mode: amount of
feedback and role of language (differentiate
speak or write)
d. Tenor: role relations of power and solidarity
(differentiate speak to who (boss/lover))
e. Field: topic or focus of the activity (differentiate
the theme (jogging))
•
The concept of genre is used to describe the
impact of the context of culture on language, by
exploring the staged, step-by-step structure
cultures institutionalize as ways of achieving
goals.
• Examples:
c. Asking times (two moves : a question and an
answer)
d. Telling a story (many steps: set the scene (time,
place, participants), develop the actions, relate
the dramatic events, give the happy ending,
express the judgement on the outcome, wrap
up).
•
 When we describe the staged, structured
way in which people go about achieving goals
using language we are describing genre.
 Example: explanation texts (statement of
problematic behavior, explanation of
possible causes, suggestion alleviating
actions, statement of outlook)
 A higher level of context to which increasing
attention is being given within systemic
linguistics is the level of ideology.
b. The values we hold (consciously or
unconsciously)
c. The biases and perspective we adopt
 Example:
b. That we should write for parents in a very
different way from the way we write for trainee
medical personnel
c. That it is important for the medical text to
foresee the possible negative outcomes of
behavior, while the magazine article foresees
the positive outcomes
WE NEED A WAY OF TALKING ABOUT HOW
LANGUAGE IS NOT JUST REPRESENTING BUT
ACTIVELY CONSTRUCTING OUR VIEW OF THE
WORLD.
 The overall purpose of language can be
described as a semantic one, and each text
we participate in is a record of the meanings
that have been made in particular context.
 Systemic analysis seeks to demonstrate that
linguistic texts are typically making not just
one, but a number of meanings
simultaneously.
 Experiential meanings: real world
 Interpersonal: expresses the writer’s role
relationship with the reader, and the
writer’s attitude towards the subject matter
 Textual: refers to the way the text is
organized as a piece of writing (or speech)
 A system has the following basic
attributes:
b. It consists of a finite set of choices or
oppositions
c. The choices in the system are discrete
d. It is the oppositions, not the substance, in
the system that are important
 TO CONSTRUCT THE SEMIOTIC SYSTEM,
WE NEED TO OBSERVE THAT EACH CHOICE
TRIGGERS DIFFERENT BEHAVIORS IN THE
RECEIVERS.
 Signs in a semiotic system are a fusion or
pairing of a content (meaning) and an
expression (realization or encoding of that
meaning)
 Semiotic systems are established by social
convention.
 Semiotic systems are arbitrary