Systemic Functional Grammar Research Articles

Multimodal Metaphors in English and Chinese Food Commercials: A Case of Snickers

Advertising serves as a unique mode of communication, where elements such as slogans, sounds, and images are essential approaches to conveying its central theme. Numerous scholars have examined advertising language and imagery through various linguistic frameworks, including stylistics, pragmatics, systemic functional grammar, and semiotics. However, the study of multimodal metaphors in advertising, particularly about their types, presentation modes, and characteristics, remains insufficiently explored. This article, grounded in conceptual metaphor theory, analyzes the multimodal metaphors employed in 14 Snickers television commercials, aiming to address the following research questions: (1) What types of multimodal metaphors are utilized in Snickers TV commercials? (2) How are these multimodal metaphors manifested through different modes? (3) What distinctive features do these multimodal metaphors exhibit in food commercials? The findings of this study indicate three key results. First, the multimodal metaphors identified in the Snickers commercials can be categorized into two primary metaphor systems, namely, the great chain of being metaphor system and the event structure metaphor system. Second, the images, language, and sound modes work in conjunction to realize the multimodal metaphors. Third, the source domain typically appears earlier than the target domain. By examining how metaphors are represented across different modes, this article contributes to the existing body of research on multimodal metaphors and offers valuable insights for advertisers in the field.

“Mood features of world leaders' commitments to carbon neutrality in COP28 climate communication”

AbstractThe world faces a critical era for climate action, and research pinpoints the role of linguistic analysis in enhancing our understanding of climate discourses (Zanaty, 2023; Dormer, 2020). In light of this, examining mood features in world leaders’ commitments to carbon neutrality is timely and essential. Defined as the balance between emitted and absorbed carbon (European Parliament, 2023), carbon neutrality has become a focal point in climate agendas. World leaders frequently use public speeches to shape perceptions and drive engagement on the issue. This study analyzes 85 speeches delivered at COP28, sourced from the official United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) website. A sample of 70 speeches was selected using Yamane's formula (1967), and Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (1985) was applied to examine 2,553 mood features in these speeches. Findings reveal a significant imbalance in mood feature usage, with 84.17% in the indicative mood to assess climate conditions, 9.67% in the imperative mood for directives, 2.50% in the conditional mood for future vision, 3.17% in the substantive mood for contextual framing, and 0.47% in the interrogative mood for audience engagement. This study underscores the importance of balanced mood features in climate discourses to reinforce global commitment toward emission reduction and to promote a more compelling, resonant narrative for climate action.

Beyond “Made in China”: visual rhetoric and cultural functionality in translating the traditional Chinese totem Loong 龙

Abstract Current inter-disciplinarity has rendered it feasible to utilize implements and methodologies to navigate around the communication of fashion at textual as well as material levels, reified by inter-semiotic and cultural translation. Fashion communication, from the perspective of post-translation studies, is a process of cultural translation with visual symbols as its text, visual rhetoric as its core meaning system, and visual stylists as its translator. This study takes one of the most formidable and awe-inspiring icons – the Chinese totem Loong 龙 as the main research object, through the analysis of multifarious styles of visual text structures across the entire process of fashion communication, to deconstruct the semiotic transformation of Loong 龙 by means of visual rhetoric. In forging this rhetorical dynamic within the realm of visual art, the cultural translative procedure is orchestrated primarily through the registers of field, tenor, and mode. Furthermore, it is molded by the intricate interplay of transitivity, mood, and modality, culminating in this newly proposed concept – “cultural functionality” through the lens of systemic functional grammar. This study, by means of this rhetorical, semiotic approach, forays into the profundity of what is named as “Made in China” and showcases Chinese spirit in fashion communication.

A Comparative Analysis of American and Vietnamese Presidents' Speeches: A Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective

This study presents a comparative analysis of the inaugural speeches of U.S. President Joe Biden and Vietnamese President To Lam, utilizing Michael Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) framework. By examining the Ideational (Transitivity), Interpersonal (Modality), and Textual (Texture and Cohesion) metafunctions, the study reveals how each leader's linguistic choices mirror the distinct political and cultural contexts of their respective nations. Joe Biden’s speech underscores the urgency of immediate action and crisis management, employing Material Processes to stress the importance of unity and national recovery. Conversely, To Lam's speech is rooted in long-term nation-building and the leadership of the Communist Party, with a focus on Relational Processes to reinforce collective responsibility and national unity. The Modality analysis demonstrates Joe Biden’s use of High Modality to convey decisiveness and transparency, aligning with American expectations for solid and clear commitments. In contrast, To Lam emphasizes collective duty and the Party's enduring leadership, reflecting Vietnam's socio-political ethos. Additionally, both speeches use Theme-Rheme structures and lexical repetition to ensure textual cohesion, though their cultural and ideological differences lead to distinct rhetorical approaches. By deepening our understanding of how political leaders use language to shape identities, communicate visions, and influence public perception, this study contributes to the broader field of political communication, offering insights into the strategic use of language across different cultural contexts.

Boom or Bust: Unveiling the Media Portrayal of Confucius Institutes in America and Britain

Intercultural communication institutes, such as the Goethe Institut and Confucius Institute, were established to globally promote language and culture. However, the status of Confucius Institutes (CIs), particularly those in the UK and US, has shifted. In light of these evolving perspectives, this research employed Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as theoretical frameworks in examining the diachronic transformations in the portrayal of CIs in American and British media discourse spanning the last decade. By analyzing intertextuality and linguistic elements, such as lexical choices and the usage of modal verbs, this study discerns different images of CI constructed by the media. Before 2020, the media highlighted the cultural elements of CI.

An Analysis of the Conceptual Function of Facing the Sea with Spring Blossoms

Since Facing the Sea with Spring Blossoms has attracted widespread attention, many scholars have formed four interpretations from various perspectives, namely: the poem conveys the love of life and the pursuit of happiness; the poem is a deathbed poem, expressing the poet's despair of earthly life; the poet is a sad and bitter soul in pursuit of happiness; the poem is the poet's choice between “existence or destruction.” Poetry is the poet's choice between "existence or destruction," and he finally chooses to give up earthly happiness. Systemic functional grammar was founded by Halliday, who believed that language has three meta-functions: conceptual function, communicative function, and textual function, which are linked to the transitivity system, mood system, and thematic system. Since its inception, Systemic Functional Grammar has been applied to many text analyses, demonstrating its powerful interpretative power. Guided by this theory, the author conducted a conceptual-functional analysis of Facing the Sea with Spring Blossoms and found that there are 25 processes in the poem, including nine material processes, five mental processes, six relational processes, three verbal processes, and two existential processes. The author analyzed the three types of processes that are more typical in this poem and drew the following conclusions: first, happiness is an important theme for the poet; second, the poem is opened by me (the poet) choosing between two kinds of happiness; third, the poet finally chooses non-earthly happiness, i.e., “I only wish to face the sea, with spring blossoms.”

A comparative study of thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in human-written and AI-generated texts

By adopting systemic functional grammar as the theoretical framework, the present research investigates the choices of the textual, the interpersonal, the topical Themes, and thematic progression patterns in human-written and AI-generated argumentative texts to examine how the human author and the robot organize the clause and text. The findings suggest that human-written and AI-generated texts differ significantly in using the subtypes of textual, interpersonal, and marked topical Themes. In terms of textual Themes, the machine tends to use more concession signals to repeat information that has been stated earlier, adopt fewer condition signals since the robot may be less likely to imagine possible or impossible situations, and repetitively rely on clause-initial conjunctive adjuncts of addition to extend the clause to the previous text. As for interpersonal Themes, the robot seldom adopts modal adjuncts or modal verbal operators as interpersonal Themes, which may suggest its lack of awareness of interaction with the reader and its avoidance of expressing its viewpoints in a typical or congruent way. Regarding topical Themes, the less use of marked themes in AI-generated texts demonstrates that AI may less carefully plan the development of the text to foreground the setting or construct coherent text. Considering thematic progression patterns, the frequent use of the constant pattern in AI-generated texts prevents the text from development and makes the text redundant and simplistic like a list of ideas.

The Semantic Function of Modern Chinese “Negation + X” Modal Words Based on Communication Technology and Big Data Corpus

The semantic function of modern Chinese “negation + X” modal words based on communication technology and big data corpus has gained wide attention. As the basis of SOA architecture, Web services provide the key resources for worldwide information transfer and information sharing with their characteristics of loose coupling, platform independence, and data exchange without additional support from third-party hardware and software. However, along with the popularization and improvement of Web service technology, the number and types of Web services in the Internet are also increasing massively, and there are a large number of Web services with various functions, quality and granularity. Therefore, how to quickly and accurately discover Web services that satisfy users’ query requests from a large and complex set of services has become a critical problem to be solved in the current Web service discovery research. Based on the real corpus, this paper analyzes the similarities and differences in the semantic functions of modern Chinese “negation + X” modal words by combining lexicalization and grammatization, cognitive linguistics, systemic functional grammar and other related theories. The experimental results demonstrate that the model is designed for automatic annotation of semantic word classes, and the annotation algorithm based on the hidden horse model, combined with the Viterbi algorithm based on dynamic programming, achieves a correct rate of 94.3% in the closed test and 89.1% in the open test despite the small size of the training corpus and severe data sparsity, and the model fitting effect meets the dynamic expectations.

Sentiment Analysis through the Lens of Systemic Functional Grammar: Bridging Linguistic Theory and NLP

Sentiment Analysis through the Lens of Systemic Functional Grammar: Bridging Linguistic Theory and NLP

Critical Discourse Analysis of an Inaugural Speech Based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar

Critical Discourse Analysis of an Inaugural Speech Based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar

Exploring Clause Complexity: A Detailed Analysis Within a Specific Text

This study investigates the role of clause complexity in students' academic writing, focusing on the application of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) symbols to create persuasive and coherent discourse. Employing a qualitative single-case method, the analysis examines a specific text on the dangers of smoking produced by students. The findings showcase the students' effective use of varied clause types and relationships, as well as their ability to present a systematic and logical flow of ideas supported by factual evidence. The results emphasize the importance of mastering multiple elements, such as utilizing diverse clause types and maintaining a strategic narrative flow, for successful academic writing. These insights can serve as valuable information for educators and academic writers alike, offering a deeper understanding of the implications of clause complexity and its role in fostering effective communication in academic writing.

A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Advertisements and Movie Posters

Multimodal discourse analysis, grounded in Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar, has been widely applied in advertising, movie posters, and e-commerce. Studies often use Kress and Van Leeuwen's visual grammar to understand how images convey meaning. It will compare the multimodal theoretical analysis of movie posters and ads, focusing on textual, color, and layout modalities, as well as stylistic features and internal modalities. Additionally, we will explore enhancing user experience in advertisements through multimodal analysis, aiming to increase impact, expressiveness, user engagement, and precise placement.

A Linguistic-Discourse Analysis of the Language of Psalm 23

This paper examines the linguistic-discourse Analysis of Psalm 23, from the holy Bible, the book of the Christian religion. Linguistic-discourse analysis is one of the approaches used in disbanding the entanglements and ambiguities in language study. The linguistics and discourse features discussed include the graphological features, phonological features, syntactic structure,lexico-semantic representation, and cohesive relations. The graphological features are the punctuation marks, indentation, paragraphing and capitalization of letters in the text. The phonological features in the text are alliteration and assonance. Moreover, the syntactic structure includes short phrases, clauses, sentences, and pattern repetition, and the use of archaic pronouns which form part of the clauses and sentences. The lexico-semantic representation explains the linguistic explanation of the structure and meaning of the text. Consequently, the cohesive relations discussed in the text are anaphora, cataphora, substitution, conjunction, synonym,repetition and collocational converse. The theoretical framework adopted in this study is the Neo-Firthian Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar . The word 'systemic' means that language is viewed as a set of options for making meaning (Halliday, 1990; Obodeh, 2018). Brown and Yule (1983) Theory on Discourse analysis is also used as a backup to Halliday systemic grammar. The theory contains four approaches which include reference, presupposition, implicative and influence. Brown and Yule stated that the theory would help in the analysis of written textual, spoken and interaction for the research and also for the reader of the analysis, and this paper is an analysis of a written discourse. The library is also one of the research methods for this study. This is where books, journals and other useful research information are kept. The analysis in the study portrays the fact that a religious text could be analysed using the tenets of linguistics discourse. Since language is a tool of all activities in life, this paper therefore has tried to solve some language problems by analyzing the linguistics and discourse features of the language of the text, Psalm 23, for better understanding of the text by readers, clergy, congregations, and scholar of language and literature in particular and the academia in general.

Study of Plot Development from the Perspective of Transitivity Analysis

This paper analyzes the short novel A Woman on a Roof by Doris Lessing from the perspective of transitivity analysis, focusing on how the development of plot is revealed through transitivity analysis within Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar is designed for the purpose of text analysis and to account for how the language is used. The conclusion of this study is that transitivity analysis is a powerful tool in analyzing literary works and it also provides us with a new perspective to appreciate and evaluate literary works.

A RIGOROUS METHODOLOGY FOR AN ETHICAL AGENDA OF THE ACT:

In this paper, we are concerned with the tension of a dialogical ontology with a structuralist episteme on the Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis model, the Social Theory of Discourse (1992; 2003). Our approach considers that, on the one hand, its origins in the Systemic Functional Grammar (HALLIDAY, 2004) maintain a "top-down" structuralist residuality, which remains in textual and linguistic analysis. However, on the other hand, we recognize that the Bakhtinian dialogism assumption (BAKHTIN, 1993; 1986) functions as a "bottom-up" dialogical eventicity that forms the ethical basis of the critical perspective. This methodological treatment of the relationship among events, practices and texts by their description and interpretation is what allows the transition from a static ethical agenda to an empowering ethical agenda. The real empowerment, embedded in the “critical purpose”, needs the consideration of the responsible and responsive integrality of the act (COSTA, 2013; 2012)

A Study on the U.S. White House Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence from the Perspective of Systemic-Functional Grammar

In November 2023, the White House of the United States introduced relevant laws and regulations about AI. The regulation of artificial intelligence is the inevitable result of social development and the inevitable trend of technological development. Other counties domestic regulation of artificial intelligence-related laws and regulations has not yet been carried out. This paper analyzes American AI executive order from keywords, transitivity, modality, and cohesion by using Systemic Functional Grammar theory. Understanding the important contents and characteristics of the U.S. executive order on artificial intelligence can provide a reference for the formulation of other countries artificial intelligence-related administrative regulations and laws, which finally promote the development of international artificial intelligence law.

Systemic Functional Grammar Analysis on Igor’s Utterances Portraying His Ideology in Coelho’s The Winner Stands Alone

Someone’s ideology can be manifested through one’s language. The language one uses to talk about himself or other can give the picture on how one sees oneself and one’s surrounding. There might be an argument that the use of language is the unconscious product. However, based on systemic functional grammar (SFG) theory, that unconscious language can be analysed from the structure to figure out the ideology of the user. This study took the novel written by Paulo Coelho entitled The Winner Stands Alone to analyse how the language used by the main character, Igor Malev, to show his ideology. There are 660 data taken from Igor’s dialogues and monologues to be analysed using SFG theory proposed by Halliday. From the analysis, this study found out that Igor shows and perceives himself as a doer, carrier, senser, existent, sayer, and behaver. It means he truly manifested his ideology as a winner and resistant in this materialistic world and he means it. He puts every thought into an action. To put simply he is a man of his word. Keyword: choice of word, ideational metafunction, ideology, interpersonal metafunction, textual metafunction

The Construction of Interpersonal Meanings in Jiaqi Li's E-Commerce Live Streams: Integrating Verbal and Visual Semiotics

This study conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of the live streaming of Jiaqi Li, a well-known Chinese streamer. Integrating systemic functional grammar and systemic visual grammar to explore the construction of interpersonal meanings in Li's live streams, the authors found that Li uses verbal semiotics to convey information and feelings and, more important, to create his different interactive roles as an authoritative opinion leader, a protector of consumers’ benefits, and a friend who shares his experiences and recommends products. This study offers insight into e-commerce discourse and communication, adding to the literature on live streaming in commerce and business communication.

Representation of Racial Disparity in Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give

Racism has become the biggest social issue in the world because of its constant unjust treatment that affects people from minority races, ethnicities, and religions. Related to this issue, The Hate U Give conveys the social condition where racial disparity towards black people is profoundly represented in the narrative. This study focuses on identifying the ideational metafunction elements, including transitivity and ergativity patterns found in the narrative. It reveals how the racial disparity is performed by the use of the meta function. Mixed method research was employed to collect and analyze the data to yield more insightful information that complements both methodologies’ findings. The theory of Systemic Functional Grammar was used to identify and classify the ideational metafunction elements from the collected narrative, and the Discourse Analysis approach was applied as a theoretical approach to support the observation. The result concluded that in the analysis of transitivity patterns, material and relational processes dominate the narrative by approximately 25% to 33% of the entire collected narrative. The findings show that racial disparity in analyzing black people that was performed by law enforcement in the collected narrative is manifested in three forms: police brutality, racial profiling, and sentencing policy.

A Comparative Multimodal Stylistics Analysis of Selected Newspapers Cartoons

This study focuses on the comparative multimodal stylistic analysis of selected newspapers cartoons. A comparative study of newspapers cartoon juxtaposes two or more newspaper cartoon brands. Multimodality entails the mode(s) employed in a cartoon to portray meaning. The data for the study comprises ten cartoons selected through the purposive random sampling technique between 2020 and 2021 from The Punch, The Nation and The Guardian newspapers respectively. Data were analysed using Halliday’s meta-function of language in his Systemic Functional Grammar. It was discovered that framing, salience and linking layout are handy analytical tools in carrying out a multimodal analysis; each brand communicates its thoughts in a unique way with salient similarities and it was discovered that newspaper cartoons also lament the current tragic occurrence in society. This study concludes that visual mode is the lifeblood of a newspaper cartoon while the verbal mode only complements cartoon but cannot stand alone as a newspaper cartoon.