Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach Research Articles

Corporate Mission Statements: An Appraisal-Based Study

A corporate mission statement aims to communicate the established goals of a company internally and externally. In this type of statement, attitude plays an important role in the expression of interpersonal linguistic meanings. Therefore, following Martin and Rose’s (2007) systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach, this paper qualitatively analyzed the mission statements of the companies that hold the top seven spots in Fortune’s corporate reputation rankings in 2021, namely Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Walt Disney, Starbucks, Berkshire Hathaway, and Alphabet, from the perspective of the appraisal system. The results indicate that the most common sub-system of attitude found in these corporate mission statements was positive appreciation. However, it was also found that the distribution patterns of evaluation resource words of the selected mission statements are not quite similar. Further, given the functions of this particular genre, that is, shaping the identity of the company and its employees, it was found that the selected corporate mission statements employ attitudinal resources that are all positive in orientation.

Understanding Analytical Exposition Text Writing with an SFL Approach

This research aims to explore the ability of eleventh-grade students to create analytical exposition texts based on their generic structure and language features, using a descriptive qualitative research approach. The study focuses on comparing model texts with students' writing to describe the types of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approaches employed and analyze the transitivity in writing analytical exposition. The participants of this study are eleventh-grade students selected based on a teacher's recommendation. The researcher reports the natural phenomena without applying any treatments that could influence the results. The primary objective is to understand the student’s ability to produce analytical exposition texts without intervention. The data collection involves analyzing sentences in the form of students' analytical exposition text assignments provided by the teacher. The researcher examines the clarity of ideas and evaluates the grammatical and generic structure present in the students' writing. This research utilizes a descriptive qualitative approach to capture and describe the natural phenomenon of students' analytical exposition text writing. The findings contribute to understanding the students' proficiency in creating analytical exposition student texts, as well as identifying areas that require further attention in instructional practices.

A Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Analysis on Short story Cindelaras by Cerita Rakyat from East Java

The purpose of this study was to analyze practical literature with a systemic functional linguistics approach. The ideal, textual, and interpersonal meanings will be analyzed using the short story “Cinderaras” by Cerita Rakyat from East Java. The researchers used descriptive qualitative methods. The stories were divided into sections and analyzed into tables using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The result of ideational metafunction analysis showed that most of the text used material and verbal processes which reached the value of 33,33%, behavioral processes reached the value of 22,22% and the last was 11,11% of behavioral processes. The result of textual metafunction analysis showed that 83,33% were topical unmarked themes and 16,66% were topical marked themes. In other words, it can be said that the “Cinderaras” was simple and concise and focused on actions and events and how the characters communicate, speak, or interact with each other.
 Keywords: systemic functional linguistics; short story

BEHAVIORAL PROCESS IN ANGKOLA LANGUAGE

The purpose of this study is to reveal how the behavioral process that is seen from the point of view of the Angkola language as one of the archipelago languages that still persists until now. The method used is descriptive qualitative through the Systemic Functional Linguistics approach. The research results show that the Angkola language behavior process has different variants. Patterns and pattern variants in verbal behavior processes are three times more numerous than patterns and pattern variants in mental behavior processes. This proves that the process of verbal behavior is more concrete in its form while the mental behavior process is more abstract in its form. Thus, the behavior process in the Angkola language can be an additional theoretical framework in an effort to understand the languages of the other archipelago.

REPRESENTASI PEREMPUAN DALAM LAGU RAP PRANCIS

This research aims to reveal the strategies used to represent women in French rap songs and identify the various identities of women depicted in French rap songs. This research utilizes Sara Mills' Critical Discourse Analysis theory and Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics approach on Transitivity. The data were then analyzed using Sara Mills' Critical Discourse Analysis theory, focusing on the subject and object positions. These clauses were classified based on transitivity elements, including participants, processes, and circumstances. The results show differences in the representation of women carried out by male and female rappers. In songs performed by male rappers, women are represented as object. Women are portrayed as materialistic, seductive, traditional, and passive. Based on the transitivity analysis, which indicates that the dominant processes are Material, Mental, and Relational processes. On the other hand, in rap songs performed by female rappers, women are represented as subject, capable of presenting themselves and offering representations that tend to empower women. This representation manifests as strong, confident, independent, and competitive women. This is also evident from the transitivity analysis, which indicates that the dominant process is the Material process

Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach to Language Policy-Problems in Sri Lanka: From Colonialism to Post-war Reconciliation

There is a vast body of literature on Language Policy (LP) produced during the last six decades in the newly independent countries from colonial subjugation. Language policy as an umbrella term penetrates several other areas. The present study has been confined to the problems of language status planning in Sri Lanka. This research was conducted to scrutinise LP-relevant problems in the light of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory and give a fresh insight into the existing problems based on the SFL approach for Sri Lankan LP ecology. The study is mostly a qualitative study that hardly utilises quantitative data. Apart from the secondary data sources, in-depth interviews were used as an interactive data collection instrument. Almost all the analyses are thematic apart from very few other types of analyses such as content analysis. Among the significant findings of this study, suppression of vernaculars during the colonial language status planning efforts and building up the feeling of superiority and inferiority based on language status planning are identified. This situation has further been established by pitching it to growthism and classism. The present study has also recognised bundles of LP-relevant real-world problems that occurred due to LP adoptions in and around LP practices. At the macro level, the lack of human, financial and material resources, violation of official language policy, the poor language proficiency of public officers, the gap between policies and implementation, lack of official language policy awareness, and legislative and machinery issues were identified. Among the other major problems, polarising linguistic communities, marginalising tiny language communities, lack of language skills of public officers, lack of officers to implement the LP, insufficient training given to the public service, lack of physical resources, resourcing LP implementing bodies poorly, and receiving public service merely in majority’s language in some places are influential findings. Several rank scales and system networks of the LP practices within the new model have been introduced to better reflect the problems systemically with some other exploratory tools. Significantly, the present study has yielded a new model which is called Cyclical Functional Model for LP in Sri Lanka. The researcher has given an entirely new insight into Sri Lankan LP ecology based on SFL. The appliable possibility that was introduced by M. A. K. Halliday to expand the SFL theory as a holistic model was the justification of this theoretical expansion. The researcher has also been able to demonstrate a causal relationship among the factors/entities from socio-political background to immediate factors involved in language policy-making, and from the language policy itself to the current social problems. The current study further concludes that the country started with some critical monolingual language policy discourse, and has moved to a fertile situation where the languages are considered as resources in principle in its orientation, nonetheless still they appear as written policies that are yet to seek practical realisations to stabilise this language ecology of the country.

Sesotho ideophones as personal names: A systemic functional linguistics approach

This article explores Sesotho ideophones as personal names. These ideophones are described with a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory framework as they were awarded as enacted messages that explicate social functions. The study is a further alleviation of the problem of complacency of taking personal names for granted, a problem facing Sesotho speakers, unaware that these names arise from their daily discourse and have social functions. It is a qualitative study and data was collected from academic institutions – their enrolment, pass and graduation lists – and from radio and TV broadcasts, telephone directories, neighbours and many other sources. The aim is to establish that Sesotho ideophones deployed as onomastics reflect as the context of reference, the semiotic view that Basotho functionally capture their socio-cultural context to portray their experiences and views. The names employ various linguistic qualities to display the interpersonal ‘social fabric’ among speakers. Their application displays the name givers skill to realise an ideophone as a permanent onomastic inscription that reveals the name givers’ modality or evaluation of a birth context. It is concluded that these ideophones significantly illuminate the aspired form-meaning description of functional Sesotho normally overlooked by Sesotho grammarians. The study finds that a ideophone-onomastic feature supersedes the verb quality of ideophones and makes the verbal group and the nominal group interrelate. Further, it magnifies SFL in the description of Sesotho grammar and strengthens that Sesotho names are context-based texts. Further research could establish the real contexts that describe these ideophone choices as personal names. This study has implications for linguistics, language education, media and advertising and applied linguistics.

Systemic Functional Linguistics to Preserve Interpersonal and Ideational Meaning in English-Indonesian Translation

Systemic functional linguistic (SFL) is a language theory that emphasize social function of a language in realizing meaning. Traditional ways of translating Indonesian text has relied heavily on generative grammar or grammar translation method. Using this method, the grammatical function of an utterance may be well preserved yet at the stake of meaning shift. Register (field, mode and tenor) is an important feature in SFL that may help translators preserving ideational meaning and tenor from the source language to target language. English sentences on specific scenarios are translated into Indonesian and vice versa using grammar translation method and systemic functional linguistic. The results are compared to observe translation shift, ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning. The findings showed that grammar translation method fail to transfer the ideational meaning into Indonesian despite preserving experiential features are intact. This does not happen in systemic functional linguistic approach since the approach requires preserving the functional meaning of a sentence instead of the grammar. The grammar categories may change using SFL but the functional meaning is well preserved. Emphasizing functional meaning instead of grammatical function enable translators to deliver equal meaning in Indonesian. While tenor is not a problem in the translation of Indonesian to English, translators need to carefully consider field, mode and tenor when translation texts from English to Indonesian.

Revisiting Halliday (1990) ‘New Ways of Meaning: The Challenge to Applied Linguistics’

Three decades ago, M. A. K. Halliday, the founder of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), presented a paper to AILA in Greece entitled ‘New Ways of Meaning: A Challenge to Applied Linguistics’ (Halliday, 1990), which introduced the notion of an ecological study of language (Fill and Mühlhäusler, 2001). In this seminal paper, Halliday emphasizes that ‘language does not passively reflect reality; language actively creates reality’ (cf. Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999) and that ‘lexicogrammar... shapes experience and transforms our perceptions into meanings’ (Halliday, 1990: 65). He identifies three ‘problematic spheres’ as foreseeable challenges – language planning, the register of scientific discourse and of language and prejudice, involving the deployment of resources within the system that constructs sexism, racism, growthism, and classism; and highlights the role of future applied linguists – ‘to use our theory of grammar... as a metatheory for understanding how grammar functions as a theory of experience’ (1990: 69) and ‘to learn to educate five billion children ... at such a time it is as well to reflect on how language construes the world’ (1990: 91), one that contains numerous ecosystems essential to the human survival. Three decades later, at a time when we humans continue to destroy the only habitable planet known in the universe, ‘ecolinguistics’ has been established and recognized as a field of research and activity (one involving ideological tensions, cf. Martin, 1986), drawing centrally on Halliday (1990), but is his challenge being met outside the academic community? We revisit the challenge and mission envisaged by Halliday to answer the questions, ‘What has changed?’ and ‘What still needs to be done?’ We adopt a systemic functional linguistics approach to investigate the questions in a wide range of registers where environmental issues are being processed semiotically and opinions are being formed, including examples from political discourse, news media, social media, and late-night talk shows on topics surrounding climate change, renewable energy, wildlife conservation and extinction, and economic inequality. We also pay attention to texts likely to be influential in the life of children and their gradual construal of their own world views with associated value systems (cf. Matthiessen, 2015).

An appraisal perspective on students’ use of attitudinal resources in university EFL academic oral presentations

Research in evaluative language classroom becomes paramount to improving students’ critical skills. Despite this fact, studies on the evaluative language of EFL students’ attitudinal resources in Indonesian universities remain tenuous. This study aims to examine the attitudinal resources in fiction book reviews by EFL students for academic oral presentations at an Indonesian private university. The analysis of attitudinal resources in this study is based on the theory of Martin and White (2005). The study applied the systemic functional linguistics approach proposed by M. A. K. Halliday (Citation1994). Data were taken from video recordings and transcripts. The findings show that students expressed all three types of attitudinal resources; Appreciation was used most often, followed by Affect and Judgement. It shows that when reviewing books, students tend to express their appreciation, evaluate the books contents and express their feelings or emotions rather than evaluating the authors’ behaviour or character. In addition, the lexical features used by the students imply criticizing, evaluating, admiring, and praising the quality of the book. The study also found that the students used both positive and negative features. As a result, EFL students need to be empowered in universities as critical thinking skills offer the potential for effective learning that can transform them into professional users of information rather than passive recipients.

Teacher-practitioner Inquiry in Professional Development A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction: A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction

This qualitative study reports the results of sensemaking when teacher-practitioner inquiry in professional development (PD) is carried out for 120 Vietnamese K-12 and college teachers. The PD was designed to prepare teachers to teach with different newly-approved English language coursebooks using a genre-based systemic functional linguistic approach (SFL). During scaffolds in workshops, teaching staff guided teachers in cooperating and drafting lessons using genre-based SFL, examining the lessons’ impacts on students’ responses. Teachers also journaled to unravel the knitted instructional complexities and express their willingness to adapt to emerging teaching practices. Data were collected via the video recordings, teachers’ interviews, and content analysis of their inquiry products. Four themes representing the complexities in teachers’ sensemaking of scaffolded collaborative PD were: 1. Improved teacher agency in terms of planning and instruction; 2. Research-based experiential learning creating a venue for intrinsic motivation to innovate in instruction; 3. An overwhelming feeling of inequity between high and low-resourced instructional situations; 4. The mismatch between teachers’ advocacy for desired deep-learning approach and the traditional ideology of rote learning for exams.

Online Shopping as Cultural Disorientation during Covid-19 Pandemic for Women Community Leaders and Cadre in Village: Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

Research basis in finding out whether there is cultural disorientation during Covid-19 Pandemic that happen to women community leaders and cadre in a village ‘Banjaragung Jombang’. Case study with systemic functional linguistic approach: transitivity is used in this research. Findings show that there is cultural disorientation in doing online shopping seen in aspects of salience, mood, conflict, and relapse. The women community leaders and cadre tend to think that online shopping is essential, enjoyable and easy but they tend to have self motivation to keep doing online shopping and get trouble in economy and time consuming which gives impact in their work. The novelty of this research is that the social case can be investigated through linguistics.

Writing in German as a foreign language in Norwegian upper sec-ondary school: An investigation of patterns of language choices for meaning-making

The main objective of this article is to identify and describe characteristic patterns of language choices in texts written by Norwegian upper secondary school students of German as a foreign language (GFL) (age 16/17, school year 12, 5th year of FL learning). The study maps language choices in a set of 12 learner responses to a writing prompt about interpreting a film title. The aim of the study is to describe these choices in terms of how the learners use ideational meaning-making resources to arrive at meaningful content. The study takes a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach and analyses the responses in terms of the following lexicogrammatical and discourse semantic systems of resources: Transitivity, taxonomic and logico-semantic relations. The study finds several strategies and language choices that presented themselves as particularly relevant for meaning-making. For example, the learners reach an interpretation through clauses relating two messages to each other, and one of those two messages is typically structured in a complex way. Overall, the study provides insights into relevant patterns for expository writing in general and such that seem important to the particular context in which the response was situated. The article also points to the sophistication of the learners’ language use and the linguistic demands regarding the task at hand. In line with existing research, the current study also shows how SFL and genre theory can be successfully applied to the analysis of responses by beginner to intermediate GFL learners.

A Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach to the Analysis of CFL Textbooks

A Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach to the Analysis of CFL Textbooks

Analysis of Patient Cues in Asynchronous Health Interactions: Pilot Study Combining Empathy Appraisal and Systemic Functional Linguistics

Lifestyle-related diseases are among the leading causes of death and disability. Their rapid increase worldwide has called for low-cost, scalable solutions to promote health behavior changes. Digital health coaching has proved to be effective in delivering affordable, scalable programs to support lifestyle change. This approach increasingly relies on asynchronous text-based interventions to motivate and support behavior change. Although we know that empathy is a core element for a successful coach-user relationship and positive patient outcomes, we lack research on how this is realized in text-based interactions. Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a linguistic theory that may support the identification of empathy opportunities (EOs) in text-based interactions, as well as the reasoning behind patients' linguistic choices in their formulation. This study aims to determine whether empathy and SFL approaches correspond and complement each other satisfactorily to study text-based communication in a health coaching context. We sought to explore whether combining empathic assessment with SFL categories can provide a means to understand client-coach interactions in asynchronous text-based coaching interactions. We retrieved 148 text messages sent by 29 women who participated in a randomized trial of telecoaching for the prevention of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and postnatal weight loss. We conducted a pilot study to identify users' explicit and implicit EOs and further investigated these statements using the SFL approach, focusing on the analysis of transitivity and thematic analysis. We identified 164 EOs present in 42.37% (3478/8209) of the word count in the corpus. These were mainly negative (n=90, 54.88%) and implicit (n=55, 60.00%). We distinguished opening, content and closing messages structures. Most of the wording was found in the content (n=7077, 86.21%) with a declarative structure (n=7084, 86.30%). Processes represented 22.4% (n=1839) of the corpus, with half being material (n=876, 10.67%) and mostly related to food and diet (n=196, 54.92%), physical activity (n=96, 26.89%), and lifestyle goals (n=40, 11.20%). Our findings show that empathy and SFL approaches are compatible. The results from our transitivity analysis reveal novel insights into the meanings of the users' EOs, such as their seek for help or praise, often missed by health care professionals (HCPs), and on the coach-user relationship. The absence of explicit EOs and direct questions could be attributed to low trust on or information about the coach's abilities. In the future, we will conduct further research to explore additional linguistic features and code coach messages. Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) ACTRN12620001240932; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=380020.

Reproducing experiential meaning in translation: A systemic functional linguistics analysis on translating ancient Chinese poetry and prose in political texts.

Ancient Chinese poetry and prose (ACPP) are the essence of traditional Chinese culture and also literary gems of the world. Despite the long tradition of previous Chinese Presidents using ACPP in their political addresses, the translation work on the three volumes of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China with much ACPP still poses a daunting challenge to the translation of literary texts in non-literary texts. As experiential meaning is inherent in all kinds of texts, literature, and non-literature, this study, drawing on the sights of Halliday's experiential mode of meaning and register theory in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), explored how the ACPP's experiential meaning was rendered in the political texts, and factors motivating transitivity patterns and shift tendencies. Statistics showed that the translations tend to reproduce the experiential meaning such that it involves more representations of the flow of events and the creation of relationships among entities, focusing more on construing the experience of the physical world rather than personal emotions, feelings, or cognition. Besides, the target text is also inclined to simplify the experiential meaning by compressing and omitting unnecessary transitivity processes and the participant and circumstance nominalization. This research found that the factors responsible for such tendencies include the features of political texts, language differences, the distribution of process types, the delicacy of the transitivity system, and register variations of fields of activity. With these findings, the study is expected to contribute to the SFL approach of studying literary translation in non-literary texts through the prism of experiential meaning and offer guidance in the translation of political literature with ACPP.

Readability of PISA-like Reading Texts: A Lesson Learned from Indonesian Teachers

This article discusses the text readability of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)-like reading texts written by Indonesian-English-teachers who are teaching in high schools in Jawa Barat province, Indonesia. The aims of the research are to describe the lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and lexical variation indexes of the PISA-like reading texts compared to PISA reading texts 2018 released field trial new reading items. The method applied is a qualitative with descriptive quantification. The qualitative method is employed to identify and describe both lexical and grammatical words, in addition to specifying the lemmas and ranking clauses in the PISA-like reading texts. Quantifying the indexes of lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and lexical variation are implemented. All analyses utilized are based on the systemic functional linguistic approach. It is reported that, firstly, the texts of PISA reading texts 2018 are lexically denser than the PISA-like reading texts. Secondly, the texts of PISA reading texts 2018 are grammatically more intricate than the PISA-like reading texts. Lastly, PISA-like reading texts have similar index with PISA reading texts 2018.

A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach to Analyzing White Supremacist and Conspiratorial Discourse on YouTube

ABSTRACT Since the 2016 US Presidential Election, extreme right-wing communities have gained extensive popularity on YouTube, spreading discourses of white supremacy and conspiracy. This paper focuses on how methods drawn from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) can be used to analyze this communication and contribute to research interests within the field of media and communication studies. SFL is a social semiotic model of language concerned with systematic analysis of language choices in terms of their social context. More specifically, this paper draws upon the Appraisal and Affiliation frameworks developed within SFL, in order to understand how patterns of evaluation are expressed in language and how these function in terms of aligning ambient audiences with particular values. YouTube videos and comments about the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire are used as a case study. The aim is to illustrate how this approach can offer an additional perspective on the issues of information disorder and hate speech that does not attempt to homogenize the multiple reasons why people engage in such hateful behavior.

Establishing an institutional EAP teacher development scheme based on BALEAP's competency framework: A critical review of the competencies

In clinical research, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered to be “the gold standard” for evaluating treatments. Accordingly, RCT reporting in top English-medium medical journals is specifically regulated by The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement. However, although the CONSORT Statement prescribes the content items that are to be included in a report, little guidance is offered on how the content can be communicated effectively. This paper explores a linguistic construction of a research gap in the introductory sections of medical research articles that report on RCTs (i.e., RCT reports), which has been identified as crucial in the process of RCT justification. In this study, a sample of Introduction sections extracted form recently published RCT reports was analysed using a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) approach to genre and evaluation. The findings indicate that RCT report writers tend to create a research gap by embedding the rhetorical structures of three arguing genres – expositions, discussions, and challenges – into their research warrants. The results of this study carry pedagogical implications for RCT report writing training.

A corpus analysis of disciplinary identity in evaluative journal articles: A Systemic Functional Linguistics approach

This study investigates the discursive construction of identity in the largely neglected register of evaluative journal articles (e.g., critiques, rebuttals). The study looks at how disciplinary identity is constructed in this register through the use of the subjective first-person pronoun I from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) perspective. This is done through the analysis of: (1) the variation of I in evaluative journal articles across six disciplines (i.e., Applied Linguistics, Biology, History, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science) and (2) the process types (e.g., material, mental) that authors use with I to construct a particular disciplinary identity. Findings show that social science and humanities authors use I much more frequently than hard science authors, but also that the frequency of I in the hard sciences is not negligible when compared to previous research. Another important finding is that disciplinary differences are reflected in both the frequency and use of process types. The findings are highly relevant for teaching graduate students discipline-appropriate ways of identity construction in evaluative registers, such as critiques.