linguistics M.A students

1. REPUBLIC OF YEMEN
Hajjah University
Faculty of Education
English Department
Dr. Haifa M. Nassar
The History of Linguistics
Functionalism

2. 2. Functional Systemic Linguistics
(SFL)
• SFL is built on previous works of some
influential linguists such as Malinowski and
Firth.
• Later, it was developed largely by M.A.K.
Halliday and his followers during the 1960s in
the United Kingdom.

3. The London School
• B. Malinowski (1884-1942), professor of
anthropology (1927).
• J. R. Firth (1890-1960), the first professor
of linguistics in the UK (1944).
• M. A. K. Halliday (1925-2018 ), student
of Firth.
– All three stressed the importance of context
of situation and the system aspect of
language.
– London school is also known as systemic
linguistics and functional linguistics.

4. Malinowski’s theory
• Paved the way for a cultural,
contextual study of language in
Britain.
– Language “is to be regarded as a
mode of action, rather than as a
counterpart of thought”.
– The meaning of an utterance comes
from its relation to the situational
context in which it occurs.
– The real linguistic data are the
complete utterances in actual uses
of Language.

5. Firth’s theory
About Language : Language is a
social process, a means of social
life.
– In order to live, human beings
have to learn and learning
Language. It is a means of
participation in social activities.
– Language is a means of doing
things and of making others do
things, a means of acting and living.

6. • Firth did not fully agree with Saussure on the
distinction of langue and parole.
– Language is not a set of conventional semiotics and
signs.
– The objects of linguistic study is language in use.
– The goal of linguistic enquiry is to analyze
meaningful elements of language in order to
establish corresponding relations between
linguistic and non-linguistic elements.

7. • Firth held that meaning is use, thus defining
meaning as the relationship between an
element at any level and its context on that
level. The meaning of any sentence can be
analyzed on five levels: (1) phonological, (2)
lexical and semantic, (3) morphological, (4)
syntactic, and (5) context of situation.
Meaning and context of situation

8. • Recognizing that context is infinitely various, he
used the notion of typical context of situation so
that some generalizations can be made about it.
• By a TYPICAL CONTEXT OF SITUATION, he meant
that social situations determine the social roles.
Participants are obliged to play; since the total
number of typical contexts of situation they will
encounter is finite, the total number of social
roles is also finite.

9. • In analysing typical context of situation, one has
to take into consideration both the situational
context and linguistic context:
Internal relations of the text:
– syntagmatic relations in structure
– paradigmatic relations in system
Internal relations of the context of situation:
– relations between text and non-linguistic
elements
– analytical relations between elements of the text
and elements within the situation

10. • He also proposed a model covering both the
situational context and the linguistic context
of a text
1. The relevant features of the participants:
persons, personalities.
2. The relevant topics, including objects, events,
and non-linguistic, non-human events.
3. The effects of the verbal action.

11. Systemic-functional grammar
• M A K Halliday (1925-2018 ).
– functional grammar: Language
as a means of social interaction,
functions of language form

12. What is systemic-functional grammar?
• The systemic functional grammar (often SFG)
studies the language through meaning (i.e. its
function).
• Systemic functional grammar is one of the major
approaches to linguistics in which the notion of
choice has been fundamental.

13. What is systemic-functional grammar?
• A range of options presented by the system –
explicitly guiding the hearer or reader in
understanding how sentences are related.
• System: a set of choices available in a language
there are many systems in every language the
whole language is conceived as a “system of
systems”. Some of the systems in English are
number, person, mood, gender, tense, transitivity,
etc.

14. • In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) of Halliday ,
context of situation consists of three parameters:
field (the subject matter of the text), tenor (the
relations between the participants and their
attitudes) and mode (how the language is
organized and functions in the text).

15. Halliday's Context of Situation
• The aspects of the context are the following: field,
tenor, and mode.
• Field refers to ‘about what’ a communication
takes place;
• Tenor is about ‘to whom’ the communication is
directed, that is, how the speaker or writer sees
the person with whom s/he is communicating;
and
• Mode is about ‘how’ the communication takes
place.

16. Functional grammar
• According to SFL, meanings are expressed
according to three broad meta-functions.
• 1. The ideational metafunction: concerned with
things (real or imagined).
• 2. The interpersonal meta-function: relationships
between participants, not only in spoken texts,
but also in written texts.
• 3. The textual meta-function: the construction of
text, how it is held together.

17. Functional grammar
• Ideational function (experiential & logical): to
convey new info, communicate a content
unknown to the hearer
• Interpersonal function: to express social and
personal relations
• Textual function: to make any stretch of
spoken or written discourse into a coherent
and unified text and make a living passage
different from a random list of sentences.

18. Realization of each meta-function:
– The ideational function mainly consists of “lexis”
and “transitivity”.
– The interpersonal function is realized by mood
modality and person
– The textual function is realized through cohesion,
theme/rheme, stress, etc.

19. The ideational metafunction
he
run
processes participants the circumstances
occur
be
she
man
car
weather
that is
how
when
where

20. The ideational Meta-function
• It is divided into two components: the
experiential component (to do with
experience and understanding of the world)
and the logical component (to do with logical
relations)

21. • A sentence contains a point of departure and
a goal of discourse. The point of departure,
called the theme, is the ground on which the
speaker and the hearer meet.
• The goal of discourse, called the rheme,
presents the very information that is to be
imparted to the hearer.
– Movement from theme to rheme reveals the
movement of the mind itself.
The textual Meta-function

22. • Therefore, the functional sentence perspective
aims to describe how information is distributed in
sentences.
• It deals particularly with the effect of the
distribution of known (given) info and new info in
discourse.
– John stands on the chair.
Theme Rheme
– On the chair stands John.
Theme Rheme
The textual Meta-function

23. Three Broad Meta-functions
• The three meta-functions are NOT independent
of each other and that any stretch of language
expresses the three functions simultaneously
(chemical solution), for example:
• Lexis: ideational meanings,
• Modal verbs: the interpersonal function,
• Conjunctions: the textual meta-function

24. Three Broad Meta-functions
Those meta-functions can overlap, for example:
. Lexis: an interpersonal dimension like the words :
“disgusting” and “sordid” (negative attitude towards
sth or sbdy)
. Pronouns have both an interpersonal and textual role.
e.g: My father bought me a car. He did it by saving
every penny he could.
(interpersonal to show relationships between
interlocutors and textual to link up one element of text
with another)

25. • The metafunctions are related to features of what
in SFL is called the context of situation.
Contextual parameters Field Tenor Mode
Metafunctions Ideational Interpersonal Textual
Lexicogrammar Lexis
Transitivity
Mood
Modality
person
Cohesion
Theme–rheme
Different levels of analysis in Systemic Functional Linguistics

27. SFL Compared to other Linguistic Traditions
• SFG studies the language through meaning (i.e.
its function), while TGG is a fully influential and
developed version of linguistics through form.
Chomsky characterized form independently of
function and meaning, while Halliday had good
reasons to believe that function and meaning
can help shape form (Bavali & Sadighi 2008).

28. SFL Compared to other Linguistic Traditions
• Halliday insisted that the central concern of
linguistics should be the study of the language
through meaning, which was different from the
dominant Bloomfield approach in American
linguistics (Matthiessen & Halliday 1997).
Bloomfield rejected the possibility that
linguistics analyzes meaning.

29. SFL can be applicable to unlimited fields
• SFL can be characterized as an "applicable"
linguistics theory, which means it is designed to
have the potential to be applied to solve problems
that arise in communities around the world
(Matthiessen & Halliday 1997).
• SFL is well-known for its application in different
fields such as healthcare, computational linguistics,
translation, multimodal studies, education, and
linguistics language education, and media discourse.
SFL can be seen by the number of publications and
conferences in SFL around the world.