Textual Functions Research Articles

Functions of the particle üldse ‘at all’ in questions in Estonian everyday conversations

Abstract The goal of the paper is to examine the use of the particle üldse ‘at all; ever; generally; absolutely (not)’ in questions in Estonian everyday face-to-face and telephone conversations. The analysis is based on the methodological framework of interactional linguistics. The particle üldse is found to serve three central functions in questions: (a) marking topic shifts and topic changes, (b) intensifying doubt or challenges, (c) emphasizing someone’s norm-violating behavior. Questions containing the particle üldse can be divided into two groups: neutral information-seeking questions and multifunctional questions that perform several social actions simultaneously. The particle üldse is commonly backward looking and serves both interpersonal and textual functions. Its use is often associated with non-preference, disagreement, or contradiction.

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.”

Functions of Ideational Metaphor in English

Types of ideational metaphor in English considered in this research incorporate nominalization, verbalization, and adjectivization. Previous studies particularly highlighted functions of nominalization, leaving the other types of ideational metaphor unconsidered; in addition, expressions of ideational metaphor are not carefully selected while exploring the functions realized by these expressions. Against this backdrop, functions of ideational metaphor uncovered in previous studies are insufficient of coverage and typicality. Drawing on COCA in this research, a corpus of typical American English, expressions of the three types of ideational metaphor with significant attraction by means of the simple collexeme analysis are employed to analyze the functions that these metaphorical expressions actually realize in their linguistic contexts. The findings demonstrated that expressions of ideational metaphor could realize such interpersonal functions as authoritativeness and objectivity, such ideational functions as conciseness, abstractness, ambiguity, and semantic condensation, and such textual functions as formality and cohesion. Explanations to these realized functions of ideational metaphor are also provided. This research is of great significance in that the documented functions are typical and representative of ideational metaphor in English.

The Integration of Bugis Cultural Values and Islamic Teachings in Digital Media

This study aims to explore how Ustaz Das'ad Latif utilises YouTube to integrate Bugis cultural values with Islamic teachings, focusing on marriage. The research employs a multimodal discourse analysis framework to examine the ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions in Ustaz Das'ad Latif's YouTube lectures. The study reveals that Siri’ culture, central to Bugis identity, is intertwined with Islamic values, particularly regarding gender roles, honour, and family dynamics. Digital media serves as an effective tool for both preserving and reshaping these cultural values. The findings suggest that digital platforms like YouTube can serve as vital spaces for the global dissemination and transformation of local traditions, offering new interpretations that resonate across cultural boundaries. This research provides novel insights into the role of digital media in preserving local religious traditions while adapting them for broader audiences, contributing to the growing literature on religion, culture, and technology.

An SFL Analysis of Dialogues in Elementary EFL Textbooks

Textbooks play a vital role in language instruction. The study aims to examine the three metafunctions of language based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory. As such, a descriptive qualitative approach along with content analysis is employed to examine dialogues that were selected conveniently from two elementary EFL textbooks. The findings indicate that the relational process is the most frequent process type indicating the ideational function of the two textbooks. For the sake of interpersonal function, declarative sentences are mostly utilized. Meanwhile, the textual function is mostly reflected by the T (Thing) and DT (Deictic + Thing) nominal group pattern. These findings have pedagogical implications for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL), particularly for elementary school students; providing simple language patterns that help students build a foundational vocabulary and understanding of grammar for proficient communication. The theoretical implication of the findings is the importance of scaffolded learning that helps learners grasp basic linguistic concepts before moving on to more complex and dynamic language use

Power and Personal Experience in Online Anonymous Communities: A Corpus-Driven Exploration

The paper presents an innovative corpus study on Personal Experience as a pragmatic-discursive resource to express power in anonymous online interactions. Specifically, we explore a corpus-driven methodology to extract lexico grammatical features typical of Personal Experience in representative samples (around 160,000 words) of 3 online fora. The method is rooted in Part of Speech and semantic domain keyness (Rayson in Int J Corpus Linguist 13(4):519–549, 2008), which we combine in Corpus Language Queries to extract statistically relevant patterns in the data. Results show that the 3 datasets share a “core” set of key lexico-grammatical features. Furthermore, our findings align with the scientific literature exploring personal experiences and narratives in many different genres. This strongly supports the idea that our inductive protocol can be reliably used to break down the discursive textual function of Personal Experience into lower-level, scalable features. In other words, we suggest that our method can be used to extract “form” (i.e. lexical, grammatical, and syntactical units) from “function” (i.e. pragmatic and discursive annotations). Findings are discussed in the context of language and power in online interactions and in the context of building automatic feature detectors for the analysis of larger cross-genre corpora.

Textual Meaning on “Umpasa” Batak Toba in Wedding Ceremony

This research is aimed in investigating the function of theme of “Umpasa” in Wedding Ceremony of Batak Toba Culture in Pematangsiantar. Theories used in conducting this research were metafunctions, especially textual function for theme functions. Descriptive qualitative and ethnomethodology approach were implemented in this research. Data source was taken from those people who attended the wedding ceremony. The population of this research was the society of Batak Toba people from Pematangsiantar, where all the participants were loved and actived Batak Culture. they are commonly called as king of customs because these people was asked to handle and given a speech in the Toba batak ceremony for example in the wedding ceremony. Sample was any kinds of object which happen in wedding Batak Toba ceremony related to verbal and non-verbal communication Pematangsiantar. Then, the researchers did some procedures in collecting data such as observing, recording, interpreting and generalizing. After carefully analyzing the data, the researchers discovered that the most commonly used types of theme rheme when giving Ulos to the bride and groom during a Toba Batak wedding ceremony are Topical Theme 39, Textual Theme 12, Interpersonal Theme 6, and Ideational Theme is one. Among these, Topical Theme is the most dominant type used in giving Ulos to the bride and groom in a Toba Batak wedding ceremony. This is because, in Toba Batak utterance, people typically use the verb or pronoun in the first position, followed by finite and other structural grammatical elements that differ from those in other languages.

The Use of English Pragmatic Markers by Learners of English from Different Linguacultural Backgrounds

Abstract This study compared the uses of the textual and interpersonal functions of English pragmatic markers (PMs) by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from three different linguacultural backgrounds in two spoken genres. Thirty Chinese, 30 Thai and 30 Indonesian EFL learners were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews and dyadic conversations. Significant differences in the ways in which the participants used textual and interpersonal functions in the two spoken genres were found, whereas there were significant differences in the use of textual functions by speakers from different linguacultural backgrounds. The spoken genres and the linguacultural backgrounds mainly affected the more frequently used functions, and had no effect on the functions that were used less frequently. Furthermore, the spoken genre had a greater effect on the different uses of the functions of English PMs than did the linguacultural backgrounds.

The semantics of language in Eugène Ionesco’s plays

The goal of this paper is to present the characteristics of Eugène Ionesco’s dramatic texts, a reason why the genre of avant-garde and theatre of the absurd are also considered, with a view to revealing their major ways of functioning. By pointing out the different dimensions of dramatic language, the emphasis is on those elements that differ from current oral and written language. Starting from the times of decadentism, a crisis of character can be noted in the theater around a type of individual who, as an alienated individual, cannot find his identity in a hostile surrounding world. One of the direct consequences of this crisis will be the impossibility of interpersonal communication, which will be best demonstrated with the concept and tenets of the theater of the absurd. In this context, the study of the theater of the 20th century is done from the perspective of cognitive semantics, as an autonomous level of language. The approach is organised around two notions: dramatic conventions and the actual language of the dramatic texts. The interpretative theory rooted in semantics is applied while analysing Ionesco’s short plays. The starting point is the linguistics of the text as described by Eugen Coşeriu. Capturing the meaning and the means by which it is constructed is one of the objectives in accord with the main principles of cognitive linguistics. The way of analysing the meaning in a text is given by the presence of some textual functions, as possibilities provided by language through relationships that the linguistic sign establishes in the discursive act. The specificity of the discourse comes from the combination of verbal and non-verbal elements, in order to highlight the playwright’s original style. The particularities of this type of language based on an ontological representation of the actional nature in human existence are also investigated. There are two dimensions recognisable in the language of literature: one is specific to the genre and the other one is particular, giving originality and uniqueness. The textual meaning in between these dimensions needs to be reconstructed from all their constituents identifiable at different levels of analysis. Ionesco distanced himself from the conventional and traditional theatre, finding a new formula for the dramatic genre in his own vision of what drama should be like. Ionesco’s dramatic work includes short plays and extensive plays in which the author expresses his adversity against totalitarian regimes. He is the representative of the theater of the absurd and anti-theater. The corpus for this research is composed mainly of the plays The Bald Soprano, The Lesson and The Chairs, the most representative plays for the avant-garde spirit, short plays on the theme of language emptied of meaning and non-communication. Language has an impact on thinking and the resulting actions, which relates it to the ontology of human existence. As dramatic language is preponderently structured on dialogical interactions (and less on monologues, soliloquies and asides), its essence can be revealed by decomposing and recomposing them, from the angle of the conventions specific to the dramatic genre. The analysis of the selected fragments from the corpus has the role to highlight their semantic features in terms of conceptual representations.

An Interpretation of Mending Wall from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics

This article provides an in-depth interpretation of Robert Frost’s Mending Wall through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), highlighting how the poem’s use of ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions enhances its thematic depth and engagement. The ideational function explores the wall's representation of both physical and metaphorical divides, touching upon its implications for human connections and social conventions. The interpersonal function probes the dialogue among characters, highlighting their divergent perspectives on customs and isolation. The textual function scrutinizes the poem’s composition and tempo, underlining its dialogue-like quality and unified theme. By analyzing the poem's structure, dialogue, and symbolic elements, the study demonstrates SFL’s efficacy in revealing the intricate relationship between language choices and literary interpretation, offering profound insights into Frost’s contemplation of social barriers and interpersonal connections.

Translation Quality Assessment of Literary Texts: A Critical Analysis of Two Recent Arabic Translations of Orwell's Animal Farm (1945)

This article aims to assess and evaluate the quality of two recent Arabic translations of George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), the first one by Mohammed Hasan Alawi (2019) and the second one by Hiba Fathi (2020) using House's (2015) Translation Quality Assessment model. A mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative methods was employed. The qualitative method involved conducting a comparative analysis between the profiles of the source text and the two translations employing House's model (2015) to identify mismatches at the register parameter. The quantitative method was employed to quantify the overtly erroneous errors and determine whether statistically significant differences exist in the mean number of these errors between the two translations. The findings of the study show numerous mismatches, particularly at the three dimensions of register (field, tenor, and mode) which to some extent affected the ideational and interpersonal components of the textual function in both translations. The findings also indicate statistically significant differences between the two translations in terms of the frequency of overtly erroneous errors. The second translation exhibited a higher number of such errors compared to the first translation, primarily resulting from the breach of the target language system. The study concluded that the second translation was less adequate compared to the first translation.

Types, Progression, and Markedness of Theme in The Jakarta Post News on the COVID-19 Outbreak

This study aims to find out textual function including the types, progression, and markednes in The Jakarta Post Newspaper on the Covid-19 Outbreak in order to identify how the information in the clause goes on and gives a significant contribution to keeping the text coherent. The texts were analyzed by applying the theory of textual Metafunction proposed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014). This study used a qualitative approach by using the content analysis. The result of this study shows topical, textual, and interpersonal Themes were found. Moreover, Topical Theme has the highest occurrences (77,3%), followed by the Textual Theme (21,5%), and Interpersonal Theme (1,2%). Regarding to the occurrences of the Theme Markedness, Unmarked Topical Theme (UMT) has higher occurrences with 91,5% than Marked Topical Theme (MT) with 8,5%. Meanwhile, the Thematic progression analysis shows that the Linear pattern has the highest occurrences with 55,8%, followed by a Constant Pattern with 36,4%, then a Split-Rheme pattern with 5,2%, and the Derived Theme as the lowest occurrences with 2,6%. The highest occurrences of unmarked Topical theme and Linear patterns give that both of them play an important role in creating continuity clauses of the newspaper.

СИСТЕМА УПРАЖНЕНИЙ ПО ОБУЧЕНИЮ СЛОВОСОЧЕТАНИЯМ КАК СОДЕЙСТВИЕ РАЗВИТИЮ ФУНКЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ ГРАМОТНОСТИ УЧАЩИХСЯ НА УРОКАХ БУРЯТСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

This article is devoted to the development of functional literacy of Buryat students when teaching phrases in Buryat language lessons. The analysis of linguistic, psychological, didactic and methodological literature allowed us to determine the initial positions that are the theoretical basis for the formation of students' communicative skills to perceive and creatively use phrases in their textual functions. The study of a phrase involves the inclusion of two stages: a) the study of the structural and semantic properties of this unit (positions, connections, ways of expression, belonging to a type); b) the study of communicative properties (the existence of a phrase in the neighborhood of other units in a speech fragment). In the aspect of the formation of functional literacy in the lessons of the Buryat language, a system of exercises such as complex work with text, linguistic analysis of text, work with miniature texts, comparison of two texts and other types of work with texts, which are the most effective forms of work organization, is of great importance. When teaching phrases of the Buryat language, the authors propose the use of three types of exercises: language exercises for the correct construction of phrases of the Buryat language, pre-speech exercises for using this syntactic unit in the context (sentence), speech exercises for expressing their thoughts in a coherent text. This system of exercises for teaching phrases is based on a combination of language, pre-speech and speech exercises that contribute to mastering the structure and mechanism of constructing phrases, individual sentences and developing the skills to use them in creative speech activity. The authors come to the conclusion that the use of this system of exercises largely determines the conditions for the development of functional literacy among students, so that they can use the acquired knowledge, skills, and skills in life to be sociable, creative, creative personalities.

Final tteyuu as a mockery stance marker: Multifunctionality and ongoing semantic change in Japanese social media

This paper explores the ongoing semantic change of a discourse marker in Japanese social media. An analysis of 140 instances of the sentence-final tteyuu on Twitter, renamed X in July 2023, suggests that this discourse marker is shifting from a textual function of elaboration to a stance marker of lighthearted mockery. I argue this transition is attributed to its recurrent use in specific contexts, leading to invited inferences about the writer's intentions in expanding upon an idea, which extend beyond purely informational to interpersonal and social concerns. The functional ambiguity of these examples suggests an intermediate stage in tteyuu's evolution. The findings of this study underscore the centrality of pragmatic inferencing in semantic changes as well as the context-dependent nature of meaning creation.

A Study on the Evolution of Metalinguistic Markers and Textual Function of Suoxing

A Study on the Evolution of Metalinguistic Markers and Textual Function of Suoxing

A Case Study of Semantic “We” in Academic Discourse

The personal pronoun “we” is the most frequently-used self-mention language of the author’s presentation in academic discourse. This study adopts quantitative and qualitative designs, selecting 60 English academic discourses from the Linguistics Journal of The Modern Language Journal and the Economics Journal of The Journal of Finance as samples to build two corpora. With the help of Antconc and Log-likelihood and Chi-Square Calculator 1.0, the present study analyzes the semantic use of the self-mention “we” in the corpus. The finding shows that there are significant differences in the use of “we” between the academic discourse of the two disciplines from the perspective of between disciplines (p < 0.001), and the use of “we” is more frequent in the economic academic discourse. From the perspective of within disciplines, the use of “exclusive we” is more frequent and there is a significant difference in the use of “inclusive we” and “exclusive we” in the academic discourse of the two disciplines. Finally, the study also analyzes the textual function of “we” in academic discourse, intending to provide some help to the understanding and writing of academic discourse in different disciplines, especially Linguistics and Economics.

Study of Discourse Analysis Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Case Study of "The Middle Eastern Bazaar"

Systemic functional linguistics holds that language has three metafunctions: ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction, and textual metafunction. This paper studies discourse “The Middle Eastern Bazaar” and analyzes it from ideational metafunction and textual metafunction. Ideational function refers to the use of language to express the objective external world in language users’ minds and their subjective judgments of the objective external world, reflecting the experiential and logical functions of language. Ideational metafunction analysis consists of the analysis of six types of processes as well as the analysis of voice. Textual function of language refers to the actual use of language as a discourse that expresses relatively complete ideas, rather than grammatical units such as words or sentences. Textual metafunction analysis is carried out from the aspects of macro discourse structure, theme-rheme structure and discourse cohesion. Discourse “The Middle Eastern Bazaar” describes a bazaar in the Middle East with very typical local characteristics. The analysis finds that more material process and verbal process are applied than mental, behavioral, relational and existing processes. More non-middle voice is applied than middle voice in the discourse. The theme-rheme structure and different cohesive devices make the thematic information flow naturally and smoothly.

Deixis Analysis in Indonesian Politic on Social Media (A Case Study in Mata Najwa 3 Bacapres Talk Ideas in Najwa Shihab Youtube Channel)

In spoken and written language, the use of deixis in society is often not fully understood by the person who is the speaker's speech partner because deixis is closely related to the context in which the speaker and speech partner communicate. Only the speaker and conversation partner understand the context and function of the deixis. The importance of understanding the use of deixis is to make speakers and speech partners understand what is meant and the messages conveyed and avoid misunderstandings. This research aims to examine the form of deixis used by Host Najwa Shihab and three candidate president of Republic Indonesia (Anies Baswedan, Ganjar Pranowo, Prabowo Subianto) in the Mata Najwa 3 Bacapres Talk Ideas on Najwa Shihab's Youtube Channel. This research method is a qualitative descriptive method. This research aims to analyze various kinds of deixis and functions occured in the speech utterances in the Mata Najwa three Bacapres Talk Ideas program which is live on the Najwa Shihab Youtube Channel. The data from this research are the speech utterances of the Host and three Presidential Candidates (Bacapres) (Anies Baswedan, Ganjar Pranowo, Prabowo Subianto) talking about Ideas as Presidential candidates of Republic Inodonesia 2024. The results of this research were demonstrative deixis, deixis of possessive/pronoun, deixis of circumstances of place and circumstances of time. The most frequently used deixis is possesive / pronoun deixis and the function deixis in the clause based on systemic functional linguistic realized as deictic in ideational function to specify nominal group and in textual function as reference.

The translation of an Italian procura alle liti into English: word-by-word rendering or functional translation?

Ad hoc corpora are considered effective to deliver native-like technical (and legal) translation. This paper explores how the translation of a system-specific document such as an Italian procura alle liti (power of attorney to appear in court) can be addressed. Translating this legal document may be problematic due to the fact that it is not recurrent in the common law system, which contemplates other types of special powers of attorney (PoAs). This paper explores whether and to what extent a corpus-based translation is possible when L2 parallel texts are difficult to find in native contexts. To this aim, a translation project with technical translators and lawyers is carried out. The participants compose an ad hoc corpus which they consult as a language reference tool. The paper findings report that the translators' corpus-based translation is mostly a word-by-word rendering of the source text, which may sound unnatural to an expert of the field. The lawyers' translation partly deviates from source words, but addresses the communicative function of the source text. The paper highlights the need for a balance between the two strategies, for example by focusing on textual functionality and/or paraphrasing, although at the cost of a reduced formulaicity.

A History of the Privileges of the Qur'an and Magical Receptions of it: A Concise Review of the Book of Wedha Mantra by Sang Indrajati

The material object of this article is the magical reception of the Qur'an described in the Wedha Mantra by Sang Indrajati. The academic problem proposed is the distance between the Qur'an as an Arabic holy book and the Indonesian people who are far from the Arab country and are not Arabic speakers. This distancing gives rise to the phenomenon of magical reception. As a brief reading, the method used is a textological study by tracing its discursive tradition through hadith literature. The findings in this article are threefold. First, in the hadith literature, the issue of the privileges of the Qur'an still pays attention to the harmony and content of the text. Second, when the Qur'an penetrates the world far from the area of decline, the potential for perception beyond its textual function becomes very significant. The user's attention is precisely on the harmony of the sound aspect and the desired desire. Third, magical worship of the Qur'an is carried out in the interest of fulfilling the psycho-biological needs of the worshipper.