Systemic Functional
Linguistics
Lecture 1
Introduction
Introduction
• 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 speechfunction, 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 coevolves 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 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 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 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