Framework Of Systemic Functional Linguistics Research Articles

Deconstructing Political Ideologies of Benazir Bhutto: A Transitivity Analysis of ‘Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West’

Lexical items employed in a talk or text are not impartial. They own potential meanings and ideologies. The present study is an endeavor to deconstruct political ideologies of Benazir Bhutto in her posthumous write up Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West from the perspective of SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics). In her book, she strives to authenticate her thesis that democracy and Islam are mutually inclusive. The objective of the research is to locate the frequency indices of the processes, participants and circumstances and how among various existing political ideologies Benazir Bhutto incorporates her own political ideologies. In order to achieve the aimed targets, transitivity, a framework of SFL has been inducted to conduct the transitivity analysis of the selected text extracts. Transitivity analysis of the text discovered 128 complex clauses and 278 simplex clauses. Moreover, maximum types of processes, participants and circumstances have been used in the text. Employment of maximum transitivity elements signifies author’s encyclopedic range concerning the ideological conflict between Islam and the West. Among processes, material processes out number all other processes which indicates she is an action lady and believes in concrete action. The experiential analysis in the study also found that besides playing the role of a pacifist to reconcile democratic ideals and Islamic ideals to fill the widening lacuna between the Orients (particularly Islam) and the Occidents, Benazir Bhutto projects her own political ideologies; secularism, socialism and liberal feminism.

TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS: GENDER REPRESENTATION IN TWO ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS FOR TENTH GRADE STUDENTS

Textbook is learning material that can affect student’s perspective and thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to several things such as gender equality contained in the textbook, either explicitly or implicitly. This paper concerns gender representation in two English textbooks assessed by the National Education Standards Agency and Cambridge University Pers. The framework of systemic functional linguistics proposed by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014) is utilized in this study. The research used a qualitative descriptive analysis focusing on the textual data obtained from the 10 selected texts related with the gender roles of the characters. The result indicates that male was found to be more frequently represented in roles of Participants, Process and Circumstantial. In this case, females are almost invisible and marginalized in both textbooks. Four types of transitivity were found in the first book and they represented male as characters whose activities related to business or industry with high desires, rational and a traveler whereas female represented as characters whose activities related to education and household. The second book contains six types of transitivity process, it is represented male as strength, attentive, talk much and female as a nurturing, beautiful, complaisant and cheerful. In summary, there is unequal representation between male and female in both textbooks.

An Ecological Discourse Analysis of Border Town from the Interpersonal Function Perspective: A Literature Review

Facing the current needs of socially sustainable development and ecological civilization construction, how to devote ourselves to the conservation of the ecosystem has become the focus of an increasing number of scholars. In the field of linguistics, the study of ecological discourse has become a new direction. Ecological Discourse Analysis is to reveal the ecological means of discourse through language analysis in order to prevent the ecological damage of human action. Hallidayan's approach emphasizes the role of language in ecological issues and the impact of language on ecological relationships, and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) lays stress on describing and analyzing linguistic facts in order to construct reality. Accordingly, this thesis conducts an ecological analysis of Shen Congwen’s classic book Border Town under the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics to explore the ecological relationship between man and nature reflected by the novel, with the expectation that this thesis will further arouse people’s awareness to environmental issues, lead people to rethink the role that human and nature play respectively and provide a new research direction for ecological discourse analysis.

Certainty and Uncertainty in the Abstract Section of Mechanical Engineering Research Articles

The study of epistemic modality in research articles (RAs) has been found in many papers. However, the investigation of epistemic modality in the abstract section of RAs viewed from Systemic Functional Linguistics is rarely conducted, especially in mechanical engineering RAs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of epistemic modality in the abstract section of mechanical engineering RAs. A number of 50 abstracts were collected from Scopus Q-1 journal of mechanical engineering entitled “International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture” in the period of 2016-2020. The data were analyzed using the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework focusing on epistemic modality markers in terms of orientation and values. The results reveal that the writers of mechanical engineering RAs tend to use epistemic modality markers as objective implicit and explicit orientation only since there is no subjective implicit or explicit orientation found in the data. Furthermore, the findings also show that the writers apply epistemic modality markers mostly with low values instead of median or high values. These results may be used to improve the academic writing ability of mechanical engineering writers, especially in writing abstract sections.

Analyzing the experiential meanings of survivors’ expressions of natural disasters in Indonesia

This study examines how natural disaster survivors in Indonesia construe their experiences regarding such calamities affecting them personally or environmentally from a linguistic angle. To this end, the direct expressions of the survivors were analyzed following the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework. The transitivity analysis of the survivors' expressions allows us to uncover the experiential meanings in terms of Processes, Participants, and Circumstances, which correspond to verbs, nouns and adjuncts in the grammar, respectively. The survivors' direct expressions were extracted from forty conveniently and criteria-based sampled Indonesian news articles. These articles vary in terms of the types and locations of natural disasters. In total, 195 expressions were found. While the results show that the survivors construe their experience in various ways, they predominantly construe their experience as material Processes or physical events that affect them personally and environmentally. The grammar of their expressions demonstrates that they mostly position the natural disasters as Actors and themselves as Goals in the events, attesting to the agentive power of nature over humans. The survivors also understood the natural disasters in abstract ways, using relational and existential Processes. This study contributes to the public narrative and collective memory in discourses related to natural disasters.

한영 문학번역 텍스트에의 Juliane House의 번역품질 평가이론 적용: 사례 연구

This study considers Juliane House’s (2015) translation quality assessment (TQA) scheme for Korean-to-English literary translation evaluation. Unlike typical literary translation evaluations, House’s scheme is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework, which involves functional aspects of language. This case study is the first to utilize House’s TQA for Korean-to-English translated texts. The results reveal that House’s (2015) TQA has more advantages than disadvantages in terms of evaluating the English translation of Korean texts. We are able to utilize the functional aspects of the texts in cultural and situational contexts as the evaluative elements such as field, tenor, and mode using corpus analysis.

THE STYLISTIC INVESTIGATION OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY IN INVISIBLE MAN

Esta pesquisa apresenta a investigação estilística da construção da identidade do protagonista da obra Invisible Man. O corpus de análise constitui-se das falas de personagens da obra, analisadas a partir de sistemas linguísticos e pautadas pelo arcabouço da Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional, sistemas os quais lidam com a temática da identidade em um texto literário. Os resultados apontam recursos contrastantes, porém complementares à voz em diálogo, utilizados pelo narrador homodiegético enquanto voz narrativa.

A Genre-based Approach to Teaching Descriptive Report Writing to Japanese EFL University Students

This mixed-methods study explored the effects of employing a genre-based approach (GBA) to descriptive report writing on the understanding of text structure and ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings among Japanese university students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) over a 15-week course divided into three units. Applied within a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) framework, the GBA allowed micro- and macro-analyses of essays from 23 first-year university students with low/high proficiency in English and limited/extensive second-language writing experience. Quantitative analysis collected general impression scores from all students’ essays at three time points using the SFL rubric. Qualitative investigation applied clause structure annotations to identify and analyse the functional parts of the clause from three metafunctional perspectives—ideational, interpersonal and textual—on descriptive genre essays by EFL learners. Lower-proficiency and novice EFL students demonstrated an improved understanding of the content, events and background information of the essay topics (ideational), and the social and power relationships between readers and writers (interpersonal). By comparison, high-proficiency and experienced students demonstrated a better understanding of the structure and coherence of the essay. This study was limited in developing an understanding of the use of pronouns and auxiliary verbs, which should be addressed in future studies.

The Ecological Discourse Analysis of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf from a Systemic Functional Perspective

Ecolinguistics studies the interaction between language and its environment. The ecological discourse analysis in the framework of ecolinguistics refers to the analysis of any discourse that has a potential impact on the ecosystem. The systemic functional linguistics of Halliday and the approach of ecolinguistics provide rich theoretical perspectives for ecological discourse analysis. The ecological discourse analysis based on systemic functional linguistics can help to reveal the ecological concept and ideology behind the ecological discourse, so as to improve people’s awareness of ecological protection and build a harmonious relationship between man and nature. Under the analysis framework of systemic functional linguistics, this thesis will analyze the ecological discourse of Jack London’s novel The Sea Wolf to explore the ecological orientation behind this novel.

The mood system of Myanmar

Abstract The main purpose of this article is to present the mood system of Myanmar within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The mood system of Myanmar is composed of two simultaneous systems: mood type and mood force. The former focuses on describing the methods of exchange including declarative, interrogative, and imperative, while the latter focuses on the “language force” embedded in the exchange. In this study, certain structures for Mood realization and Mood particles used by Myanmar speakers are presented for each type and subtype of the mood type and mood force systems of Myanmar. The findings show the interpersonal metafunction of Myanmar language makes an important contribution to further contrastive studies between the mood systems and their realizations of Myanmar and those of foreign languages.

Drama Translation Strategies from the Perspective of Metaphors of Mood

Halliday proposed the concept of “metaphors of mood” in the framework of systemic functional linguistics. Metaphors of mood refer to the phenomenon that the mood and speech function of a sentence is not consistent. What translation strategies will the translator adopt when translating a drama with metaphors of mood? What is the basis for translators to choose different translation strategies? Based on Mo Yan's drama Frog and its English translation from Ge Haowen, this paper studies the drama translation strategies from the perspective of metaphors of mood. It is found that translators usually choose the following three translation strategies in different situations: using the same metaphors of mood as the source text, choosing the corresponding mood according to the actual speech function of the source text, and using other types of metaphors of mood.

Construing Structure in Engineering Texts in the Framework of SFL

This paper deals with how a structure is construed in engineering texts. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the realization of structure viewed from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The method used in this study was a qualitative one. The data were obtained from two engineering textbooks functioning as references. Analyzing the data by applying SFL reveals that the structure is construed by relational process clauses, especially circumstantial relational clauses. The relational process belongs to attributive ones realized by various lexical verbs: support, assemble, attach, fasten, and bolt. Whereas, the circumstantial elements which represent Attribute semantically serves as Means and Place.

Getting Better: A Systematic Functional Interpretation of Grief Through a Song

This article presents an analysis of the song Get Better by British band Alt-J. The song was written amid the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. It mainly represents grief after the loss of a beloved person from the perspective of the bereaved. The analysis was conducted using the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework by Halliday with an emphasis on the three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The findings of the analysis determined that the song depicted a few of the occurrences that some people unfortunately had to experience after unforeseeable death of a loved one and how they managed to overcome grief.

Theresa May’s BBC Speech on Brexit Referendum: An Interpersonal Metafunction Analysis

Interpersonal metafunction is one of three components of linguistic study within the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework (SFL). It is concerned with how language users express ideas in texts in order for their audience to perceive them. In regards to political discourse, this study aims to unravel what PM Theresa May tries to deliver to her audience. By examining the patterns of independent clauses in her BBC speech regarding Brexit referendum, it indicates the presence of declarative and/or statement sentences. There is clearly an exchange pattern between the speaker (Theresa May) and the targeted listener (British citizen). She planned the order of her speech, beginning with an explanation of the existing state of the United Kingdom and her new elevated position as Prime Minister, as a preamble to her theme speech, the Brexit referendum. By boosting her speech (using the finite 'will'), she explored her promise of a far better life for British citizens after leaving the EU, and in the final portion of her address, she maintained a strong demand (using the high modulation 'must') to realize her planned goal. This text analysis as a whole may provide extra insight into political speech language.

A Genre Pedagogy for Teaching Young EFL Learners of English Village of Parit Baru

This case study aimed to find out the implementation of a genre pedagogy under systemic functional linguistics (SFL) framework or under Sydney School to teach the English language to young English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners of English Village of Parit Baru, Kubu Raya, West Kalimantan. Fifty-two young EFL learners were involved in this study. The data collection used two instruments, namely participant observations and documentation. The data analysis reveals that genre pedagogy elements could help the young EFL learners in constructing and communicating their texts independently. Also, the learners’ texts are following the schematic structures and linguistic features of the spoken genres the learners learned. To help the learners to cope with the teaching activities, songs and games activities were used to build their interest in the English language, new vocabulary, and practices to communicate their texts. This means that a genre pedagogy under the SFL framework could be integrated with joyful activities that not only provide guidance but also promote enjoyable learning in building the English language capacities of the young EFL learners in a non-formal educational context.

A systemic functional linguistics approach to implicit entity recognition in tweets

The identification of knowledge graph entity mentions in textual content has already attracted much attention. The major assumption of existing work is that entities are explicitly mentioned in text and would only need to be disambiguated and linked. However, this assumption does not necessarily hold for social content where a significant portion of information is implied. The focus of our work in this paper is to identify whether textual social content include implicit mentions of knowledge graph entities or not, hence forming a two-class classification problem. To this end, we adopt the systemic functional linguistic framework that allows for capturing meaning expressed through language. Based on this theoretical framework we systematically introduce two classes of features, namely syntagmatic and paradigmatic features, for implicit entity recognition. In our experiments, we show the utility of these features for the task, report on ablation studies, measure the impact of each feature subset on each other and also provide a detailed error analysis of our technique.

A contrastive study of the Chinese and Japanese mood type systems

AbstractThe main purpose of this paper is to contrast the Chinese and Japanesemood typesystems and their realizations following the network developed within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is found that: Chinese and Japanese show similarity in the delicacy of themood typesystems, but Chinese has established a more prominent status for unbiased polarity seeker and the choice of content than Japanese does; the two languages display shared features in the use of Mood particles, qualitative and quantitative groups, the alternation of word orders, and the use of certain structures for Mood realization, and they differ in basic word orders, the preferences for certain grammatical patterns, and the prominence in depending on vocabularies and morphological changes. The findings are rooted in the functional and typological prominences of the two languages, which may further shed light on interpersonal communication patterns in the two societies.

Theoretical framework for ecological discourse analysis: A summary of New Developments of Ecological Discourse Analysis

Abstract This article is a summary of the newly published book New Developments of Ecological Discourse Analysis. On the premise of reviewing the overall development of ecolinguistics, this book firstly develops the Hallidayan approach and defines Ecological Discourse Analysis as an independent paradigm. Based on the guiding principle of the ecosophy, “Diversity and Harmony, Interaction and Co-existence”, it then expands and extends the experiential, interpersonal, textual, and logical metafunctions within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Consequently, it constructs the theoretical systems of Ecological Discourse Analysis from the perspective of ecolinguistics: the transitivity system, mood system, appraisal system, Theme system, cohesion and coherence system, and logical system. This book presents readers with a comprehensive and applicable theoretical framework for Ecological Discourse Analysis, that is, “ecological grammar”.

Thematic Structure and Thematic Progression in Research Articles Published in Scopus-Indexed International Journals

Publishing in highly-indexed journals is greatly competitive, thus writing a qualified and eligible text becomes more challenging for a second/foreign language writer of English. A good text should be written logically and organized effectively according to the role of good academic writing. Thematic structure and thematic progression contribute to the development of a well-structured meaningful text. This study examines the use of thematic structure and thematic progression in research articles published in Q1 and Q2 Scopus-indexed international journals as well as their relationship to achieve the texts’ coherence. This is a descriptive qualitative study within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) that employs discourse analysis. 3426 clauses gathered from ten research articles were analyzed by using Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) taxonomy of thematic structure and Eggins’s (2004) theory of thematic progression. This study highlights three major findings. Firstly, in terms of thematic structure, the textual theme is massively used followed by the topical and interpersonal theme. The predominance of the textual theme implies the authors’ ability in developing the logical relations between clauses. Secondly, in terms of the thematic progression, the theme reiteration pattern is frequently employed, followed by the multiple-rheme and the zig-zag pattern. The tremendous use of the theme reiteration indicates the authors’ ability in maintaining the focus of the texts. Thirdly, the relationship between thematic structure and thematic progression constructs logical relations between the clauses to achieve the texts’ coherence. Finally, this study provides some pedagogical implications for the teaching of English as a second/foreign language.

Revealing the Meanings on William Wordsworth’s Poem Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

This study investigates a literary work, a poem, from a linguistic framework. The aim of this study is to reveal the meanings found in William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known’ from systemic stylistic analysis in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Verbal Art Semiotics. The data were collected by library study and analyzed with a descriptive, deconstructive method and content analysis with an intrinsic objective approach. This result of the study proves that the subject matter of this poem is ‘the poet rode a horse to Lucy’s cottage from the rice of evening till the drop of the bright moon”. The deep level of meaning refers to the last clause complex ‘O that is a mercy, to myself I cried If Lucy should be dead.’ The deeper level of meaning of this poem is about ‘the death of a young girl named Lucy’, and finally, the deepest level or the theme of this poem is about ‘death is a natural part of life cycle.’