How a neurological account of language can be reconciled with a linguist's account of language: The case of systemic-functional linguistics

Abstract

In recent years there has been a huge amount of research into the neural processing of language, and at the same time a number of papers have been published seeking to bring all this research together to construct coherent models of language processing. None of these papers has used insights from systemic functional linguistics to construct their models, and the present paper sets out to remedy this situation. The paper begins by exploring the fundamental principles of systemic functional linguistics: All language is influenced by the context in which it is uttered (the context of situation); any utterance is the product of numerous different linguistic choices (the systems of systemic); there are three generalised metafunctions of language (the functions of functional), which together make up the meaning potential of the language. The paper focuses on one of the metafunctions, the ideational (ideation base), and through an exploration of key concepts in neuroscience like the mirror neuron system, the role of the frontal lobes and the distributed nature of noun and verb processing, demonstrates that basic principles of systemic functional linguistics are supported by research in neuroscience, and could point the way forward to future research.