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SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR
SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
Michael Halliday developed SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS (SFL) which is both a theory of language as social process used in everyday social interaction and an analytical methodology to describe language patterns. It makes four main theoretical claims:
- Language is functional,
- Language is contextual,
- Language is semantic,
- Language is semiotic. 1 (FUNCTIONAL)= linguistic choices are determined by their function in the linguistic system. This is connected to human needs in everyday situations. 2 (CONTEXTUAL)= language is realised in social and cultural authentic contexts, which shape language and subsequently, text genre configurations. The social context affecting language is realised through 3 main register variables:
- FIELD: what the text deals with and the domain of experience (topic);
- TENOR: social role and relationship between participants in the linguistic act (ex. Equal/non-equal, frequent/occasional, high/low);
- MODE: means of communication and the role played by language in a certain context (ex: written or spoken). 3 (SEMANTIC)= language is used for precise purposes and the meaning potential in language is expressed through the so-called three metafunctions:
- IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTION: aimed at the representation of the environment, of a certain situation;
- INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION: referring to the actions of participants;
- TEXTUAL METAFUNCTION: related to the message conveyed and its organisation. Semantics represents the upper level of content; lexico-grammar the lower level of content and phonology and phonetics the level of expression. 4 (SEMIOTIC)= in SFL language is considered a set of features and a systemic grammar is the paradigmatic ordering of language, which functions as a network of interrelated options. The notion of choice is fundamental in understanding how language makes meaning. SFL is not seen as a list of rules: every grammar choice implies a choice from a set of options, and choice cannot be
considered as right or wrong but as appropriate or inappropriate in a certain context. The grammar elaborated by SFL is not prescriptive but descriptive. (LANGUAGE IS FUNCTIONAL)
THE IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTION
The register variable of FIELD is directly connected to this metafunction. The ideational metafunction can be divided into 2 components:
- EXPERIENTIAL METAFUNCTION: it is concerned with clauses as representation of experience and it is predominantly configured through selections in the grammar system of transitivity. It can have three elements: a. Process (realised by a verb); b. Participants (expressed by a nominal group); PROCESS TYPE CATEGORY MEANING PARTICIPANTS Material Doing Actor, goal, beneficiary Mental Sensing Senser, phenomenon Attribution Attributing Carrier, attribute Identification Identifying Token, value Behavioural Behaving Behaver Verbal Saying Sayer, target Existential Existing Existent c. Circumstances of place, time and manner (articulated through an adverbial group or a prepositional phrase). The most important circumstantial elements are:
- location: when and where, in time (temporal) and in space (spatial);
- extent: duration (temporal) and distance (spatial);
- manner: means, quality and comparison;
- cause: reason, purpose and behalf;
- accompaniment: with whom the action is realised;
- matter: topic, argument;
- role: guise or product someone or something is or becomes. In tourism and travel texts are predominant:
- Material processes expressing movement;
- Mental processes indicating sensorial perception;
- Circumstances of spatial extent and location.
Clauses can be divided into two components:
- MOOD: it indicates the group of subject (nominal group) and finite (verbal group) the way in which they appear in a clause establishes whether a statement is being made, a question is being asked or a command is being given. Non finite clauses are those that have not configured a tense or modal verb element.
- RESIDUE: it is composed of: a. Predicator (the lexical part of the verbal group); b. Complement (a nominal group with the potential of being a subject) c. Adjunct (it can be realised through an adverbial group or nominal phrase and provide some non-essential information. It can be of two different types: mood or commentary) An alternative to polarity (not all the utterances are black or white) is MODALITY. It is divided into two sub-systems:
- MODALISATION: when modality is used to argue about the probability or frequency of propositions;
- MODULATION: when modality is used to argue about the obligation or inclination of proposals. As we have already observed, the interpersonal metafunction is concerned with interactants’ relations. On the basis of the power dynamics, the interpersonal relations can be:
- Horizontal, when they are characterised by solidarity;
- Vertical, when they are characterised by power. Example: In most traditional guidebooks, such as Baedecker, the relationship is vertical, since the author acts like a sort of instructor for the readers. Instead, in most recent guidebooks, the relationship is more equal between authors and audience.
THE TEXTUAL METAFUNCTION
It consists on the providing of a message by the clause and has a thematic structure. It is connected to the flow of information within a text and deploys clauses as relevant and coherent messages. The thematic structure is a two-part structure and consists in:
- THEME: the point of departure of the message and the prominent element. It locates and orients the clause within its context. It depends on the position in the clause, and thus on mood and can be unmarked (when it conflates with structure in the first position of that mood class) or marked (when it corresponds to any other constituent of the mood system).
- RHEME: the development of the theme.
The information that it is possible to find in a clause can be (already) given or new. Usually, the clause’s flow is organised starting from ‘given’ and develops into ‘new’ informational elements. This structure and the thematic structure are strictly connected but don’t always conflate. Within the textual metafunction it is also possible to consider two linguistic features, which are highly sensitive to mode variation:
- LEXICAL DENSITY: Halliday defines it as “the proportion of lexical items in a text” (in proportion to all the words within a text). Lexical items are the so called ‘content-carrying words’ which are usually juxtaposed to the so called ‘function words’, which have only a grammatical function in the sentence and not a proper meaning. For this reason it is usually more related to writing/written texts.
- GRAMMATICAL COMPLEXITY: regards the complexity of language referring to how many clauses are joined in a clause complex. It considers how many relations for parataxis or hypotaxis are established among clauses, while omits the embedding.
SFL IN TOURISM AND TRAVEL TEXTS
It concerns its importance in tourism and travel discourse, and it is useful to understand these claims:
- How to decodify a tourist/travel text through SFL;
- The most important genre-related language aspects;
- The way in which they can be approached by tourists/travellers.
TOURIST INFORMATION ENGLISH TEXTS
In Castello’s study (2001), they are approached using a systemic functional perspective, showing similarities and differences in the four genres (webpages, brochures, magazines and guides). RESULT OF THIS EXAMINATION:
- For what concerns grammar intricacy in the corpus, websites, for example, present the lowest score, while tourist guides the highest; imperative forms can frequently be found in brochures, magazines and websites (the Lonely Planet guide is the only exception, because of its informal and friendly tenor); tourist guides are also poor in interrogative forms, while the highest score is represented by magazines. One similarity is the similar average number of occurrences which characterises brochures and websites.
and out, enjoying full-screen vision, select varying background images or music, manipulating vision quality).
- COMMUNICATION FUNCTION= it is defined as ‘a form of printed promotional material designed to communicate with existing or potential tourists’ (MOLINA AND ESTEBAN): being the second target predominant, it is generally consumed at the pre-trip stage by potential holidaymakers for destination-image formation and destination choice performance. It can be seen as multifunctional, as it is informative but only promotional. Acting as a tourist ‘marker’ (CULLER, 1989), a particular significance of a site as sight is established, operating as a semiotic, cognitive and affective artefact (HIIPPALA): to do this, it builds a positive image of a destination as a holiday attraction worth visiting, beautifying and celebrating the physical place, through the combination of catchy pictures and enchanting verbal language (DANN, FERRERA, LING IP, MOCINI).
- ORGANISATION= it is simple; it has a cover, a summary, a section for general presentation, one for tailored offers, and terms and conditions. These show a functional pyramid structure, where the first section (the cover), is the most attention-grabbing and persuasive and it is positioned at the top, while the ‘terms and conditions’ only have informative functions- serving as the pyramid’s base.
SFL IN TOURISM PROMOTION TEXTS
For its examination, the 2009 Malta, Gozo and Comino brochure is a valid source; the text issued by the official Maltese tourist board, Malta Tourism Authority, demonstrates that the corpus is definitely small (only 2579 tokens). Being a tourism text, it is short compared to the 118, tokens of the 2010 Lonely Planet Guide to Malta and Gozo (WILSON)
THE MALTESE ISLANDS: TRULY MEDITERRANEAN
The first observation of this text is made through the ideational metafunction (via the grammar system of Transitivity, referring to the register variable of field), and the textual metafunction (via the grammar system of Thematisation, with reference to the register variable of mode.
TRANSITIVITY AND THEME ANALYSIS
Key. Processes: material (Pm), mental (Pme), attributive (Pa), identifying (Pi), behavioural (Pb), verbal (Pv), existential (Pe). Participants: Actor (A), Goal (G), Beneficiary (B), Senser (S), Phenomenon (Ph), Carrier (C), Attribute (At), Token (T), Value (V), Behaver (B), Sayer (Sy), Target (T), Existent (E). Circumstance of location (CI), of extent (Cx), of manner (Cm), of cause (Cc), of accompaniment (Ca), of matter (Ct), of role (Co). Theme is underlined.
- TRANSITIVITY:
- Process types are restricted: out of a total of 16 process types, 6 items are attributive= this means that the text is fundamentally concerned with the description of the Maltese islands in their tourist appeal;
- Material verbs represent the second group, and they are mainly referred to through metaphorically expressed actions, performed by the personified destination towards potential visitors; the highest number of participants indicates the island’s several pull factors (the climate, water, cultural and artistic treasures, natural sites, hospitality and transport services). The term ‘traveller’ is used to define the Beneficiary of Malta’s beauties, evoking a curious, active and non-massified attitude, while the item ‘tourist’ is omitted (for its negative connotation of superficiality and passivity).
- THEME-RHEME STRUCTURE= a marked Theme is adopted very often, where Theme doesn’t conflate with Subject in declarative sentences. Where a dependent clause preceded its main clause, a double Theme analysis has been carried out= with the result of a carefully written mode, in which the writer has planned the rhetorical development of the text. For example, the first sentence shows subtle Theme planning, with two parallel dependent clauses in Thematic position; this rhetorical syntax builds a slow, pleasant and suspended rythm: the confirmation is that the destination name is often Thematised, positioned and foregrounded as given, known and familiar. The Maltese archipelago is the most prominent element; the remainder of the message, the Rheme, is meant to sustain and prove the destination enhancement.
MOOD ANALYSIS
Knowing that tourism texts have a persuasive function, the system deals with the construction of the clause as exchange between a sender and an audience; the text is built of statements with a descriptive purpose articulated through the declarative mood, which has the aim of providing tourist information: by doing this, the reader is placed in a potential role of acknowledger, and there are no interrogative or imperative forms to establish any dialogic interaction.
comment (Ao), polarity (Ap), vocative (Av), conjunctive (Aj), continuity (At). MOOD element of ranking (non-embedded) clauses is shown in bold.
SFL IN AN ONLINE TRAVEL DIARY RECORDING A TRIP TO MALTA
It is a C2C Web 2.0 text genre (Customer to customer)= it is written by tourists who had already made the experience of travelling for the other people who are interested in doing it. It is made online
- ONLINE TRAVEL DIARIES: web-based travelogues written and shared by travellers while they are still on the road (CAPPELLI, DANN); travel communication has been invaded and subverted by this forum for travel discussion, because of electronic material support, allowing instant and global connections
- DANN and PARRINELLO: the definition of ‘word-of-mouse’= this term refers to the migration onto the web of the most spontaneous and immediate form of tourism communication, word-of-mouth. This type of travel narration is supported by the opportunity for reader feedback: any reader can react to a post, generating an open dialogue with a potentially limitless number of participants (“ “);
- CALVI and DANN: these digital entries are generally seen as telling the ‘real’, uncensored story, positioning them as credible, unmediated witnesses to the events, places, services or facilities they describe; they are considered as more valid in their evaluations than professionally written travel guides or brochures, these travelogues are increasingly being consulted by would-be travellers when planning their holidays. These diaries can have a varied length and may be composed of one or more textual units called posts, archived inside the blog in reverse chronological order; the written text is generally complemented by a wide range of multimodal material (photos and videos, chart trips, maps); diaries are typical of blogs, composite texts to be considered as travel macro- genres
- BLOGGING: it emerged in the mid-1990s as a practice among professionals in computing science and engineering, and this phenomenon is expanding and differentiating rapidly: a new blog is created every half a second (MYERS);
- ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: are spontaneous and impulsive, written in a colloquial and immediate style (ANTELMI and SANTULLI). On the one hand, online travel accounts are unedited texts, that contain lexico-grammatical mistakes or incoherent sentences and an impoverishment of lexicon; on the other hand, different possibilities of expression are
explored, creating a spontaneous and impulsive form of textuality, merging characteristics of written and spoken English (CRYSTAL); The example is a text taken from the TravelPod website, retrieved by entering the single keyword ‘Malta’, organising the results in reversed chronological order; the following paragraphs are the central part of the texts (the final part of the first paragraph has been cut in order for the extract to be about the same length as the brochure passage). For the exemplification of the stylistic distinction of this text genre formal inaccuracies have been left unedited and unhighlighted. This example can be first observed in two ways: the ideational metafunction, via the Transitivity (referring to the field), and the textual metafunction, via the Thematisation (referring to the mode). TRANSITIVITY AND THEME ANALYSIS
- TRANSITIVITY: it helps to understand the nature and function of this text
- Material, mental and verbal process types reveal the complete difference of the electronic travel journal text genre from the previous one, the narrative genre value being predominant here over the descriptive one;
- Narrated events (‘to leave the Medina’, ‘enter Rabat’, ‘hear something loud’), among others, focuse on the narrator’s cognitive and sensorial perceptions and actions; there are less attributive processes than in the previous descriptive passage;
- THEMATISATION: various solutions are adopted, but this variation does not feature any lexical or syntactic parallelism or rhythmic patterning as in the brochure genre. Generally, unmarked solutions are more frequent, leading to the demonstration of a non-carefully written text, resorting to simple and immediate strategies.
MOOD ANALYSIS
The statements of the online diary have a narrative purpose, with the predominance of the declarative syntactic mood; there’s only a rhetorical question, whose value is more self-referential than dialogic. The central part of this passage are the first person’s acts, thoughts and perceptions, as it is confirmed by the systematic occurrence of the first-person personal pronoun;
- TENOR: its construction as an enthusiast and curious traveller, who wants to share the tale of this experience with a potentially limitless number of readers with whom the writer has an equal power relation COMMUNICATION FUNCTIONS is the aspect in which both texts differ: according to Eggins’, the motivation of the brochure is pragmatic (having a clear, tangible goal to be achieved), while the aim of the online travel diary is that of sharing opinions, experiences and suggestions on the destination or itinerary.
CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter the theory and the methodological framework of SFL have been examined; it has illustrated the register variables of field, tenor and mode, as interconnected with the semantic metafunctions and eventually realised at the lexico-grammar level. It also has considered these levels in a tourism brochure and an online travel diary, also observing the way in which medium-based affordances and modal configurations influence semiosis. By approaching the multimodal viewpoint taken by the volume, verbal language makes meaning as expressed through writing or speech, with variations in terms of materiality, semantic properties, cognitive orientation and semantic potential.
