Systemic Functional Linguistics

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SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

Introduction

            Systemic, or Systemic-Functional, theory has its origins in the main intellectual tradition of European linguistics that developed following the work of Saussure. 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.

            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.

            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.

            A central notion is 'stratification', such that language is analyzed 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.).

            Systemic semantics includes what is usually called 'pragmatics'. Semantics is divided into three components:

• Ideational Semantics (the propositional content);
• Interpersonal Semantics (concerned with speech-function, 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 Lexico-Grammar concerns the syntactic organization 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.

History of Systemic

            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.

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. Ruqaia Hasan has also performed studies of interactions between children and mothers.

Systemic and Computation

SFL has been prominent in computational linguistics, especially in Natural Language Generation (NLG). 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 (currently in Bremen, Germany) 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.

One of the earliest and best-known parsing systems is Winograd's SHRDLU, which uses system networks and grammar as a central component. Since then, several systems have been developed using SFL (e.g., Kasper, O'Donnell, O'Donoghue, Cummings, Weerasinghe), although this work hasn't been as central to the field as that in NLG.

Communication Planes

            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 realize.

Level of Social Context

•         The form of human language is as it is since it co-evolves 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).

•         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.

•         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?

More Information:

•         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 realized 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.

Discourse Analysis

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Well, in the previous discussion I have shared about communicative competence I have learnt in my class. And now I would like to share about Discourse analysis. Check it out guys… ^o^

Discourse Analysis

          Robert (1966) stated that discourse analysis is the study of language in use extending beyond sentence boundaries (Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000). It is “a dynamic process of meaning creation” (Widdowson, 1979:129) that is deeply affected by genre, register and mode of expression (spoken or written) and is, therefore, culturally bound. So, discourse analysis is defined as the examination of language use by members of a speech community. The language use means how language is used in communication, interrelationship between language and society, and interactive or dialogic properties of every communication. It involves both language form and language function and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts.

          Discourse analysis identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of talk.

ü   Contexts of situation and context of culture

Contexts of situation mean what to say to whom in what circumstances and how to say it (when, why, where, what, how).

For example:

Thanks for not smoking

No smoking

In the second sentence, ‘No smoking’ means actual warning that means ‘I want you that you don’t smoke’ while in the first sentence, it is not used in English speaking countries.

The example of context of culture is when Indonesian people say because of an accident.

“Untung cuma  patah tulang.”

“Untung cuma ketabrak motor, nggak ada truk yang lewat.”

Those statements were stated by Indonesian because of the Indonesian culture.

ü   What texts tell us about happenings, what people think, believe, etc.

For example:

Indonesian said a building in Semarang “Lawang Sewu”. Actually “Lawang sewu” doesn’t means the building has 1000 doors but it is because to simplify the name and people in the past thought that 1000 has high value not in nowadays.

ü   How texts are produced as a social practice

For example:

Indonesian said “Terima kasih telah membantu saya”, “ Maaf telah merepotkan anda”

Those statements are stated because the speaker receives something benefit so he/she thanks to the person that has helped.

ü   How texts represent ideology (power struggle)

In one issue there are always two opposing opinions that are pros and contras based on the ideology.

For example: The government’s plan about raising the fuel’s price, there are the pros who agree the plan and the contras who disagree because of their own opinions and reasons.

Discourse: language function

What you say is not always what you mean.

ü   Context: Participants’ knowledge and perception of paralanguage, other texts, the situation, the culture, the world in general and role, intentions and relationships of participants.

In sum, Discourse analysis can give benefit to explore what language is and it is used to achieve communicative goals in different contexts. Thus, discourse analysis can help to create a second language learning environment that more accurately reflects how language is used and encourages learners toward their goal of proficiency in another language.

Speech Act Theory

ü   Unit of analysis : Speech act (SA) or Illucutionary force (IF)

ü   Principal Problems: the lack of a one-to-one match up between discourse function (IF) and the grammatical form.

Comunicative Competence

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Here, in this section I would like to share my understanding about Communicative Competence… Check it out.. ^o^

Communicative Competence : A pedagogically

motivated model with content specifications

Celce-Murcia, Dőrnyei, Thurrell

            Hymes (1972) defined communicative competence as the knowledge of both rules of grammar and rules of language use appropriate to a given context. Then, the conceptualization of communicative competence has been further developed by researchers such as Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983), Bachman (1990) and Celce-Murcia et al. (1995), who attempted to define the specific components of the construction of communicative competence.

            Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) refined the model construction by making finer distinctions in the area of sociolinguistic competence. CMDT’s Model :

1.             Linguistic Competence concerns the basic elements of communication, such as sentence patterns, morphological inflections, phonological and orthographic systems, as well as lexical resources.

2.             Strategic Competence concerns with the knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them.

3.             Sociocultural Competence refers to the speaker’s knowledge of how to express appropriate messages within the social and cultural context of communication in which they are produced.

4.             Actional Competence involves the understanding of the speakers’ communicative intent by performing and interpreting speech act sets.

5.             Discourse Competence concerns the selection and sequencing of sentences to achieve a unified spoken or written text. Discourse competence is the main competence which should be achieved by the students. It covers the ability of communication both written and spoken in a communicational event, the interpersonal ability in communication and the channels used in communication. A speaker will be considered successful in participating in various communication events if he or she acquires discourse competence which is shown in the small circle of the diagram. In order to acquire discourse competence, a speaker should master the collaboration of linguistic competence, actional competence, socio-cultural competence, strategic competence and discourse supporting competence.

Discourse Competence Diagram (C-MDT)

History of English Language Teaching

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The History of English Language Teaching

            The English language teaching tradition has been subjected to a tremendous change, especially throughout the twentieth century. Perhaps more than any other discipline, this tradition has been practiced, in various adaptations, in language classrooms all around the world for centuries. While the teaching of Maths or Physics, that is, the methodology of teaching Maths or Physics, has, to a greater or lesser extent, remained the same, this is hardly the case with English or language teaching in general. Here, there are some milestones in the development of this tradition, which we will briefly touch upon, in an attempt to reveal the importance of research in the selection and implementation of the optimal methods and techniques for language teaching and learning.

Language Teaching can be viewed in three parts:

I.              Traditional Approaches (Up to the late 1960s)

               In language teaching, traditional approaches focuses on grammatical competence as the basis of language proficiency. It is because a belief that grammar could be learned by using repetitive practice and drill through direct instruction. In a process of teaching, the grammar is given in deductive application of an explicit grammar rule. It means students are presented with grammar rules and then they apply the rules to examples they are given. It is contrast with inductive one that students are given examples of sentences containing a grammar rule. The assumption was language learning meant building up list of sentences and grammatical patterns and learning to produce these accurately and quickly in the appropriate situation. The command of oral drilling and practice expanded the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The techniques that were used included memorization of dialogs, question and answer practice, substitution drills and various forms of guided speaking and writing practice. Besides, the accuracy of pronunciation and mastery of grammar also were paid attention through the process of learning because if students made errors these would become a permanent part of the learner’s speech. The methodologies include Audiolingualism/ Aural-Oral Method) and Structural-Situational Approach/Situational Language Teaching. Syllabuses consisted of word lists graded across levels.

The procedures of a typical Audiolingualism were:

1.      Students hear a model dialog first

2.      The dialog is adapted to the students’ interest or situation

3.      Certain key structures from the dialog are selected and used as the basis for pattern drills of different kinds

4.      The students may refer to their textbook

5.      Follow-up activities may take place in the language laboratory

In the Situational approach there were three-phase sequences, known as P-P-P :

1.      Presentation means new grammar structure is presented by means of conversation or short text and teacher explains the new structure and check students’ comprehension of it.

2.      Practice means students practice to use the new structure through drills or substitution exercises.

3.      Production means students practice to use new structure in different contexts using their own content or information to develop their fluency with the new pattern.

II.           Classic Communicative Language Teaching (1970s to 1990s)

               Because of the old methods of language teaching in Traditional Approach, in the 1970s there was a broader concept in language teaching. It was argued that language ability was not only about grammatical competence but included the other aspects of language. In grammatical competence it was needed to produce grammatically correct sentences. But, besides that, the communicative competence was also needed in using language communicatively. Communicative competence was developed within the discipline of linguistics and appealed to many within the language teaching profession. It focuses that the goal of language teaching should be achieved. Communicative Language Teaching created a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement when it appeared as a new approach to language teaching in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, language teachers and teaching institutions all around the world began to rethink their teaching, syllabuses and classroom materials that was within a communicative approach. The starting point was not grammar anymore.

The syllabus in Classic Communicative Language Teaching should identify the following aspects of language use in order to develop the learner’s communicative competence:

1.      A detail consideration of the purposes

2.      Some idea of the setting in which students will want to use the target language

3.      The socially defined role the learners will assume in the target language

4.      The communicative events in which the learners will participate

5.      The involving language functions in those events

6.      The involving notions or concepts

7.      The involving skills in the ‘knitting together’ of discourse

8.      The variety or varieties of the target language that will be needed

9.      The grammatical content that will be needed

10.  The lexical content or vocabulary that will be needed

III.        Current Communicative Language Teaching (late 1990s to the present)

               In 1990, the implementation of communicative language teaching has been wide. The process of second language learning that has developed was evolved by using communicative language teaching to develop our understanding about it. It is taking socio cultural issues into CLT, i.e. CLT today refers to a set of generally agreed principles to be applied in different ways, depending on the teaching context, the age of learner, their levels, their learning goals, etc.

               In current communicative language teaching, there are many principles:

1.      When learners are engaged/involved in the interaction and meaningful communication, second language learning is facilitated.

2.      Effective classroom learning tasks and exercises provide opportunities for students to negotiate meaning, expand their language resources, notice how language is used, and take part in meaningful exchange.

3.      The students processing content that is relevant, purposeful, interesting, and engaging achieves meaningful communication.

4.      Communication is a holistic process that often calls upon the use of several language skills or modalities.

5.      Language learning is facilitated both by activities that involve inductive or discovery learning of underlying rules of language use and organization , as well as by those involving language analysis and reflection.

6.      Language learning is a gradual process that involves creative use of language and trial and error. Although errors are a normal product of learning the ultimate goal of learning is to be able to use the new language both accurately and fluently

7.      In developing learners’ own routes to language learning, they have different needs and motivations for language learning.

8.      Successful language learning involves the use of effective learning and communication strategies.

9.      The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator, who creates a classroom climate conducive to language learning and provides opportunities for students to use and practice the language and to reflect on language use and language learning.

10.  The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing.

There are two extentions of Communicative Language Learning:

1.        Process-based methodologies

They include Content-based instruction and Task-based instruction.

2.        Product-based methodologies

They include Text-based instruction and Competency-based instruction.

          In general, Communicative Language Teaching is considered as a set of principles about goals of language teaching (communicative competence versus grammatical competence), how learners learn a language (mastery of grammatical competence versus meaningful and purposeful interaction and collaboration with negotiation of meaning), the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitates learning (memorization of dialogs and drills versus pair/group work activities, role play, and project work), and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom (Richards, 2005).