SOURCE; Grammar in EAP
https://www.uefap.com/grammar/gramfram-intro-sfl.htm
The approach taken for this grammatical description and analysis is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Only Systemic Functional Linguistics would seem to provide a description of how the structure of English relates to the situational variables of the social context (e.g. business, engineering, education) in which the language is functioning. Functional grammar is uniquely able to understand how the grammatical form of language is structured to achieve purposes in a variety of social (e.g. academic, occupational or professional contexts.
The approach taken here is mainly taken from the work of Michael Halliday, in particular the model of language set out in An Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004), following on from Malinowski (1923), Firth (1957) and Hymes (1967) (Halliday & Hasan, 1985, pp. 5-9).
Systemic Functional Linguistics has a number of beliefs that make it particularly useful as a basis for developing such a description:
• Language is functional. That is, language is the way it is because of the meanings it makes. Resources available within the systems of semantics, grammar and vocabulary are utilised in specific ways to make specific meanings.
• It is a theory of language in context, and suggests that language can only be understood in relation to the context in which it is used. So different purposes for using language and different contexts result in different texts. The construction of language texts in turn impacts on the context. There is thus a two-way relationship between text and context.
• The process of using language is a semiotic process, a process of making meanings by choosing.
• The theory focuses on language at the level of the whole text. By text is meant any connected stretch of language that is doing a job within a social context. Thus, the term 'text' is used to refer to stretches of spoken and written language. Text may be as short as one word, e.g. EXIT, or may be as long as a book such as a training manual. This theory differs from most other approaches to language study, which offer systematic analyses of language only up to the level of sentence. It provides little guidance to the LSP learner, who needs to know about structure, organisation and development in connected oral discourse and written texts in context.
The starting point is culture. In the EAP case, the culture is the international academic world; in the EPP case, the culture is the international professional world. All language use takes place within this culture. The context of culture includes:
• The attitudes, values and shared experiences of the people working in the culture.
• The culturally evolved ways of behaving.
• The culturally evolved ways of achieving goals.
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Systemic Functional Linguistics is concerned with understanding how the ways in which language is used for different purposes and in different contexts and how these situations shape its structure.
The key argument is that to understand linguistic meaning we have to appreciate the function of items in a structural context.
The ways in which human beings use language - the meanings that we can make with language - are classified by Halliday (1978, pp. 36-58) into three broad categories or metafunctions (Bloor & Bloor, 2004, pp. 10-11).
1. Language is used to organise, understand and express our perceptions of the world and of our own consciousness. This function is known as the ideational function. The ideational metafunction is about the natural world in the broadest sense, and is concerned with clauses as representations. The ideational function can be classified into two subfunctions: the experiential and the logical. The experiential function is largely concerned with content or ideas. The logical function is concerned with the relationship between ideas.
2. Language is used to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand feelings, attitude and judgements. This function is known as the interpersonal function. The interpersonal metafunction is about the social world, especially the relationship between speaker and hearer, and is concerned with clauses as exchanges.
3. Language is used to relate what is said (or written) to the real world and to other linguistic events. This involves the use of language to organise the text itself. This is known as the textual function. The textual metafunction is about the verbal world, especially the flow of information in a text, and is concerned with clauses as messages.
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