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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.