Systemic functional grammar (SFG) or systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a model of grammar developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s.1 It is part of a broad social semiotic approach to language called systemic linguistics. The term "systemic" refers to the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making meaning";2 The term "functional" indicates that the approach is concerned with the contextualized, practical uses to which language is put, as opposed to formal grammar, which focuses on compositional semantics, syntax and word classes such as nouns and verbs.
Systemic functional grammar is concerned primarily with the choices the grammar makes available to speakers and writers.1 These choices relate speakers' and writers' intentions to the concrete forms of a language. Traditionally the "choices" are viewed in terms of either the content or the structure of the language used. In SFG, language is analysed in three different ways (strata): semantics, phonology, and lexicogrammar.3 SFG presents a view of language in terms of both structure (grammar) and words (lexis). The term "lexicogrammar" describes this combined approach.
Metafunctions
According to SFG, functional bases of grammatical phenomena are divided into three broad areas, called metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual.4 Written and spoken texts can be examined with respect to each of these metafunctions in register analyses.5
The ideational metafunction
The ideational metafunction is divided into two: experiential and logical metafunctions. The experiential metafunction organises our experience and understanding of the world. It is the potential of the language to construe figures with elements (such as screen shots of a moving picture or pictures of a comic novel) and its potential to differentiate these elements into processes, the participants in these processes, and the circumstances in which the processes occur. The logical metafunction works above the experiential. It organises our reasoning on the basis of our experience. It is the potential of the language to construe logical links between figures; for example, "this happened after that happened" or, with more experience, "this happens every time that happens".
The ideational metafunction relates to the field aspects of a text, or its subject matter and context of use.6 Field is divided into three areas: semantic domain, specialisation, and angle of representation.7
Within the semantic domain, SFG proponents examine the subject matter of a text through organising its nominal groups (nouns / noun phrases) and its lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. These are the words that carry lexical meaning in a text, as opposed to function words, whose purpose is purely grammatical‚ that is, their purpose lies only in relation to other words in the vicinity.
Specialisation is partially determined through attention to jargon or other technical vocabulary items.8
Examining the angle of representation involves a close look at types of processes, participants, and circumstances.9
The interpersonal metafunction
The interpersonal metafunction relates to a text's aspects of tenor or interactivity.10 Like field, tenor comprises three component areas: the speaker/writer persona, social distance, and relative social status.11 Social distance and relative social status are applicable only to spoken texts.12. Note - this is not so, looking at the text of O´Halloran we are told that we no longer have the option to contrast the various speakers but we can examine "how the individual authors present themselves to the reader", therefore, we are able to look at social distance and relative social status in texts where there is only one author.
The speaker/writer persona concerns the stance, personalisation and standing of the speaker or writer. This involves looking at whether the writer or speaker has a neutral attitude, which can be seen through the use of positive or negative language. Social distance means how close the speakers are, e.g. how the use of nicknames shows the degree to which they are intimate. Relative social status asks whether they are equal in terms of power and knowledge on a subject, for example, the relationship between a mother and child would be considered unequal. Focuses here are on speech acts (e.g. whether one person tends to ask questions and the other speaker tends to answer), who chooses the topic, turn management, and how capable both speakers are of evaluating the subject.13
The textual metafunction
The textual metafunction relates to mode; the internal organisation and communicative nature of a text.14 This comprises textual interactivity, spontaneity and communicative distance.15
Textual interactivity is examined with reference to disfluencies such as hesitators, pauses and repetitions.
Spontaneity is determined through a focus on lexical density, grammatical complexity, coordination (how clauses are linked together) and the use of nominal groups. The study of communicative distance involves looking at a text’s cohesion—that is, how it hangs together, as well as any abstract language it uses.
Cohesion is analysed in the context of both lexical and grammatical as well as intonational aspects16 with reference to lexical chains17 and, in the speech register, tonality, tonicity, and tone.18 The lexical aspect focuses on sense relations and lexical repetitions, while the grammatical aspect looks at repetition of meaning shown through reference, substitution and ellipsis, as well as the role of linking adverbials.
Systemic functional grammar deals with all of these areas of meaning equally within the grammatical system itself.
Children’s grammar
Michael Halliday (1973) outlined seven functions of language with regard to the grammar used by children:19
- the instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen;
- the regulatory function of language is the control of events;
- the representational function is the use of language to make statements, convey facts and knowledge, explain, or report to represent reality as the speaker/writer sees it;
- the interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance;
- the personal function is to express emotions, personality, and “gut-level” reactions;
- the heuristic function used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment;
- the imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas.
Relation to other branches of grammar
Halliday's theory sets out to explain how spoken and written texts construe meanings and how the resources of language are organised in open systems and functionally bound to meanings. This is a radically different theory of language from Noam Chomsky's. It does not try to address Chomsky's thesis that there is a "finite rule system which generates all and only the grammatical sentences in a language?".citation needed Instead of trying to determine all closed systems and listing all words of a language, Halliday's theory tries to determine no closed system nor set of resources. In SFG, every system can be expanded with new resources and a system is a "small set" of resources that is closer to the grammatical than the lexical end of the lexicogrammatical continuum. This means that no grammatical system is not expansible by the use of a new resource and, instead of postulating that a sentence is grammatical or ungrammatical, SFG documents the relative frequencies of choices and assumes these relative frequencies reflect the probability that each resource will be chosen. Thus, SFG does not describe language as a finite rule system, but rather as a system realised by instantiations which is continuously expanded by the very instantiations that realise it and which is continuously reduced with the birth of newer generations and the death of older ones.
Another way to understand the difference in concerns between functional and generative grammars is through Chomsky's claim that "linguistics is a sub-branch of psychology". Halliday investigates linguistics as though it were a sub-branch of sociology. SFG therefore pays much more attention to pragmatics and discourse semantics, rather than an easily computable formalism.
Systemic functional grammar has been used to derive further grammatical accounts; for example, the model has been used by Richard Hudson to develop word grammar.
See also
Other significant systemic functional grammarians:
Linguists also involved with the early development of the approach:
References
- ^ a b http://www.isfla.org/Systemics/Definition/definition.html, accessed 30 July 2008
- ^ Halliday, M.A.K. Introduction to functional grammar, 2nd ed. (1994) London: Edward Arnold., p. 15
- ^ http://www.isfla.org/Systemics/Definition/chapelle.html, accessed 30 July 2008
- ^ Elke Teich, Systemic functional grammar in natural language generation (1999), Continuum International Publishing Group, p.21.
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006), The Open University, pp. 13–14
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006) The Open University, p. 31.
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006), The Open University, p. 178.
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006), The Open University, pp. 32–33.
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 3: Getting practical (2006), The Open University, pp. 68–86
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006), The Open University, p. 15.
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 3: Getting practical (2006), The Open University, p. 11
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006), The Open University, p. 22.
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 3: Getting practical (2006), The Open University, pp. 22–23
- ^ O’Halloran, K.A. (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 2: Getting inside English (2006), The Open University, p. 36.
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 3: Getting practical (2006), The Open University, p. 245
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 3: Getting practical (2006), The Open University, p. 158
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English Grammar in Context, Book 3, Getting Practical (2006) The Open University, p.158
- ^ Coffin, C (ed.) English grammar in context, Book 3: Getting practical (2006), The Open University, p. 184
- ^ Butler, C.S., Structure and function (2003), John Benjamins, p. 415
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