Volume 10, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Systemic functional linguistics: advances and applications; Guest Editor: David Banks

While approaches informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) have been widely applied to the field of language education since the 1960s, the idea of the system embodying the meaning potential of language in context, represented as a system network, could be used to make a much more significant contribution to second language (L2) or foreign language education, where despite pioneering efforts the uptake of SFL has been less than in L1 education. In this paper, we will take stock of the ways system networks have been used in studies concerned with L2 education and at the same time we will highlight new opportunities to empower new studies and applications based on system networks as a way of engaging with the central notion of learning how to mean in a second/foreign language. We argue that system networks can make a very significant contribution to L2 education if they are given more attention and their deployment is highlighted. The uses considered in this paper include the following: Tracking language development systemically; diagnosing problems in L2 student texts; supporting sequencing in the curriculum of the learning of the L2 meaning potential; designing exercises based on options in system networks; guiding L2 learners by means of system networks as cartographic tools; contrasting L1 and L2 resources based on multilingual system networks; and supporting advanced L2 learners expanding their L2 uses by adding translation skills drawing on multilingual system networks. We will touch on these uses, highlighting those that have perhaps given the least attention in L2 education drawing on SFL, but which look very promising as we move ahead in the next couple of decades.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of deontic modality as a strategic means of mitigating evaluative meanings within and across texts. Evaluative meanings concern the function of language as used to express the speaker’s or writer’s subjective opinions, and such meanings have been extensively analysed through Appraisal framework. The framework has been used to account for evaluative/attitudinal meanings in texts, as well as dealing with the interaction of voices as one way through which speakers and writers can attribute evaluations to third parties in order to downplay or distance themselves from the evaluations that are expressed. Within the literature on Appraisal, however, the potential for deontic modality to mitigate subjective evaluation in texts has largely been overlooked and, thus, under-analysed. In this paper therefore, we develop a systems network for analysing the role of deontic modality and its interaction with other features as a tool for text analysis. We illustrate the distinctions in the network with examples of contrasting values from hard news stories that covered the 2011 public sector workers’ strike in Botswana and finish up with a short textual analysis to demonstrate how the consideration of deontic modality as a strategy of mitigation can not only enhance our understanding of how evaluative meanings are downplayed or overridden in texts, but also of how the distinctions between text types themselves can be blurred.

While there is a clear tendency for a Theme not to occur within its own tone group, it is equally clear that clauses are frequently formed out of more than a single tone group. Hence it is precipitous to assume an a priori relationship between clause and tone group/information unit. Speakers in pursuit of their individual communicative choices manage their interactional and informational needs by producing prosodic and thematic choices appropriate to their goals. Such choices as we have seen are frequently mutually re-enforcing, but speakers may employ prosodic choices which foreground their interactional needs. Specifically, this entails that there is no direct relationship between lexico-grammatical and prosodic meanings; both redound with semantic meanings. Yet, these meanings may be constrained by the interactional demands of the communicative situation in which a speaker operates. In this paper, I examine the spoken realisation of Interpersonal Theme and find that Interpersonal Themes realized by Mood adjuncts and metaphors of modality tended to be realized with different key. Similarly, the expectation that marked Theme was likely to attract high key was found to be subject to the speaker’s need to manage the interaction.

This paper aims to show how concepts and analytical methods of systemic functional linguistics can work congruently with other human practices to improve outcomes for those undergoing the suffering around loss of meaning and the absence of purposeful, self-directed experience. Based on a two-decade collaboration between linguists and psychotherapists in Sydney, Australia, and using the tools of text linguistics as developed by Michael A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan in systemic functional theory, the paper presents an indicative selection of intense exchanges between traumatized persons and therapists (centrally the experience of ‘Ruth’). The level by level linguistic descriptions of these exchanges offer opportunities for understanding how progress in the clinical interaction might be achieved. The descriptions can also be evaluated against the theoretical claims of psychotherapy in psychiatry – in particular, the emphasis of the Conversational Model of Psychotherapy developed in England and Australia by Robert Hobson and Russell Meares, whose characterization of disorders involves an emphasis on ‘co-ordination’ and ‘cohesion’ within frontal lobe activity of traumatized patients. In this way the paper also explores conceptual parallels and intellectual antecedents shared between the Conversational Model and Systemic Functional Linguistics, contributing to the broader intellectual history of the human sciences.

This article focuses on instances of spoken communication which qualify commonly as “oratory” and which can be modelled within the socio-semiotic of “spoken and monologic”. This includes both “podium oratory”, as exemplified by political speeches delivered from a stage to an audience that is physically present, as well as forms of “digital oratory” which have developed via the digital interface, including videos posted to social media. The study proposes to model both types of oratory with respect to a range of multimodal and linguistic resources. The study notably explores spoken and monologic discourse in regard to grammatical intricacy and lexical density, the two types of information packaging which respectively inform prototypical speech and writing. Digital oratory reflects trends associated with the technologisation of discourse, and its underpinnings as socio-semiotic. The discussion also makes the case that systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory, via its articulation between system and function, provides an ideal lens through which these activities can be modelled, as well as their social role and the symbolic power attached to them.

In spite of decades of research developing a model of language and context, there is little consensus in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) about how context should be modelled and how language and context are related. In this paper, we review recent work in SFL which focuses on modelling register as a resource – reconceiving field as a resource for construing phenomena, tenor as a resource for negotiating social relations, and mode as a resource for composing texture. This work has a number of implications for SFL’s conception of realisation (as strata of abstraction), instantiation (as a cline of generalisation), and individuation (as a scale of belonging). For realisation it bears critically on the issue of whether or not to adopt a stratified model of context (as register and genre) and the relationship between extrinsic functionality (field, tenor, and mode) and intrinsic functionality (ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions). For instantiation, it bears critically on our modelling of principles for coupling (co-selecting and arranging choices within and across languages and related modalities of communication) – for example mass, presence, and association. And for individuation, it bears critically on the perspectives of allocation (i.e. how access to meanings and their uptake is distributed across communities) and affiliation (i.e. how meanings are used to collaborate and struggle, within and between social groups). Our basic aim in this paper is to suggest a model for improving traction as far as SFL work on language in context is concerned, fully embracing a multimodal perspective on language and related modalities of communication as resources for meaning.

The main purpose of this article is to show how Functional Grammar of Dance (FGD) can be applied to dance discourse analysis to reveal the discursive strategies that underlie choreographies and support movement-based communication. In recent years, studies in Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) have benefited from the development of several models of analysis, and from the emergence of a new focus on the materiality of semiotic modes. The Functional Grammar of Dance is a recently developed model of analysis that draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics theory and focuses on movement-based communication starting from dance (particularly ballet as a starting point). The Functional Grammar of Dance has been adopted as a central theory in an international collaborative project funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) in the UK and the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ‘German Research Foundation’) in Germany, The Kinesemiotic Body, where it has been used with the ELAN annotation system. ELAN annotation based on the Functional Grammar of Dance was used for both live-collected data from dance rehearsals and for dance videos and revealed aspects of dance performances that are not necessarily captured by the naked eye. This paper proposes three case studies where we show that our ELAN annotation with the FGD provides an effective and very flexible interface for the grammaticalization of movement-based communication and the study of movement-based discursive strategies.