Systemic Functional Grammar Research Articles

Guided to Guider: the “∼ed” and “∼er” roles in professional development materials for guided Reading

ABSTRACT This paper takes a social semiotic, Bernsteinian, view of the language used to describe the Guided Reading teaching strategy in Professional Development session materials for in-service teachers in Australia. We use categories from Michael Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar and Ruqaiya Hasan’s stylistics to demonstrate a radical discontinuity between content and form. While the content of the professional development materials makes the case for greater child dynamism in reading, the grammatical roles assigned to the children by the language forms are generally less dynamic than those assigned to the teacher. We propose two changes. First, classroom language should aim at increasing child “∼er” roles. Secondly, the language of professional development materials ought to reflect, and if possible, appropriate and speak through that classroom language.

Communication and Conflict: Interpersonal Metaphor in the Movie Carnage

Interpersonal metaphor, as one constituent of grammatical metaphor in systemic-functional grammar, is mainly represented by metaphor of mood and metaphor of modality. The language of the movie Carnage is abound with interpersonal metaphors in diverse context of “communication” and “conflict” respectively. By summarizing the application of two types of interpersonal metaphor in specific contexts of “communication” and “conflict”, interlocutors’ purposes of using interpersonal metaphor in communicating with others and the communicative effects they intend to achieve can be analyzed to further reveal the functions of interpersonal metaphor and contribute to people’s better understanding of the art of language.

Back to the Future: Uncovering Deeper Meanings in Historical Newspaper Texts

Keeping in mind the recent COVID-19 pandemic, this paper builds on a study that examined how a major twentieth century South African newspaper utilised outbreaks of bubonic plague to propagate racial stereotypes in Johannesburg. The data were gathered from the Rand Daily Mail archive database and analysed thematically. Recent years have seen the emergence of new disciplines, such as historical pragmatics, along with calls for historians to move beyond collecting documentation into textual analysis. Thus, the researchers reanalysed selected data using systemic functional grammar to discover how the communicative intention was achieved. The research follows a descriptive qualitative method. It was found that the newspaper played a major role in the promotion of racial segregation. However, at times its reporting was nuanced. Understanding how past media made use of events and discourses to influence the public and achieve political goals can serve to inform the present and illuminate the future.

Ideational and Textual Metafunctions in Systemic Functional Grammar: A Review Article

Ideational and Textual Metafunctions in Systemic Functional Grammar: A Review Article

An Analysis of Ideational and Textual Metafunctions in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the light of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar

An Analysis of Ideational and Textual Metafunctions in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the light of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar

A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of News Reports about China on COVID-19 in The New York Times

In 2019, the COVID-19 has spread around the world and there have been numerous reports about this topic. In fact, these seemingly objective and unbiased news reports contain underlying ideologies and influence readers’ opinions and judgments. During April and July 2020, negative public perceptions of China in the U.S. reached a historical high point. Therefore, this study uses Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis model as the theoretical framework and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar as the analytical tool, and selects 40 articles from the beginning of April to the end of July 2020 as the research corpus with the help of AntConc 4.0.5 (macOS) 2022, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. The following key findings emerged from the study. Firstly, The New York Times tends to use negative linguistic elements to portray an arbitrary image of China, but the expression of Sino-U.S. relations is neutral. Secondly, The New York Times tends to use direct quotations in its news coverage, but the quotations tend to be negative in content. Finally, political, economic and cultural aspects have a direct impact on the ideological production of news reports. This thesis contributes to the enrichment of research in the field of critical discourse analysis and enhances the critical awareness of readers.

TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR ON INDONESIAN STATE SPEECH OF JOKO WIDODO

This research aimed to analyze the transitivity in political speech by using systemic functional grammar in each sentence. The data in this research were fragments of clauses which identified the type of transitivity (process, participant, and circumstance), logical meaning, and context of the situation while the source of the data was Jokowi's presidential campaign speech to his volunteer in the 2019 election. This research was carried out using recording and note-taking techniques. The result showed five types of process is used by Joko Widodo, such as material process, relational process, mental process, verbal process, and existential process. The material process in ideational metafunction was the most dominant with the choice of the word "work" as an interpretation of an invitation or call for volunteers to work even harder. Besides, the most dominant theme used in President Jokowi's speech text was the Marked Theme thematic structure, namely the thematic structure that was in the phrase that occupied the subject function indicated that Jokowi gave more emphasis on the things that were meant.

An Analysis of the Orchid Pavilion from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

In the 1960s, Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar gradually emerged in the field of linguistic research. It provides a theoretical framework for discourse analysis. The Orchid Pavilion is a widely circulated calligraphy and literary work in ancient China. Nowadays, many scholars have translated it into English, among which Lin Yutang’s translation is especially famous. This article takes the three meta-functions of Systemic Functional Grammar as the theoretical framework, and analyzes Lin Yutang’s English translation of Wang Shichih’s article The Orchid Pavilion from transitivity, mood system, modality and thematic structure so as to investigate the ways in which the ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function are realized respectively. It can also verify the applicability and operability of Systemic Functional Grammar in translation. In all, this article provides a new perspective for understanding and translating The Orchid Pavilion as well as offering a reference in understanding and translating Chinese literary work.

Grammatical Metaphor in Political Discourse in the Central Kurdish Language

The goal of this work is to examine political discourse in the Central Kurdish language via the prism of Halliday's grammatical metaphor. Political discourse is a common form of public discourse. In the SFG, Halliday identified the ideational and interpersonal grammatical metaphor. This study pertains to the study of Systemic Functional Grammar in that it studies the linguistic metaphors in the political speeches of Mala Bakhtyar and Abul Latif. The two figures are representing two opposing ideologies and they promote different types of religious and political ideologies. The authors utilized a mixed-methods strategy using Halliday's grammatical metaphor to assemble the findings. In the paper, the following research objectives are addressed: The most frequent form of nominalized processes and mood grammatical metaphor in the political public speeches in CK, in the political discourse in Central Kurdish are focused. Second, the expression of reality through ideational grammatical metaphor is investigated. And lastly, the convey of interpersonal meaning in interpersonal grammatical metaphor in the speeches by the political figures is examined. Overall, 133 distinct nominalized processes were identified during the speeches. Four of the six distinct nominalized types of processes were used. The total number of nominalized material process selections is 65, (48.8%) of the total, with verbal process types accounting for 58 events, (43.6%) of the total, and mental process types accounting for only 9 selections, (6.7%). Only one behavioral type was used, accounting for 0.75%. There are no other nominalized process types. And 53 instances of mood grammatical metaphor were drawn. In addition, the authors discovered that both political figures strive to represent their political beliefs using nominalized process types, and the interpersonal mood grammatical metaphor conveys interpersonal meaning.

A social semiotic study of public institutional websites focusing on teenage pregnancy in Brazil

Although institutional websites focusing on health matters play an important role in providing information in contemporary society, analysis of the way they use visual communication has received scarce academic attention. This exploratory study seeks to address this neglect through a visual analysis of public institutional websites concerned with the prevention of teenage pregnancy, which, in Brazil, is a serious sociocultural predicament. Drawing on a social semiotic approach to communication, specifically using systemic-functional grammar, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design ( Reading Images, 2021[2006]) and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework of visual social actors, the authors analyse the visual and verbal features used to portray the social actors in images from the selected websites. Results show that pregnant teenagers tend to be visually portrayed in isolation, suggesting a sense of powerlessness. Other relevant social actors such as parents and/or family members, fathers of the babies, medical and educational professionals are usually not represented. In addition, pregnant teenagers are portrayed generically, categorizing them, rather than portraying them as individuals. Teenagers who apparently abstain from sexuality, on the other hand, are shown in naturalistic images, smiling at the viewer and in happy closely-knit groups of friends. The texts also foreground the institutions providing the information, through logos and through typography.

AN ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENTIAL MEANING OF THE STORY “QUÀ…TỨC LÀ NGƯỜI” BY THACH LAM

This paper is concerned with exploring experiential meaning realized through transitivity resources in the story “Quà…tức là người” by Thạch Lam. The theoretical framework adopted in the study is systemic functional grammar (SFG). The findings show that in composing the story, the writer has employed a high frequency of relational, material, mental processes and a low number of existential, behavioural and verbal processes. Remarkably, relational clauses were deployed to describe the taste and flavor of street foods and the way Hanoians enjoy such foods. The author implies that the choice as well as the way of enjoying food, to some extent, can tell people’s personality. This explains why the story was named “Quà…tức là người”. In addition, a high number of circumstances are found in the story with the high frequency of circumstances of manner, among which the circumstance of manner is mostly used in relational clauses to specify the taste and flavor of street foods.

Critical Discourse Analysis Based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics: Taking The Economist’s First Commentation on the End of China’s Zero-COVID Policy as an Example

Based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, especially the ideational function, this research aims at disclosing the hidden ideologies and values of the seemingly objective news reports on China’s COVID-19 policies in The Economist. Transitivity, voice, and nominalization are the major analytical subjects. After China lifted the zero-COVID policy, western media began criticizing China’s lack of data sharing, with some misinformation and misleading reports. The denouncement of inertness and reluctance to fight against the pandemic disclaim the Chinese government’s efforts and depreciate China’s image. China is portrayed as the villain and destroyer of people’s health worldwide. Meanwhile, they also hold a hesitant attitude toward China’s diplomacy. The re-engaging with foreign countries and travel restrictions have been described as imprudent and rushed actions. They also consider China as the fuse of contradiction in the United Nations. What is overt is their view of breaking up China.

A Transitivity Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner

This study uses Halliday’s transitivity approach to analyze D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner. The purpose is to provide a linguistic analysis of the literary work by Lawrence to see how far the linguistic approaches to literary texts conform to the literary analyses of the same texts. The study uses a framework based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, in which process types are identified in the text and then used to arrive at an interpretation of the text based on the linguistic analysis. The linguistic outcomes correspond with the psychological interpretations of the story. In addition, the mother-son relationship is recurrent in D. H. Lawrence’s fiction. This further supports the connection between the linguistic and the literary interpretation of the story and shows how a linguistic analysis may lead to one based on literary approaches.

Meaning and Usages of Polysemy and Collocation in Nigerian English

This work examines the existence, meaning and usage of Polysemy and Collocation in the Nigerian variety of English. English, as a cosmopolitan language, has different varieties spoken in different parts of the world. These varieties are determined based on the different environments they operate and how unique they appear in these environments. On this parameter, this work highlights the uniqueness of English spoken in the region of Nigeria under the linguistic elements of polysemy and collocation. Extracts from three (3) novels by Nigerians, namely: June 12, Devil's Pawn and Things Fall Apart, constitute data for the study. This work adopts systemic Functional Grammar as its theoretical framework: the aim is to focus on the functionality and acceptability of these nativized expressions and not their form or grammaticality. This work notes that some expressions in Nigerian English are direct transliterations from the local languages. Culture plays an important role in the legitimacy of Nigerian English. Many English words connote different meanings in the Nigerian context as opposed to an L1 Speaker of English. This work concludes the fact that polysemy and collocation co-exist as part and parcel of the concept of Nigerian English, which is a distinct variety within the world Englishes.

Is There an “I” in “We?” – Children as Individuals or Group Subjects in School-Age Educare Staff’s Collegial Conversations

The aim of this study is to gain knowledge of how School-Age EduCare (SAEC) staff in and through collegial conversations construe a child/children. Collegial conversations with two SAEC staff teams were analyzed using the theoretical concepts from the fields of discourse analysis and systemic functional grammar. The results show that children were repeatedly construed as a group subject by the staff and more rarely as individual subjects. The SAEC staff construed the children as group subjects in four different ways: as general groups, as pre-determined groups, as quantity-related groups, and as behavior-related groups. The children who were construed as individual subjects were mainly the ones who diverged from the group, often in negative ways.

Multimodal Refusal and Response to Refusal of Chinese-Speaking Children: A Comparative Case Study

As a complex and dynamic phenomenon, multimodal discourse has gained increasing attention in various fields. One common type of multimodal act among children is multimodal refusal, which involves a communicative act of rejecting an offer, request, or invitation using multimodal semiotic resources such as verbal languages, gestures and body movements, etc. Usually, a refusal is followed by a response to it. The analysis of children’s refusal and their responses to refusal can shed light on the ways in which they manage social relationships and interpersonal dynamics in their interactions. Choosing Chinese-speaking children’s acts of multimodal refusal on one hand and their responses to refusal on the other hand as its research object, this paper aims to examine and systematically reveal the representational and interactional characteristics of such discourse. A naturally occurred corpus of 100 videos with a length of 120.24 minutes is collected and analyzed, on the basis of which the modal representation, modal interaction and multimodal graduation characteristics of Chinese-speaking children’s multimodal refusal-response acts in the early school age are thoroughly analyzed and compared guided by Systemic Functional Grammar and Appraisal Theory. It is found that 62% of the refusal acts are caused by acts of request, and 68% of the children would use multiple modes to implement acts of refusal. Children’s multimodal refusal-response acts has the highest frequency of modal synergy, and some children would have strong emotional reactions after being refused. It is suggested that, children’s multimodal refusal-response acts should be concerned and valued by researchers, educators and children’s parents.

A Meta-Functional Analysis of Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor in Biden’s State of the Union Address

This paper is a tentative endeavor to analyze the functions of interpersonal grammatical metaphor used in Biden’s 2022 State of the Union Address based on the theoretical framework which is composed of interpersonal grammatical metaphor theory and the theory of meta-functions within systematic functional grammar. The interpersonal grammatical metaphor used in this speech is examined from two aspects as metaphors of mood and modality. Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are both employed to reveal the linguistic characteristics as well as the interpersonal meaning hidden in the speech, aiming at explore the meta-functions of interpersonal grammatical metaphor so that the understanding of the speech content is deepened. The research has found out that metaphor of modality is the preferred type of interpersonal grammatical metaphor in the chosen linguistic text, which mostly serves to express the speaker’s evaluation of a proposition. The metaphor of mood accounts for a lower proportion, which is mainly used to express the address function. The functions of these two types of interpersonal grammatical metaphor are mainly within the scope of interpersonal meta-function, which relates to interact with others in order to establish and maintain the social relationship. This linguistic research proves the necessity and significance of the existence of grammatical metaphor theory and to some extent enriches the research of interpersonal grammatical metaphor in spoken discourse.

The manifestation of privilege: A critical discourse analysis of the Indonesian circular letter on health protocols for international travel

Taking the principles of critical discourse analysis favoring issues on unequal power relations, this discourse study attempts to disclose the manifestation of privilege in government regulations. To do so, it combines the principles of Systemic Functional Grammar and CDA by explicating the results of transitivity analysis on the legal text within relevant socio-political context. The data were the clauses in Circular Letter No. 26/2021 enacted by the Indonesian government on Health Protocols for International Travel during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The results show that, in terms of transitivity, the circular letter includes material, relational, verbal, and mental process, which serve to show the details on health protocols to be adhered by travelers, to describe the criteria of travelers who are given special provisions and of the countries being temporarily banned from entering Indonesia, to report the health condition of travelers, and to show the need of medical assistance. The material and relational processes demonstrate the form of privileges, namely dispensation from quarantine implementation and the exemption from Indonesia travel restriction. The relational process shows the particular privileged groups, including the state officials, delegates of economic cooperation, and well-known figures. It is embedded in the circular letter that what are deemed beneficial for the political elites and the country’s economic are somehow not in line with the public interest.

A Feature Analysis of Clause Complex in Scientific News from China Daily: A Case Study of Clean Energy News Reports

This paper selected three clean energy news reports from China Daily to analyze the logico-semantic relations and function of the clause complex in the discourse based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. The study aims to explore the characteristics of logico-semantic relations in the scientific news report, so as to have a deeper understanding of the sentence structure in the text. According to the five categories of logico-semantic relations, the study found that there are 64 clause complexes, with 22 locution projection, 13 enhancement relation, 12 elaboration relation, 9 idea projection and 8 extension relation. Projection clause type is generally used to evaluate the progress and effect of energy development projects; extension clause type usually emphasizes the impact of energy development or energy projects; enhancement clause type indicates when, where and why the energy transition and energy development projects are taking place and elaboration clause type is used to provide additional instruction of the project. In addition, this study also provides a reference for English learners and news write.rs

The Story of an Hour: A Text Kidnapped by Feminist Criticism

The Story of an Hour as one of Kate Chopin’s classic masterpieces, has always been regarded as a purely feminist work that authentically indicates the awakening of women’s consciousness of freedom under the oppression of patriarchal politics. Since Halliday proposed Systemic Functional Grammar and the three metafunctions of language, transitivity has been widely employed in the interpretation of literary works. The present study focuses on the vicissitude of the protagonist Mrs. Mallard’s mental status through the transitivity analysis as a useful tool and the stylistic features of the text itself as well to explore the hidden theme which has been neglected, and concludes that this classic work is kidnapped by feminist criticism. It satirizes the protagonist’s pathological emotional state of pursuing the absolute freedom in marriage.