Systemic Functional Perspective Research Articles

A contrastive study of the English and Myanmar configurations of process, participants, and circumstances from the systemic functional perspective

This study seeks to explore the similarities and distinctions inherent in the transitivity configurations of English and Myanmar from the Systemic Functional perspective. The investigation reveals that both languages share a commonality in comprising three fundamental elements: process, participant roles, and circumstantial elements. However, their degree of integration between processes and participants is comparatively limited. Salient distinguishing features emerge in terms of the sequencing of transitivity elements, their ellipsis, and salience. In English transitivity configurations, processes typically manifest after the first or second participant role, or both. In instances involving an empty Subject (It/There), the process immediately ensues. Additionally, the positional relations between processes and participant roles are more numerous. Circumstantial elements conventionally find placement at the clause's outset, between the first participant role and process, between the process and second participant role, or at the clause's conclusion. Ellipsis of participant roles may occur sporadically. Conversely, Myanmar transitivity configurations exhibit participant roles at the clause's beginning, with processes commonly positioned at the clause's culmination. The positional relations between processes and participant roles are less frequent. Circumstantial elements are conventionally situated at the clause's outset, between participant roles, or preceding the process. While ellipsis of processes is infrequent, ellipsis of participant roles transpires more frequently. These findings significantly contribute to the ongoing comparative analysis of transitivity configurations across languages, especially in the context of Myanmar and other global languages.

A Comparative Study on Epistemic Modality in Linguistic Research Article Conclusions

Epistemic modality is an important and complex linguistic device in academic writing, which could help authors state their claims and positions. The conclusion is also a critical part in research articles, where authors summarize their studies and give suggestions. Many scholars study modality in many aspects, but they rarely focus on its application in research article conclusions. Therefore, this study compared the use of modality in 25 conclusions of linguistic research papers written by native English speakers and 25 English conclusions written by Chinese authors from a systemic functional perspective. It focused on the similarities and differences of the use of modality in linguistic research article conclusions from two perspectives: value and orientation. The results show that both native English speakers and Chinese authors are more likely to rely on low and median value and subjective orientation in their conclusions. The findings suggest that linguistic research article authors tend to make claims in a reserved and tentative way. Moreover, this study shows that Chinese authors are more likely to employ modal expressions and subjective orientation of modality in their conclusions, which may relate to cultural diversity and modality shift. The findings of the study may help non-native English authors to produce linguistic research articles in a more acceptable way.

Readability of Reading Texts as Authentic Materials Issued by ChatGPT: A Systemic Functional Perspective

Selecting the appropriate texts as the authentic material for English teaching, particularly at the university level, matched with students’ mastery level is still challenging. This study attempts to investigate the readability level of reading texts through the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) issued by ChatGPT, focused on whether the complexity level of the texts matches the standard level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) by proposed British Council. Through the qualitative design with content analysis, this study examines eighteen texts classified following CEFR levels issued by ChatGPT. It analyzes their lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and lexical variation to know the complexity of the texts. The analysis revealed that the complexity level of the texts issued by ChatGPT has not thoroughly followed the standard level of the texts used by the British Council on the CEFR level, indicating that several texts are inappropriate with their complexity levels. It is found that the complexity level of the texts issued by ChatGPT is determined by the length of the texts that increase from the basic level to the proficient level seen from the number of words in each text, not by their lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and lexical variation indexes. The study provides implications for the lecturer to carefully select the text used as teaching material issued by ChatGPT by relying on the lexico-grammatical analysis of the text to help students achieve the comprehension stage.

Translating Ideational Meaning in Political Texts: A Systemic Functional Perspective

Political texts are unlike other texts as they ''are a part and/or the results of political events", and they are historically and culturally produced in which politics is the main subject matter (Schäffner, 2001:133). Transferring meaning of such text types in the translation process is difficult for translators due to specific terminologies, expressions and linguistic structure. Regarding meaning, Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL) identifies three kinds of meaning of language, namely, Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual. The major focus of this research is the Ideational meaning. From this perspective, this paper applies SFL to analyze and discuss the patters of equivalence and shift that are employed to transfer the Ideational meaning of journalistic texts, political texts in particular, in translating from English into Kurdish. With a corpus of 8 pairs of English source texts and their Kurdish translations, the analysis shows that a number of patterns are used to reproduce the source clausal Ideational meaning in the target texts. Finally, the study ends with the main findings and conclusions

Deontic Modality in "The Invisible Man" Movie (A Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective)

This research discusses the aspects of action and speech that are contained in The Invisible Man movie based on the theory of Jespersen and Palmer (2007) in the sub-categories commissive, directive, and volitive. The objective of this research is to describe deontic modality in three sub-categories commissive, directive, and volitive in The Invisible Man movie. This research used the descriptive qualitative method. The sources of data of this research are audio visual as primary data and written utterances from screenshotting and transcribing as secondary data. The data is from The Invisible Man movie. Data collection was carried out by searching and downloading movies, watching movies, screenshotting, classifying, and coding. Data were analyzed by presenting, describing, interpreting, and concluding data to answer research questions from this research. The results show that 18 data are included in the sub-categories commissive, directive, and volitive. Deontic modality appears because it is made by several characters in the movie that make promises and threats (commissive), make requests, order others to do something, give suggestions, carry out obligations (directive), and hope for something (volitive). The researcher found that the characters in The Invisible Man movie adopt deontic modality aspects that focus on the sub-categories commissive, directive, and volitive modality because many scenes show how aspects of the three sub-categories are used by characters to overcome existing problems. These three sub-categories are related to each other, the existence of a commissive that will lead to the directive to volitive.

Surah Al Mujadalah Translation and Discourse Learning in Higher Education: A Systemic Functional Perspective

The main topic in this study is the system of transitivity and modality translation of Al-Quran Al-Mujadalah, and its relevance to the context of learning in higher education, with the goals of 1) determining the system of transitivity and modality, and 2) knowing the type of process and modalities that dominates and determines the relevance of the research on learning discourse in college. The method employed is a qualitative descriptive theory, which is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. Documentation and records were used to collect data. The data was analyzed using the clause identification method, and the data were analyzed using the described method. According to the findings, the transitivity system as Al-Mujadalah verses 11 is process materials 4 (67 percent), relational identification process as many as 1 (16 percent), behavioral process 1 (16 percent). The shapes of modalities are probability, obligation, and usuality. The dominant of transitivity is a material process and the dominant modality is an obligation. In the context of higher education, discourse learning is not only about analyzing the text i.e Quran but also about the urgency of the message based on that surah translation.

Ba in the Chinese Ba-Construction: A Cardiff Grammar Approach

This study explores the semantic and the syntactic status of ba in the Chinese ba-construction from a systemic functional perspective. At the level of meaning, ba functions as the Process element in the transitivity structure of the overall construction, and delivers an influential meaning. This means that the ba-construction involves a dominant and a dependent process. The dominant process is a configuration of a Participant Role (PR, hereafter), the influential Process element and another PR, and the influential Process element is expressed in the word ba. At the level of form, ba is the Predicator element in the syntactic structure of the overall construction. It indicates that the ba-construction involves a ranking and an embedded clause at the primary and the secondary level, respectively. The ranking clause is composed of the Subject, Predicator and Complement elements, and the Predicator element is expounded by the word ba.

Understanding Chinese High School ESL Learners’ Use of L2 Attitudinal Resources in Letter Writing : A Systemic Functional Perspective

Understanding Chinese High School ESL Learners’ Use of L2 Attitudinal Resources in Letter Writing : A Systemic Functional Perspective

Meaning in EFL textbooks delivered to Chilean public schools: knowledge construction from a Systemic Functional approach

This study examines the knowledge built through the 1st and 2nd-grade English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks used in Chilean public schools. From a linguistic perspective, knowledge is addressed as meaning, developed through the selection of linguistic resources that a given language offers. Textbooks are fundamental in teaching and learning a foreign language, because they provide a great part of these resources; consequently, it is essential to understand how meaning begins to be built and develops through the curriculum. With that aim, with a mixed-method approach and from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective, we examined the lexical resources employed in textbooks that contribute to the construction of meaning. We conducted discourse analysis to identify the relations among lexical items and the kind of knowledge they build. Corpus analysis was used to estimate how lexical complexity increases from one level to the next. We found that the two books build commonsense knowledge, corresponding to what children know about the world in their mother tongue. We also found that lexical complexity increases from one book to the other, thus enlarging learners’ repertoire of words in English.

Transitivity and Social Context in Balinese Folklores: A Systemic Functional Perspective

Mesatua “storytelling” is a tradition that is usually done by parents or grandparents in Bali. Storytelling uses Balinese folklore, which is rich in moral value. It is an effort to preserve the language and culture and develop Balinese cultural values. This study aims to determine Balinese folklore’s transitivity and social context by applying a systemic functional analysis theory. The result of the analysis showed that transitivity elements consist of process, participant, and circumstances. The situational context consists of the field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. The cultural context involves mesatua “storytelling” traditions, the level of Balinese language used in the text, and religious symbolic meaning.

Multimodal-Based Learning Improves Students' Reading Ability in Perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics

This study was encouraged by taking advantage of the low analytical literacy abilities of students in junior high schools. This research aims to analyze Multimodal-Based Learning in Improving Students' Reading Ability from a Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective. This research was conducted using quantitative research, incredibly descriptive, and experimental research. Data is collected through comment sheets and ratings. The respondents in this study were 210 students and nine teachers in seven classes. The tools used to obtain learning statistics are (1) an assessment to measure the competence of junior high school students and (2) note sheets to obtain statistics on the results of looking at the learning system. The statistics have been processed using descriptive statistical judgments and inferential facts. Based on the research results, the analytical learning system in the classroom still does not meet the actual learning requirements. The second result is that the multimodality method has proven effective in analyzing the literacy talents of junior high school students from various backgrounds. Based on this, the multimodality learning method can be used to improve the analytical literacy talents of junior high school students in classes with various backgrounds.

Revealing attitude toward statistics among MA TEFL students: A Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective

Higher education students’ attitudes toward statistics are of great importance as these may affect student performance and achievement in statistics learning. Despite some interest in attitude towards statistics among higher education students in language-related fields and the broader area of tertiary-level education, the different types of existing attitudes toward statistics might remain uncovered. Applying the Attitude system as an analytical framework, this study explores how higher education students use linguistic resources to indicate statistics-related attitude before, during and after learning. The narratives of learning statistics were obtained from a group of MA TEFL students (n=25) who participated in an introductory course on basic statistical concepts and procedures, among others. The study makes visible a great variety and a considerable variation of linguistic means which students use to express statistics-related attitude as Judgement, Appreciation and Affect, emerging over time. As such, this study advances methodological practices and training in the field.

A Representation of Malaysian Malay Women Identity from a Systemic Functional Perspective

Employing a systemic functional analysis of two selected stories written by two different Malay women writers, namely Dina Zaman and Karina Bahrin, this paper investigates the perception of Malay women from two contrasting settings, the metropolitan Kuala Lumpur and a kampong in Terengganu. The study explores the social cultural identity of Malay women within a linguistic context based on an analysis of thematic choice derived from the Hallidayan notion of grammar. In And She Became an Angel (Dina Zaman) , suggesting a subordinated female identity in a Malay kampong context, findings derived from the clausal analysis concluded that the main protagonist, Mandak successfully transcended herself from a victimized role into a heroin at the end of the story. She eventually had become an angel in a fire to embrace the only one thing of her life. However, in A Subtle Degree of Restraint (Karina Bahrin), Elena and Badariah, the two representations of new Malay women living in the cosmopolitan Kuala Lumpur, encountered subtle feelings of deprivation in their contrasting life conditions through either marriage or barrenness. Applying a Hallidayan framework that looks at thematic choice in the system of Theme and Rheme and the System of Transitivity, this paper justifies its findings from the distribution and the experiential elements of thematic choices in the two short stories from a linguistic spectrum. It also signifies a refreshing approach on literary studies in the MLE.

An analysis of the modulation system in Vietnamese from a systemic functional perspective and some suggestions for legal translation

Systemic Functional Grammar (hereinafter referred to as SFG) is a linguistic area that has attracted numerous attention from linguistic scholars in Vietnam and worldwide. In this paper, we focus on Modulation analysis in Vietnamese, including Obligation and Inclination, from a Systemic Functional perspective. The qualitative research methodology will be applied to explore the aspects of Modulation in Vietnamese. The descriptive language method is mainly employed in this article to investigate the Modulation system in Vietnamese from the SFG viewpoint. The data for the investigation of Vietnamese Modulation was collected from formal online newspapers in Vietnamese. The data for the recommendation for legal translation was the Singapore Companies Act. The results of the study showed that the Modulation system in Vietnamese is composed of two categories: Obligation and Inclination. Regarding Obligation, it consists of four subcategories: necessity, Obligation, permission, and expectation. As for inclination, it includes Intention and Willingness. Then the results of the study will be employed to make some suggestions for legal translation in Viet Nam context.

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.

Structuring written arguments in primary and secondary school: A systemic functional linguistics perspective

Learning to write arguments is a key goal of primary and secondary schooling in democratic societies. Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has influenced the teaching of argumentative writing in several countries; however, little SFL research has investigated the development of argumentative writing skills. This paper analysed the structural features (text stages and phases) in 60 high-scoring arguments written by students in Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 for Australia's national writing assessment. The analysis of stages revealed a preference for one-sided expositions in the primary years and an increased number of two-sided discussions in the secondary years. While existing descriptions of argument phases provided a useful starting point for the phase analysis, these descriptions were insufficient to account for the many phase choices made by high-scoring students. The paper proposes a detailed list of phase options for argument genres resulting from the analysis, with several implications for theory and practice.

Representing Behavioral Pathology: The Importance of Modality in Medical Descriptions of Conduct, ADHD as Case Study

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of modality resources (e.g. “may,” “often”) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in representing behavioral pathology focusing, in particular, on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). ADHD diagnosis requires reports of non-practitioners (e.g. carers and teachers); an effective understanding of behavioral descriptors by the lay community is thus of paramount importance. The study combines qualitative linguistic discourse analysis and a corpus approach to study the presence and functions of modality, adopting a Systemic Functional perspective toward language. The study argues that in the DSM-5 modality is an important linguistic resource for conveying clinical significance, inferred from graduations of recurrence and probability. However, adopting features of professional discourse in representing behavioral pathology for non-experts, especially when those resources are inherently evaluative, stresses the need of health literacy among the lay social community and accessibility in health communication materials, particularly when non-practitioners are involved in the diagnosis practice.

Including visual representations within senior high school biology assessment: Considerations of grammatical complexity

AbstractThis paper analyses the opportunities for presenting knowledge that are created when assessment allows senior high school biology students to draw on linguistic and visual resources when constructing meaning in response to short‐answer examination‐style questions requiring a sequential explanation. Students within one senior high school biology class were given the opportunity to respond to an examination‐style question through both written and visual representations. Analysis of the student responses for high and middle‐achieving students, from a systemic functional linguistics perspective, indicates that high‐achieving students use a broader range of grammatical forms more often than middle‐achieving students to present key understandings of classification and composition within both written and visual representations. Including opportunities within assessment for students to express knowledge through written and visual representations allows for students to elaborate within their short‐answer responses and to construct the broader range of representations that is valued within the discipline, but explicit guidance is required to support all students to make use of the complex grammatical patterns within written and visual representation. For senior high school biology students to be successful in the final stages of schooling, explicitness about the complex grammars of visual and written representations is required within curriculum and pedagogy.

The Analysis of the Soldier from Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspectives

The Soldier is a sonnet written in 1914 by Rupert Brook, a British war poet. The paper aims at analyzing the poem by applying M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as a theoretical framework. The study mainly adopts a qualitative methodology to analyze the text by text linguistics. However, the quantitative methodology is also used to calculate the proportions of each metafunctional process in this poem. The main findings of this paper are: 1) Topic theme: the themes of the poem are I, dust, England, this heart, et., which show the soldie'’s love and gratefulness for England; 2) The focus of tense: The Soldier starts with a conditional clause and then uses present and past tense to create a context as if he was depicting a real external world instead of an imagination from the inner world. 3) Patterning and re-patterning: The patterning analysis shows the soldier in the poem emphasizes his motivation for sacrificing and spreading the precious things in England who had brought him up. The paper concludes that The Soldier shows a strong sense of patriotism, which might be an approval for the former literary studies of this poem from linguistic aspects.

A Linguistic Analysis of Trump’s Trial from a Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective

A Linguistic Analysis of Trump’s Trial from a Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective