Reviews
[This volume] has to a great extent brought SFL studies up to date and outlined the major trends in SFL. It is recommended.Functions of Language
Developing Systemic Functional Linguistics
Theory and Application
Edited by
Fang Yan [+–]
Tsinghua University (retired)
Fang Yan taught at Peking University and then at Tsinghua University until retirement in 2004.
Jonathan J. Webster [+–]
City University of Hong Kong
Professor Jonathan Webster is Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, and Professor at the City University of Hong Kong (retired). He was the Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (2005-2021), and Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong (2005-2011). Professor Jonathan Webster is the Founding Editor for Linguistics and the Human Sciences published by Equinox, and Managing Editor for WORD. Professor Jonathan Webster is also the Editor of 36 books on topics in Systemic Functional Linguistics.
This volume presents current views on the achievements made in the study of Systemic Functional Linguistics in both theory and application, and on potential domains and directions for its further development.
The first part looks at strengthening theoretical research and description in system networks and seeks to deepen our understanding of the concept of choice and of the consequences arising from making choices in particular social contexts. It also makes comparisons of different models within SFL and of similarities and differences between SFL and other linguistic models. The second part sums up SFL’s fifty years of refinement as a theory and goes on to offer an explicit definition of Applicable Discourse Analysis, presenting views on the potential areas, methods and criteria for verbal and multimodal discourse analysis, with examples. The final part of the volume discusses potential directions for SFL, including expanding SFL typological research into languages other than English, in countries other than the major English speaking ones, exploring solutions to the challenges faced by multimodal discourse, extending traditional translation studies to other modes; extending stylistics studies across different disciplines; exploring the potential of SFL to tackle the challenges confronting language education at both macro and micro levels; and achieving globalization in SFL across cyberspace.
Table of Contents
Prelims
Preface [+–] vii – viii
City University of Hong Kong
Professor Jonathan Webster is Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, and Professor at the City University of Hong Kong (retired). He was the Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (2005-2021), and Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong (2005-2011). Professor Jonathan Webster is the Founding Editor for Linguistics and the Human Sciences published by Equinox, and Managing Editor for WORD. Professor Jonathan Webster is also the Editor of 36 books on topics in Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Tsinghua University (retired)
Fang Yan taught at Peking University and then at Tsinghua University until retirement in 2004.
This volume presents current views on the achievements made in the study of Systemic Functional Linguistics in both theory and application, and on potential domains and directions for its further development. The first part looks at strengthening theoretical research and description in system networks and seeks to deepen our understanding of the concept of choice and of the consequences arising from making choices in particular social contexts. It also makes comparisons of different models within SFL and of similarities and differences between SFL and other linguistic models. The second part sums up SFL’s fifty years of refinement as a theory and goes on to offer an explicit definition of Applicable Discourse Analysis, presenting views on the potential areas, methods and criteria for verbal and multimodal discourse analysis, with examples. The final part of the volume discusses potential directions for SFL, including expanding SFL typological research into languages other than English, in countries other than the major English speaking ones, exploring solutions to the challenges faced by multimodal discourse, extending traditional translation studies to other modes; extending stylistics studies across different disciplines; exploring the potential of SFL to tackle the challenges confronting language education at both macro and micro levels; and achieving globalization in SFL across cyberspace.
Acknowledgments [+–] ix – ix
Tsinghua University (retired)
Fang Yan taught at Peking University and then at Tsinghua University until retirement in 2004.
City University of Hong Kong
Professor Jonathan Webster is Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, and Professor at the City University of Hong Kong (retired). He was the Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (2005-2021), and Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong (2005-2011). Professor Jonathan Webster is the Founding Editor for Linguistics and the Human Sciences published by Equinox, and Managing Editor for WORD. Professor Jonathan Webster is also the Editor of 36 books on topics in Systemic Functional Linguistics.
This volume presents current views on the achievements made in the study of Systemic Functional Linguistics in both theory and application, and on potential domains and directions for its further development. The first part looks at strengthening theoretical research and description in system networks and seeks to deepen our understanding of the concept of choice and of the consequences arising from making choices in particular social contexts. It also makes comparisons of different models within SFL and of similarities and differences between SFL and other linguistic models. The second part sums up SFL’s fifty years of refinement as a theory and goes on to offer an explicit definition of Applicable Discourse Analysis, presenting views on the potential areas, methods and criteria for verbal and multimodal discourse analysis, with examples. The final part of the volume discusses potential directions for SFL, including expanding SFL typological research into languages other than English, in countries other than the major English speaking ones, exploring solutions to the challenges faced by multimodal discourse, extending traditional translation studies to other modes; extending stylistics studies across different disciplines; exploring the potential of SFL to tackle the challenges confronting language education at both macro and micro levels; and achieving globalization in SFL across cyberspace.
1: Theoretical issues in description
University of Sydney (Emeritus)
M.A.K. Halliday, who died in April 2018, was born in Yorkshire in 1925. He was trained in Chinese for war service with the British army; studied in China, taught Chinese in Britain for a number of years, then moved into linguistics, becoming in 1965 Professor of General Linguistics at University College London. In 1975 he was appointed Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, where he remained until his retirement.
Languages change; they are changing all the time, even as we speak them. This was already known to linguists of the ancient world ‒ such as the phonologists of the period before the Tang dynasty in China, who recognized that the sound patterns of the Chinese syllable were significantly different from what they had been at an earlier time. We usually think of linguistic change first of all in terms of the changing sounds of speech; or, if we consider change in meaning, then it is in terms of the meaning of single words, or small clusters of words that are related. We do not usually think in terms of the meaning potential that characterizes a language as a whole.
University of Sydney
J R Martin is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. His research interests include systemic theory, functional grammar, discourse semantics, register, genre, multimodality and critical discourse analysis, focussing on English and Tagalog – with special reference to the transdisciplinary fields of educational linguistics and social semiotics.
University of New South Wales
Michele Zappavigna is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. As a linguist, her primary focus is on exploring the language of microblogging and social media. Her research in this area investigates discursive patterns in social media texts and corpora.
University of London
Rachel Dwyer is Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London.
She took her BA in Sanskrit at SOAS, followed by an MPhil in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. Her PhD research was on the Gujarati lyrics of Dayaram (1777-1852).
Professor Dwyer has published ten books, several of which are on Indian cinema. She has recently completed ‘Bollywood’s India: Indian cinema as a guide to modern India for Reaktion Books, London and Hachette, India. She is currently researching the Asian elephant in India.
Youth justice conferencing
Tongji University
Zhang Delu is Professor of linguistics and applied linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University, Shanghai, China; His major research areas are systemic functional linguistics, discourse analysis, functional stylistics, social semiotics and foreign language teaching.
The present chapter is intended to explore the areas concerned with these questions, to give a clearer picture of the relations between the different areas and models, and suggest tentatively the directions to be pursued in future research.
Suzhou University
In this chapter, we shall try to show the isomorphism between constructivism and systemic linguistics, with special emphasis on exploring the philosophical implications of the evolutionary theory of meaning, grammatical metaphor theory and textual metafunction.
Institute of Linguistics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
This chapter will focus on elaborating the principles applied to constructing the system network to ensure well produced expressions of complex aspect. The work will be described in the following respects: the classification of Chinese aspect, the development of the primary systems, the selection order principle, and the reasons for rejecting the parallel derivation in the network drawing. A sample network of durative aspect will also be presented.
2: Theory and its applications
Macquarie University
Ruqaiya Hasan, who died in 2015, was a professor of linguistics who taught and held visiting positions at various universities in England. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University, Australia, from where she retired as Emeritus Professor in 1994. Throughout her career she researched and published widely in the areas of verbal art, culture, context and text, text and texture, lexicogrammar and semantic variation.
Read her obituary here
Systemic functional linguistics, especially the variety associated with the name of Halliday, has been perhaps unique in explicitly and defiantly celebrating the inherent relations of theory and practice from its earliest stages (e.g. Halliday, 1960). The actual range of purposes for which sfl has been used is indeed remarkable (Appendix A; Halliday, 2008: 190ff; Hasan et al., 2005, 2007). But my aim here is not to join in praise or denigration; I wish instead to raise a basic question: what enables a linguistic theory to become appliable? Why do some theories such as sfl or Prague School linguistics become widely appliable?3 Why do other models, some with claims of elevated intellectual pedigree, remain above or below human use?
7. Appliable Discourse Analysis [+–] 138 – 208
University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen is a Swedish-born linguist and a leading figure in the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) school, having authored or co-authored more than 160 books, refereed journal articles, and papers in refereed conference proceedings, with contributions to three television programs. He is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics at University of International Business and Economics,
Beijing, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, in the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Guest Professor at Beijing Science and Technology University, and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. Before this, he was Chair Professor, Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Professor in the Linguistics Department of Macquarie University. Professor Matthiessen has worked in areas as diverse as language typology, linguistics and computing, grammatical descriptions of various languages, grammar and discourse, healthcare communication studies, functional grammar for English-language teachers, text analysis and translation, multisemiotic studies, and the evolution of language. He has supervised over 40 research students.
Beijing, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, in the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Guest Professor at Beijing Science and Technology University, and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. Before this, he was Chair Professor, Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Professor in the Linguistics Department of Macquarie University. Professor Matthiessen has worked in areas as diverse as language typology, linguistics and computing, grammatical descriptions of various languages, grammar and discourse, healthcare communication studies, functional grammar for English-language teachers, text analysis and translation, multisemiotic studies, and the evolution of language. He has supervised over 40 research students.
There is general agreement that linguistics is the scientific study of language; in Wikipedia, it is characterized as ‘the scientific study of human language’. However, there is as yet no consensus about what actually constitutes the – or even a – scientific study of language and there is also as yet no agreement about the nature of language (see e.g. Halliday, 1977, and Seuren, 1998, on two currents running through the history of scholarly thinking about language – language as resource/ecologists vs. language as rule/formalists): linguists differ in their views about the nature of data, of methodology, and of theory; and they also differ in their views regarding the relationship between data and theory, between description and theory, and between theory and application.
University of Liverpool
Geoff Thompson was Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Liverpool, UK
The aim of the present chapter is to extend the analysis in delicacy, looking at the ways in which sub-categories of speech functions (such as ‘concession’ or ‘assertion’) may be signalled in projecting clauses, and the uses which are made of the resource. Since these clauses can be seen as a type of metadiscourse, I draw on the terminology used by Hyland (2005: 49) in referring to these more delicate categories as ‘discourse acts’; and apply the term ‘discourse act label’ to the projecting clause.
9. Modelling ellipsis in EFL classroom discourse [+–] 227 – 240
Beijing Foreign Studies University
As an attempt at the semantics of ellipsis in a specific text type, which in turn is considered a step towards the semantics of text types as well as a way into general semantics, this chapter presents an analysis of ellipsis choices occurring in EFL classroom discourse, offering a description of the different types of elliptical clauses as identified in the analysis, followed by a proposed semantic system of ellipsis specific to EFL classroom discourse, referred to as DALOGIC SEQUENCE. EFL classroom discourse is chosen as the object of analysis both because it is a text type featuring ellipsis, and because classroom discourse has been much studied in the SFL tradition (e.g. Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Berry, 1987; Christie, 2002) but not equally so within an EFL context. It is held that a systemic-functional account of ellipsis in EFL classroom discourse has practical implications for the ways EFL teachers ‘manage’ classroom interaction (Allwright and Bailey, 1991; Walsh, 2006).
10. Genre and appraisal theories in Functional Discourse Analysis – with reference to accounts in Dragon Carving and the Literary Mind [+–] 241 – 255
Nanjing International Studies University
This chapter examines the genre and evaluation thoughts in a Chinese classic Dragon Carving and the Literary Mind (hereafter, for short, Dragon Carving ), with the aim of drawing insights from this single longest treatise in Chinese literary criticism.
Sun Yat-sen University
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the analysis of the reporting clause in translating Confucius’s Lun Yu (or ‘Lunyu’; Lún Yǔ; 論語) into English, with special focus on translating the reporting clause in a section of Chapter 14 in Lun Yu. The discussion shows that even the analysis of a single example from Lun Yu can provide implications for translation studies within a systemic functional linguistics framework.
3: Developing directions
12. Challenges and solutions for multimodal analysis: Technology, theory and practice [+–] 271 – 297
School of Education at Curtin University
Bradley A. Smith is a Research Fellow in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He has previously worked in a learning and teaching centre at the University of Melbourne, and in the Multimodal Analysis Lab at the National University of Singapore. His PhD thesis (2008, Macquarie University) is entitled ‘Intonation and Register: A Multidimensional Exploration’. His major research interests are intonation, register, communication in higher education, and multimodality, with a focus on the roles of sound-based semiotic resources within cultures. His publications include (with William S. Greaves) the chapter on intonation for the forthcoming Bloomsbury Companion to Halliday, co-editor (with Kay L. O’Halloran) of Multimodal Studies: Exploring Issues and Domains (2011), as well as several journal articles, book chapters, two invited encyclopaedia entries in the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (2013) and an invited review for Linguistics and the Human Sciences of Halliday and Greaves’ (2008) Intonation in the Grammar of English.
Associate Professor in the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia.
Kay O’Halloran is Associate Professor in the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia. Prior to this, she was Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of English Language & Literature at the National University of Singapore. During this time, she held a joint appointment as the founding Director of the Multimodal Analysis Lab and Deputy Director of the Interactive Digital Media Institute, a university-level research institute at the National University of Singapore. Her areas of research include multimodal analysis, mathematical discourse, digital humanities and the development of digital technologies and visualization techniques for multimodal and socio-cultural analytics. Kay O’Halloran has published widely in these fields, and she is the founding editor of the Routledge Studies in Multimodality Book Series.
Sheer Industries Group
Educational Technology Division, Ministry of Education in Singapore
Dr Victor Lim Fei is Senior Head for Technologies for Learning, and Senior Specialist, at the Educational Technology Division, Ministry of Education, Singapore. He is a multimodal discourse analyst and an educator. He is interested in different modes of knowledge representation as well as innovative teaching, learning and assessment practices enabled by technology. Victor’s research areas include multimodality, multimodal literacy, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, educational technology and learning sciences.
Victor has been active in the field of multimodality over a decade. He was a recipient of several scholarships, including the Singapore Ministry of Education Postgraduate Scholarship, the National University of Singapore Research Scholarship, and the Singapore Public Service Commission Scholarship. Victor’s publications include invited book chapters, articles, as well as papers in top-tier journals such as the Cambridge Journal of Education. He is also an invited reviewer of several journals. He blogs at Multimodal Literacy and Perspectives.
Victor is a founding member and serves on the Board of directors (non-remunerative) for CityCare, a non-profit organisation set up in 2007 for local community work and international humanitarian projects. He has participated in these efforts, such as being on the disaster relief team to help in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti as well as leading several school-development projects in China.
In what follows, the principal functionalities of Semiomix are first described (see also O’Halloran et al., 2012) and then illustrated via screenshots from Professor W. Gilbert Strang’s first lecture in Linear Algebra from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Open Courseware (OCW).1 Following this, Professor Strang’s use of language and gesture are interpreted in relation to the different stages of the mathematics lecture. Finally, the achievements and limitations of the existing version of Semiomix are described with view to future research.
13. Motivated selection in verbal art, ‘verbal science’, and psychotherapy: When many methods are at one [+–] 298 – 322
David Butt,Caroline Henderson-Brooks,Ashley R. Moore,Russell Meares,Joan Haliburn,Anthony Korner,Roy Eyal £17.50
Macquarie University
David Butt is associate Professor in linguistics at Macquarie University and for more than a decade has been the Director of the University Research Centre for Language in Social Life (CLSL: now a Research Network). This Centre has conducted projects across communities and institutions for which functional linguistics provided significant evidence about the management of change.
Through the Centre, he has been actively engaged with professionals in medicine (surgery and psychiatry), counselling, care for people with disabilities, intelligent systems design and brain sciences, cultural analysis (literature, theatre, world Englishes), complexity theory and ‘smart spaces’, Vygotskian approaches to education and training, financial reporting, courtroom
explanations and forensic evidence, media and journalism, and child language development (in the traditions of Trevarthen and Halliday). The Centre has also investigated the interrelations between linguistics, verbal art (especially poetry), philosophy and the arguments of natural sciences (viz biology; genetics; and physics). The Centre has actively promoted educational developments in various cultures beyond Australia – Singapore, India, and especially with Timor and in Indonesia. David has published extensively on verbal art and has conducted many research projects and classes
on the subject.
Through the Centre, he has been actively engaged with professionals in medicine (surgery and psychiatry), counselling, care for people with disabilities, intelligent systems design and brain sciences, cultural analysis (literature, theatre, world Englishes), complexity theory and ‘smart spaces’, Vygotskian approaches to education and training, financial reporting, courtroom
explanations and forensic evidence, media and journalism, and child language development (in the traditions of Trevarthen and Halliday). The Centre has also investigated the interrelations between linguistics, verbal art (especially poetry), philosophy and the arguments of natural sciences (viz biology; genetics; and physics). The Centre has actively promoted educational developments in various cultures beyond Australia – Singapore, India, and especially with Timor and in Indonesia. David has published extensively on verbal art and has conducted many research projects and classes
on the subject.
University of Western Sydney
University of Wollongong
University of Sydney
From the research project undertaken by this team (and outlined below), it emerged that the ‘semantic drift’ of unconscious patterns of meaning making is something that an experienced therapist ‘reads off’ from the interaction. Furthermore, it seems probable that it is in responding to a bandwidth of latent patterns in the structure of discourse that psychotherapists find the motivation for the semiotic techniques their practice propounds as theory.
14. Systemic Functional Linguistics in the round: Imagining foreign language education for a global world [+–] 323 – 344
Georgetown University
My research continues to focus on analysis of students’ writing development across the curricular level using the theoretical framework of systemic-functional linguistics. With the publication of the MLJ monograph (with Hiram Maxim and John Norris), (MLJ 94-S1, 2010), “Realizing advanced foreign language writing development in collegiate education: Curricular design, pedagogy, assessment”, we have provided an overall framework within which to continue the exploration of L2 development in other areas.
Through the Humanities Assessment Project we are exploring the possibility of tracing the simultaneous development of language abilities and cultural content knowledge. In line with one of the underlying assumptions of the curriculum, namely that language and content learning can be and need to be fostered concurrently, this project assesses cultural content knowledge and awareness through language use, specifically through the system of appraisal as developed in systemic functional linguistics (Martin and White. First research results are reported in Ryshina-Pankova & Byrnes (2013), “Writing as learning to know: Tracing knowledge construction in L2 composition”, part of a special issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing which I guest edited. Its theme: Teaching for meaning-making – writing to mean.
Through the Humanities Assessment Project we are exploring the possibility of tracing the simultaneous development of language abilities and cultural content knowledge. In line with one of the underlying assumptions of the curriculum, namely that language and content learning can be and need to be fostered concurrently, this project assesses cultural content knowledge and awareness through language use, specifically through the system of appraisal as developed in systemic functional linguistics (Martin and White. First research results are reported in Ryshina-Pankova & Byrnes (2013), “Writing as learning to know: Tracing knowledge construction in L2 composition”, part of a special issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing which I guest edited. Its theme: Teaching for meaning-making – writing to mean.
The topic I wish to address in this chapter, ‘Systemic functional linguistics in the round: imagining foreign language education for a global world’, is the result of interactions with my SFL colleagues in the real world and through their writings. What I learned in both contexts has had considerable effect on my interpretation of a number of vexing issues in foreign language (FL) education in colleges and universities in the United States.
15. Systemic Functional Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics: Interconnections and current state [+–] 345 – 369
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Lecturer in the Department of English Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
This chapter will explore some of the reasons for the lack of interaction between these two disciplines. We will first outline the history of CL to provide some background to the subsequent discussion as to why CL has not made much use of SFL. We will then discuss why SFL has not made much use of CL. In the final section, we will discuss ways in which SFL and CL are currently beginning to profit from each other, and ways in which the tools and methodology of corpus linguistics still need to be developed in order to fully support the needs of a sociological oriented theory such as SFL.
16. Systemic Functional Theory and Cyberspace [+–] 370 – 377
Aalto University
Major research areas are:
international business and corporate communication and language;
multimodal and –medial text- and discourse analysis;
intercultural and contrastive communication and linguistics,
systemic-functional linguistics, discourse analysis,
multisemiotic discourses of written and spoken genres of various kinds
academic discourses: academic writing and presentations
(hobby area: linguistic stylistics, Australian and South Pacific language, literature and culture)
international business and corporate communication and language;
multimodal and –medial text- and discourse analysis;
intercultural and contrastive communication and linguistics,
systemic-functional linguistics, discourse analysis,
multisemiotic discourses of written and spoken genres of various kinds
academic discourses: academic writing and presentations
(hobby area: linguistic stylistics, Australian and South Pacific language, literature and culture)
This chapter analyses the nature of the Cyberspace presence and actions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Cyberspace uses the Internet as its medium. The term ‘cyberspace’ is attributed to the science fiction author, William Gibson. Here, in this chapter, Cyberspace refers to the platform for creating knowledge and interaction, and the Internet is the medium by which it is virtually transmitted. So, as far as this chapter is concerned, Cyberspace is described as: (1) reaching a wide audience, which is ‘not tied to geographic location’; and (2) enabling numerous ways of interacting.
Index
Index [+–] 378 – 381
Tsinghua University (retired)
Fang Yan taught at Peking University and then at Tsinghua University until retirement in 2004.
City University of Hong Kong
Professor Jonathan Webster is Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, and Professor at the City University of Hong Kong (retired). He was the Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (2005-2021), and Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong (2005-2011). Professor Jonathan Webster is the Founding Editor for Linguistics and the Human Sciences published by Equinox, and Managing Editor for WORD. Professor Jonathan Webster is also the Editor of 36 books on topics in Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Index
Functions of Language
