nkjlkl

SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) views language in a social language perspective. Halliday and Hasan (1985) consider semiotics the study of sign system or in other words, as the study of meaning in its most general sense (p.4)

Language is a kind of semiotics, an aspect of the study of meaning. Culture is defined as a set of semiotic system, a set of system of meaning. Language in the perspective of social –semiotic has three principles:

a.       Language always occurs as a text, whether it is spoken or written.

b.      Language is used to express meaning.

c.       Language is functional. It reflects the attitudes, opinions, and the ideology of the users (lbid. cf. Halliday, 1985a).

Every text, whether it is spoken or written, unfolds in some context, namely context of situation and context of culture. As a text, language is organized to express meanings. Meanings in SFL are known as ‘metafunctions.’ The metafunctions of language are:

a.       To understand the environment (ideational meaning);

b.      To act on the others in it (interpersonal meaning);

c.       To breathe relevance into the other two (textual meaning) (Halliday, 1985a)

The reflections of the attitudes, opinions, and values of the users will be clearly seen through register system below:

1.      Text and Context

Language always occurs as a text. A text is “a unit of language in use” (halliday and Hasan, 1976: 1). It is not a grammatical unit clause or a sentence and it is not defined by it size. It may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue. It can be only one single word of warning or an all-day discussion of a committee.

As a text, language is always surrounded by its environment or its context. Context is simply “other text that accompanies the text or ‘text that is with’” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 5). The context here refers to the context of culture and context of situations.

Context of situation refers to “all those extra-linguistic factors which have some bearing on the text it self. They are the external factors affecting the linguistic choices that the speaker or the writer make” (Halliday and Hasan. 1976: 20).

Context of situation is divided into three components, corresponding to the three metafunctions. The three components are:

a.       The field of discourse: the ‘play’ – the kind of activity, as recognized in the culture, within which language is playing some part or the total event, in which the text is functioning; it includes the subject matter as one element in it (predicts the experiential meaning)

b.      The tenor of discourse: the ‘players’ – the actors of the type of role interaction that are involved in the creation of the text, the set of relevant social interaction, permanent and temporary among the participants involved (predicts interpersonal meaning).

c.       The mode of discourse: the ‘parts’ – the particular functions that are assigned to language in the situation, including both the channel taken by the language (spoken or written) and its genre (predicts textual meaning) (Halliday and Hasan. 1976: 22; cf. 1985: 45-46).

2.      Register

Halliday states that “a register is a semantic concept. It can be defined as a configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, mode, and tenor” (lbid., pp: 39)

Register, in other words, is used to refer to “the semiotic system constituted by the contextual variables field, tenor, and mode” (Martin, 1992: 502)

a.       Field

Halliday and Hasan (1985: 12) defined it as “what is happening, to the nature of social action that is taking place: what is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component.”

Bell proposes six functions deriving from Jakobson’s (Jakobson in Bell, 1991: 192-195; cf. Newmark, 1998, 39-44). The first function is referential. The focus is on the denotative content of the message or the subject matter (Martin, 1992). This function is oriented towards referring to entities, states, events, and relationship and is represented in the propositions. For example :

Here are the 14a

Said in the bus queue, this has referential function. It indicates the presence of an entity, that is the bus whose number is 14a.

Second function is emotive, shows connotative rather than denotative meaning; subjective rather than objective; personal rather than public. References to states of mind, feeling, health, and the like have this as their primary function. For example:

I’m tired.

Connotative function, when language is used to influence others. For example:

Johny! Come here a minute!

Fourth, phatic function, focuses on the channel: on the fact that participant are in contact. For instance, someone could (greetings and channel clearing signals such as ‘hello’ on the telephone) typify this or that one, for the moment, not willing to discuss any particular topic..

Fifth function is poetic function. The orientation is towards the messages and the selection of element from the code which draw attention to them and to the text. The clear example of it rhymes. Story-telling and joke-telling also use this function

The last function is metalinguistic, derives from orientation of the code, which is the language being used to talk about language. For example:

Perhaps we should look into opportunities for fu..fu..funding.

In understanding the field, some semiotic resource should be taken into consideration. Those semiotic resources are: Lexis (Abstraction, Technicality, and Metaphor), Grammar (Lexical density, Complexity of Clauses and Groups), Cohesion, Activity Sequence, Text Structure, and Genre.

1)      Lexis

Lexis here can be considered as the synonym of vocabulary. It is “the physical glossary or the terminology database, that is an instant ‘look-up’ facility for lexical items both ‘words and idioms’ (Bell, 1991: 47)

The first part of lexis is abstraction. It is formed by nominalization (Martin, 1992). Nominalization is a process of noun forming from other word classes. Then, technicality of the text should be considered using taxonomic relations. Technicality is the use of certain technical terms in the text. The taxonomic relation has two basic kinds, superordination (hyponym, superordinate, and co-hyponym) and composition (meronymy and co-meronymy).

Metaphor deals with Incongruency (Halliday, 1985a). Incongruent realization in the lexicogrammar is called metaphor. Martin (lbid., p. 406-416) divides metaphor into three categories : ideational, interpersonal, and textual metaphor. Ideational metaphor consist of logical and experiential metaphors (nominalization) (lbid., p.327.). It can be seen if unliving things do some activities which are usually done by the animate being (Santosa, 1994a:9) for example:

Some hotels don’t have a 13^th floor

Interpersonal metaphor connects with congruent and metaphorical realizations of speech function in MOOD. For example:

You see.

Textual metaphor tries to organize text as social reality through meta-message relation (reason, example, point, etc). text reference, internal conjunction, and negotiative texture.

Meta-message relation            That point is just silly! (Martin, 1992: 417)

Text reference                         It applies to the way … (Clause 6/Text 06)

                                                No one think that religious does not aplly …                                                                          (Clause 5b/ text 6)

Negotiative text                      Do we hurt and complain (Clause 28a/Text 03)

Internal Conjunction               Whatever your duty is (Clause 7a/Text 06)

2)      Grammar

The first semiotic resource of grammar is lexical density. Lexical density is calculated by counting the lexical items or content words of the clauses ignoring functional words (grammatical items). Such functional items are “pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and other closed system items” (Martin, 1985: 29, Halliday, 1985b). For example: At the conclusion of the recital the entire audience rose as one (Clause 10a/Text 05). The underlined words are functional items. Therefore, it has six lexical and six functional items.

Second semiotic resource is complexity of clause and groups. A clause will be complex if it consists of more then one clause. Example:

His motto was “Live or die, I must ride and ride he did ride up until the time of his death in the cabin home of George Arnold on March 31, 1816, in Spottsylvania, Virginia” (Clause 9a-9c/Text 04)

A group called complex when it is embedded. Example:

On the stage [before an audience of hundreds of lovers of good music]

3)      Cohesion

Cohesion is “a semantic relation between an element in the text and some other element that is crucial to the interpretation of it” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 8, Halliday 1985a: 288).

Halliday and Hasan divide cohesion into two: lexical cohesion and grammatical cohesion (cf. Martin, 1992). Lexical cohesion is realized through repetition, antonym, collocation, hyponym and c0-hyponym, synonym and antonym, meronymy and co-meronymy.

Grammatical cohesion consists of reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction.

4)      Activity Sequence, Text Structure, and Genre

The activities in the text should be observed in their relations through activity sequence. It is done by looking at the whole text (Martin, 1992). After analyzing the text sequence, we can also analyze the text structure. It is actually the function of activities in social reality.  Finally, the genre of the text will be clearly seen.

In SFL, there are many definitions, of genre. Hasan defines genre as “language doing the job appropriate to that class of social happenings” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 65). Language or text, as a result of a particular social process, carries a social function. In its social function, language as text has its own structure composing from opening, body, and closing. By Halliday and Hasan (lbid.), it is called as generic structure potensial (GSP). GSP is actually the obligatory elements of the text structure that can be used to determine types of genre. Therefore, texts having the same GSP belong to the same genre. There are eight types of genre, namely recount, description, report, procedure, explanation, exposition, discussion, and exploration (Martin , 1992; MEDSP , 1989; Riyadi, 1996).

b.      Tenor

Tenor here refers to “who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their status and roles: what kind of role relationship obtains among the participants, including permanent and temporary relationship of one kind on another, both the types of speech role that they are taking on the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant relationship in which they are involve” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 523).

Tenor also refers to the negotiation of social relationship among participant. Within register, it is the projection of interpersonal meaning.

c.       Mode

Mode refers to the role language is playing in realizing social action (martin 1992; 508)

According to Haliday in Martin, mode refers to what part of language is playing, what the participants are expecting the language to do for them in the situation: the symbolic organization of the text, the status that it has, end its function in the context, including the channel and also the rhetorical mode, what is being achieved by the text in terms of such categories as persuasive, rhetorical didactic, and the like.

3. Lexicogrammar

As a configuration of meanings, register is an abstract component. To realize these meanings, they should be expressed in lexicogrammar. Lexicogrammar refers to words in grammatical structure. The tree macro functions are ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning.   

1.      Ideational meaning

 Ideational meaning expresses cognitive meaning. This draws on the systems and netwoks of transitive which conveys the experience of the external experience (experiential meaning) and of the internal experience (logical meaning)

·         Nominal Group

Is an experiential structure which has function of (i) a class of thing and (ii) some category of membership within the class.

·         Adverbial Group

Is an adverb which is accompanied by the modifying such as rather, so, more. Etc. the modifying elements of adverbial group may be (i) the embedded clause or (ii) the embedded phrase.

a)      Experiential meaning

This external world of sense is realized through transitivity. Transitivity functional as the representation of a process. It consists of “goings- on” of doing.  Happening, felling, and being ( Halliday 1989, 101).

v  Type of processes and their participant

Ø  Material process

Ø  Metal process

Ø  Behavioral process

Ø  Verbal process

Ø  Relational process

Ø  Existential process

v  Circumstances

Those circumstantial elements are Extent (spatial, temporal). Location (Spatial, Temporal), Manner (Means, Quality, Comparison), Cause (Reason, Bahalf), Accompaniment ( Comitative, Additive ), Matter and Role.

Circumstance Manner is divided into three types: means, quality, and comparison. If means is answering the question ‘how?’ with agency, quality is also answering the same question but with expression of quality of behavior. Then comparison is the answer of the question like what? With expression of similarity and difference.

b)     Logical meaning

In term of internal experience of mind or logical meaning, language expresses our logic. In the grammar level, it is realized through the complexity of clause. In SFL, clauses are divided into simplex and complex clauses.

A simple clause is a clause which can stand by it self (independent clause) example

The spiritual of these thoughts are many (clause 12/ text 03)

There are two types of relation between lcauses, namely (a) Interdependency relation, and (b) Logico- semantic relations

Ø  Interdependency relation is the relation of modifying in which one element modifies another.

Ø  Logico- semantic relation holds between a primary and a secondary member of a clause complex.

2.      Interpersonal meaning

The interpersonal meaning expresses speech function meaning by drawing on the systems and networks of MOO. The function of it is to create sentence which carry the cognitive and logical content of propositions and display the speaker’s relationship with other ship with other to whom the messages are being addressed (bell, 1991: 121) in lexicogrammar, the interpersonal meaning is realized in:

v  MOOD System

To structure sentence (more, correctly, clauses) which ‘count as speech acts which facilitate social exchanges. (ibid., p 134)

v  Modality system

Halliday (1985a) states that modality means “ the speaker’s judgment of probability or the obligation involved in what he is saying” (p.335). Further, he adds that “modality refers to the area of meaning that lies between yes and no the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity.”(ibid)

3.      Textual Meaning

The textual meaning which is predicated from the mode of discourse expresses. Theme is the point of departure where the speaker points the emphasis of his meaning on.

Generally the are three kinds of theme,(Mart in , 1985, 93-94) first s topical either marked or unmarked. A theme that is something other than the functions above is called a marked theme. Textual theme relates the clause conjunctively to what has done before. Interpersonal theme expresses the writer’s attitude to what he is saying.