Published in the Proceedings of the ISCA 12th International Conference, pp. 181-185
Towards the Application of Systemic Functional Linguistics in Writing Tools
Sandra Maria Aluisio1 and Rex E. Gantenbein
Department of Computer Science
University of Wyoming
Abstract
being developed at the University of Wyoming.
The goal of this paper is twofold: (1) to present a
writing-support tool which uses both text corpora approach
for linguistic analysis and text reuse to assist non-native
English writers, and (2) to describe an enhancement to the
tool’s self-review process that uses a Systemic Functional
Linguistic (SFL) model of language. SFL provides a
framework for categorizing the major text adaptations
available to the writer during the self-review process. Making
explicit the SFL-based textual reformulation of published
English-language papers can provide a way to develop
students’ academic drafting and revising skills in a foreign
language. This approach presents both the reasons for, and
the effects of, specific changes made during the self-review
process. Explaining the genre writing skills performed by
native expert authors in a linguistically-motivated way is a
first step in building an effective learning environment for
scientific writing.
AMADEUS targets the understanding of the diverse
processes involved in the creation of successful scientific
papers. Its overall architecture embodies both advising and
tutoring tools. AMADEUS was motivated by previous
research [11] which used a framework for error
categorization and error gravity analyses and applied it to
theses, articles and research reports written in English
produced by Brazilian graduate students. This work observed
that localized errors (i.e., those which can be treated in
isolation with the use of a dictionary, a grammar book or
related software tools) do not interfere with communication
as much as those which affect the global meaning of the text
or the meaning of large chunks of text. Problems with intersentence relationships or with meanings of a more global
nature, as well as with functional meanings in discourse, tend
to be better corrected by means of input material based on
naturally occurring examples. This linguistic material offers
micro-elements within a context; these form the
macrostructure of the text which is molded by the schematic
structure of its specific genre.
Keywords: educational programs, technical writing, casebased reasoning, Systemic Functional Linguistics.
1. Introduction
The use of text corpora in computational linguistics
research is now well-established [1-5]. In addition, corpora
are increasingly being used in teaching language and writing,
including the direct exploration of corpora by foreign
language students. Another vein of research in the teaching
of language and writing skills is the use of Systemic
Functional Linguistics (SFL) in applications such as foreign
language teaching and the design of syllabi [6], description
of non-native English (NNE) speakers' scientific texts [7,8],
and the analysis of textual revisions by native speakers in
NNE writing [9,10].
The present work focuses on the two lines of research
described above, paying special attention to the teaching of a
particular skill  the writing of scientific texts  addressed
to novice NNE students and researchers. The Writing
Support tool described in Section 2 is part of a learning
environment for scientific writing (AMADEUS) currently
Several publications have presented complementary
aspects of this project. This paper expands the scope of the
previous research by presenting an SFL-based design for the
self-review process of the case-based writing-support tool.
Section 2 provides a scenario for the proposed design by
giving a brief overview of the existing case-based writingsupport tool. Section 3 introduces an SFL framework for
textual revisions in scientific research papers. Section 4
discusses the design rationale and presents examples of the
use of SFL-based revisions. The paper concludes with a
summary of the new opportunities made available to writing
tool development by such use of SFL, and a discussion of
future directions.
2. Overview of the Case-Based Writing Support Tool
The reuse of linguistic material from a corpus, acquired
either manually or by semi-automatic tools, has been
employed in a range of systems, from report generators to
document drafting tools. In the AMADEUS tool, linguistic
material is reused to improve the cohesion and coherence of
1 On leave from the Department of Computer Science, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
the introduction of a scientific paper. The tool utilizes casebased reasoning (CBR) [12] to model the planning, drafting,
and revising stages of the writing process [13].
A number of works have been published on the
schematic structure of introductory sections in Englishlanguage experimental research papers. However, to apply
CBR to the design of writing tools it is necessary to perform
a detailed corpus analysis. Although the global structure of a
text may possess a relatively well-defined schema, as
suggested by [14] and [15], its more detailed structure,
composed of rhetorical strategies, may be organized in
different ways. Moreover, text reuse requires an indexing
vocabulary sufficient to discriminate amongst texts on the
basis of the characteristics relevant to the purpose for which
knowledge sources were applied to the three stages of the
writing process. Accordingly, the user follows a three-step
procedure: i) gathering of features, in which the user selects
the features intended for his/her Introduction; ii) selection of
the best-match case, following case recovery by the system;
iii) procedural revision/adaptation on the selected case in
order to insert the user’s own text.
The screen-shot presented in Figure 1 illustrates the
gathering phase of the writing tool using a case base
consisting of Physics papers. In Figure 1, the writer chooses
the main components  setting, literature review, gap,
purpose, methodology, main results, value of the research,
and layout of the paper  and strategies  introducing
Figure 1: Gathering of structural features.
the text is being retrieved.
The detailed schematic structure (shown in Figure 1), the
notation used in defining the rhetorical strategies, and the
rhetorical structures of the introduction corpus (one example
is shown in Figure 3) have been used in a case-based system2
for assisting NNE speakers to write scientific texts. These
2
The case base contains 54 annotated Introductions, with each case
consisting of the Introduction plus its rhetorical structure. The schematic
structure for the analyzed Introductions is composed of 8 components,
30 rhetorical strategies and 45 different kinds of messages.
research topic from the research area, historical review,
listing criteria or conditions, for example  to be included
in the introduction along with the writer’s degree of certainty
about their relative order in the text  sure about the order,
some doubts, and many doubts.
To recover cases, three types of pattern matching
between the selected features and the available cases are
used: perfect match (equal lists), proper undermatch (sublist)
and non-proper undermatch (intersection). The tool selects
cases to be returned to the user by evaluating various
combinations of these three similarity metrics, with the
particular combination used depending on the degree of
Social Systems and Structures
certainty of the user about the order of the components and
strategies.
3. A Systemic Functional Linguistics Framework for
Textual Revisions
In this section, we illustrate how novice writers can
benefit from the use of an SFL framework in the self-review
process. Following Martin’s approach to genre and register3
[18], the schematic structure of a genre constrains the
combinatorial variable realizations of register, which in turn
determine semantic/discourse and other linguistic structures
(Figure 2).
While books on technical writing and professional
reviewers focus mainly on lexico-grammatical and
orthographical strata4 in text writing, the organization of
genres in terms of schematic structures also plays an
important role, specifically in the way those structures are
realized through register, and ultimately through Ideational,
Interpersonal and Textual functions [9]. The Ideational metafunction expresses relations between an author and the
subject matter, the Interpersonal expresses relations between
the author and the audience, while the Textual meta-function
expresses the options for text structures appropriate to a
particular situation.
In light of the above discussions, Gosden outlines a
method for analysis of textual revisions in scientific texts.
The four categories of Gosden’s revisions are: (1) addition of
technical detail or statements [+TD]; (2) deletion of technical
detail or statements [-TD]; (3) reshuffling of statements [R];
and (4) rhetorical machining [RM]. The last category is
subdivided according to three basic orientations: (4.1)
rhetorical machining of discourse structure (by means of
thematic (theme-rheme) and information (given-new)
structures and cohesive relations) [Rmd]; (4.2) changes
which relate to writers’ claims and to writers’ own research
hypotheses and limitations work [RMc] (this also includes
their research position to other published works); (4.3)
rhetorical machining which relates to the writers’ purpose,
reasons for, results of research actions taken, and conclusions
reached [RMp].
3
4
Genre is a culture-specific category textually encoding a situation as it can
typically occur in a culture or linguistic community [16]. Register is
described in terms of the three parameters of field, tenor and mode. Field
refers to the nature of the social action that is taking place. Tenor refers
to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles. Mode refers
what the participants are expecting the language to do for them in the
situation [17].
For example, article use, lexical choice, syntactic structure, use of
prepositions, and punctuation.
Context of
Culture
Context of
Situation
GENRE
REGISTER
Schematic
Structure
Field
Tenor
Mode
Determine
choices in
Are reflected
in choices in
Language Systems and Structures
Semantic/Discourse
Stratum
METAFUNCTIONAL
COMPONENTS
Ideational
Interpersonal
Textual
Lexicogrammatical
Stratum
SYSTEMS &
STRUCTURES
Transitivity
Mood
Theme
Are realized
by choices in
Figure 2: Martin’s systemic stratified view of the context of
genre and register, and the linguistic strata of the
semantic/discourse and the lexicogrammar (taken from [10])
4. The Self-Review Process
The writing-support tool was designed to use the CBR
paradigm for problem-solving. Four revision operations
were previously proposed and designed to be used in a semiautomated way. A fully automated implementation of the
self-review process would have required the use of powerful
CL techniques5, which are not within the scope of this
research.
The procedural revisions available were: i) changes in
the lexical and syntactic material of the messages, ii) change
of the selected strategy by replacement with a similar one, iii)
addition of messages to a specific strategy, and iv) deletion
of messages. Operations ii), iii) and iv) are derived directly
from the notation for rhetorical strategies: a message may
have an alternative, may occur one or more times, zero or
more times, or may be optional. Operation i) was designed to
lend paraphrasing power to the tool. No additional help or
explanation was to be provided in this first design for the
revision phase.
Table 1: Mapping between Procedural and SFL-based self-review
Procedural
Deletion of optional messages in strategies
Addition of optional messages in strategies
Changing linguistic material and Exchanging
a strategy/message for a similar one (features:
rhetorical promotion and demotion of technical detail)
Changing linguistic material (feature: markedness)
Changing linguistic material (features: hedging devices
and modality)
Changing linguistic material (features: reason, purpose,
and result) and Addition of optional messages in
strategies
5
SFL-based
[-TD]
[+TD]
[R]
[RMd]
[RMc]
[RMp]
See, for example, work on implementing sentence generation and using
revision rules to add new messages while preserving the conciseness of
reports [3].
4.1 SFL-based Self-Review
The new proposed approach to self-review uses
Gosden’s four major categories of textual revisions presented
in Section 3, and makes a mapping between them and the
procedural revisions of the support tool (Table 1).
To build a learning environment (the goal in enlarging the
scope of the current AMADEUS tools), it is believed
necessary to: introduce the available revisions in an
understandable way to a novice writer; explain the reasons
for particular revisions; and show the effects of revisions on
specific examples. The proposed design for self-review
follows this rationale by wrapping the procedural revisions
and giving them an SFL interpretation.
The corpus must be analyzed to identify occurrences of
features described in Table 1. For example, the features
rhetorical promotion and rhetorical demotion of technical
detail are related to the syntactic structure of sentences
because there are three possibilities for clause/sentence
combining: sentence connection/juxtaposition, clause
coordination and clause subordination. Clauses can be
promoted from a subordinate arrangement to a coordination
or juxtaposition arrangement. The reverse operation is true
for demotion. The features markedness, hedging devices,
reason, purpose and results are related to the presence of
different markers within the sentence. Markedness, for
example, includes in addition, here, furthermore, as well as
expressions of discourse organization, such as: as shown in
Figure 1, the first is, these are summarized. Finally, the
feature modality highlight the use of adverbs used to
comment on the content of the communication: possibly,
certainly, probably, etc.
Several aspects of the proposed design for the selfreview process are described below.
Activation of the revisions. The revisions receive
names which are related to their effect on text rather than
their method of implementation. They are activated by the
following names: addition of technical detail; deletion of
technical detail; promotion of technical detail; demotion of
technical detail; addition of text organization markers
(discourse markers); addition of discourse markers to make
explicit the writer’s claims; use of modality; addition of
discourse markers to make explicit the writer’s research
hypotheses and limitations; addition of discourse markers to
make explicit the writer’s research position in relation to
other published work; addition of markers to make explicit
the writer’s purpose, the expression of reasons for, and the
results of, research actions.
Justification for the activation of the revisions. When,
for example, the user activates addition or deletion of
technical details, an explanation of the possible revisions
which can be performed on a strategy is presented. This
explanation is based on the notation for strategies used by the
writing tool and it makes the user aware of the kind of
information a specific genre is supposed to contain.
Display of the effects of the revisions. The potential
revisions on a text may be shown by using markers from
Gosden’s framework. Figure 3 illustrates one of the possible
ways to show revisions using the text of a case previously
recovered from the specifications in Figure 1. In this
example, bold text presents reusable material, italics
highlights SFL-based revisions, while bold italics presents
reusable material in the revisions.
5. Conclusions
This paper has presented an experimental application of
an SFL framework, in the context of a writing-support tool,
and has shown that such use can be the first step in the
building of a learning environment for the teaching of
technical writing. The major improvement that the use of
SFL offers is that the revision focus is oriented towards the
text not towards sentences, thus assisting the problem of
cohesion, which writers commonly face when adding and
removing material to the structure of a chosen case. While
the previous procedural self-review performs the same
process, SFL provides a superior interface to the writer,
allowing the presentation of text-linguistic justifications for
the revisions in a form easily understood by novice writers.
Future work within the scenario described here will include:
(a) implementation of the proposed approach in a case base
of Computer Science papers, (b) expansion of the genres
available for the above discipline, incorporating, for
example, the classification of types of papers used in CHI
conferences: empirical research, experience, systems, theory,
methodology, and opinion papers, and (c) testing an
implementation of the proposed approach with real users to
evaluate the additional increased teaching capability.
Acknowledgements. The research presented in this paper
was supported by CNPq (Brazilian Research Council) under
a post-doctoral research grant.
Figure 3: Displaying the SFL revisions for a recoved Introduction
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