Abstract
It is difficult to track the philosophy foundation and epistemology of systemic functional grammar (SFG) formulated by Halliday in the 1980s as this kind of grammar views language as a systemic resource for meaning. Besides, it has had global impacts on linguistics and flourished in contemporary linguistic theory. Anyone who is familiar with Halliday’s work realizes that his SFG is an approach designed to analyze English texts. Halliday (1994: xv) explicitly states that “to construct a grammar for purposes of text analysis: one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text, spoken or written, in modern English.” The aim of this study is not about the applicability of SFG to text analysis as many researchers and scholars do. Our efforts are made to clarify the philosophical foundation of Halliday’s SFG. The paper presents on triangle: (i) language, mind and world; (ii) and empiricism in Halliday’s SFG.
Highlights
There have been considerable interests in systemic functional grammar (SFG) raised by Halliday since 1985
In SFG, clauses can be analyzed on the basis of how they represent the world, how they enact social relations and how they create a message
The one that deals with the ability of language to convey some information about reality and construe experience through meaning at the lexicogrammar stratum is the experimental metafunction
Summary
There have been considerable interests in SFG raised by Halliday since 1985. Many other linguists have been attracted by this new approach and major contributions are being made by a new generation of SFG linguists. A considerable number of languages such as Danish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and many others (Mwinlaaru and Xuan 2016) have been described within SFG. They have made great contributions to empowering SFG theory. To my knowledge there is no in-depth analysis of the “grounding” of Halliday’s SFG theory: philosophical ideas and epistemology in his work. Our attempts have been made to point out its “grounding”: philosophical ideas and epistemology in SFG. Halliday’s SFG is so complicated, broad and philosophical that we cannot cover all matters in this single study. In this study we just closely examine experimental metafunction and consider it in relation to philosophy
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