Systemic Functional Grammar

and Text Analysis

Register Theory

Systemic Functional Grammar

3 different kinds of grammar:

• Mental grammar (the rules in your headyou use by intuition)

• Prescriptive grammar (tells you what to do, good for foreign language learners)

• Descriptive grammar (describesphenomena found in discourse). SFG is a descriptive grammar for analysing texts.

Variation in language

Three kinds of variation in language:

• User-related; dialect

• User-related; sociolect

• Use-related; register

Register Theory

• a theory of language variation according to situational contexts (Halliday et al., 1964, Halliday & Hasan, 1989)

• focus: the systematic relation between a context of situation and the language variety used in that context -register

• the notion of register: used by other people and in other contexts, e.g., discourse studies (Ghadessy, 1988), translation studies (Hatim & Mason, 1990), contrastive linguistics (Biber 95)

Functional variation

• functional varieties are in principle available to

all speakers (whereas regional and social

varieties are not)

• obviously: the more functional varieties you are

able to use, the better

• but you must be able to use the right register in

the appropriate context

Exercise 1

• Try to find features that distinguish oneregister from another.

• Can we classify these features somehow?

Examples A

Line a gas burner with foil to protect it from aubergine juice.Turn flame to medium-low. Place aubergine directly over the flame and let it get charred on one side. Keep turning the aubergine until the entire skin looks burnt and the vegetable turnslimp and soft. Peel away the charred skin under cold, running water.Chop the aubergine pulp.

Operate the device only on 3 V DC with two R6 batteries (size AA)batteries. For AC operation, use the AC-E311/E314 AC power Adaptor. Do not use any other type.For car battery operation, use the car battery cord recommended; donot use any other type.

Examples B

Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.

At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was

dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Muskateer

Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would

not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw

slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel. A little green

light flashed in his eye, signalling a right turn he had resolved never to

make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He hap flipped a

coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was decided-upon

suicide. In fact it was a New Year‘s resolution.

Olbrich, Joseph Maria, b. Troppau 1867, d. Düsseldorf 1908.

After attending the State Schools of Arts and Crafts in Vienna,

he studies under Carl von Hasenauer in Vienna. ... In 1899 he

was summoned to Darmstadt where he was given the opportunity

of developing a synthesis of the Arts and Crafts and Garden Cities

Movement in a great civic Gesamtkunstwerk. ... In 1907 O. enlarged

the artists‘ colony on Mathildenhöhe around the Wedding Tower.

Three parameters to describe any register:

• Field of discourse

• Mode of discourse

• Tenor of discourse

Parameters of variation according to situation (register):

field, tenor,mode (Halliday & Hasan, 1989)

• field: refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place: what is it the participants are engaged in, what is the text about?

• tenor: refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles: what kinds of role relationship obtainamong the participants, including permanent and temporary relationships of one kind or another…

• mode: refers to what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in that situation: the symbolic organization of the text, the status that is has, …, including the channel...

Field, Tenor, Mode

If we wanted to determine the context of situation of a text

applying these terms, it would be a bit difficult…

…we need more fine grained distinctions.

• field: experiential domain, goal-orientation (short-term vs. long-term), social activity

• tenor: agentive role, social role (hierarchic vs. non-hierarchic), social distance (minimal vs. maximal)

• mode: language role (ancillary vs. constitutive),channel (graphic vs. phonic), medium (spoken vs. written)

Register Theory: system network of field, tenor and mode

field

tenor

mode

- goal orientation

- social activity

short term

long term

- agentive role

- social role

- social distance

hierarchic

non-hierarchic

minimal

maximal

- language role

- channel

- medium

constitutive

ancillary phonic

graphicwritten

spoken

visual contact

- experiential domain

no visual contact

Field of discourse

With the discourse parameter of field we describe the activity of theinteractants in a situation. What is the discourse about?

• experiential domain e.g. football match, shopping, education

– Lexis, indexical lexical items

– tense, aspect

– particular grammatical patterns (e.g., transitivity)

• goal-orientation, e.g., argumentation, narration, instruction

– mood

– ellipsis

– conjunctive relations

– patterns of thematic development

• social activity, e.g., consumption (e.g., manual), exchange (e.g., service encounter)

How is field of discourse reflected in the language? Some examples

Instructional registers

• Lexically: nuts, bolts, lever, adjust

• Grammatically:

– imperatives: Pour the milk into a bowl vs. You should pour the milk into a bowl.

– omission of object: Bake at 220°.

Scientific and technical registers

• Grammatically:

– passives plus nominalization: Rectification of this fault is achieved by…vs. You can rectify this fault if you insert …

Newspaper registers, e.g. headlines

– Omission of articles and finite verbs, e.g., Development Plan for Suburbs Fought

Tenor of discourse

With the discourse parameter of tenor we describe the relationship

between the interactants in a situation. Who is taking part?

• Agentive role (e.g. vendor-customer; girlfriend-boyfriend)

-mood

-modality

-specialist language

• Social role (e.g. class, gender, age, level of expertise)

-grammatical and lexical means of expressing politeness

• Social distance (formal vs. informal)

-tagging

-modality

-use of accents or dialects

Mode of discourse

With the discourse parameter of mode we describe how the interactants comunicate.

What role is language playing in this situation?

• Language role (constitutive or ancillary)

– ellipsis

– mood

– Tense

• Channel (graphic vs. phonic)

• Medium (written or spoken)

– pronouns vs. full words

– exophoric vs. endophoric reference

– different types of cohesion in general

– face-to-face interaction allows body language

– non-face-to-face interaction (e.g., on the telephone) does not

Mode of discourse: Medium

• written:– situational: written medium presumes the absence of

addressees in the situation

– language: more explicitness, e.g., explicit reference, complete sentences

– cannot use intonation, stress, rhythm

• spoken:– cannot use orthography and punctuation

– incomplete sentences

– long sentences

– less explicit reference

Examples C

S1 yes please

S2 can I have these two like that

S1 yesS1 one´s forty-five

S1 one´s twenty-five

S2 And have you got the…of…

S1 yes

S1 how many would you likeS2 four please

S1 two of each?

S2 what have you got

S1 uh…there´s two different designs on the …(shows cover)

S2 I´ll take two of eachS1 uhum

S1 right… that´s a dollar seventy thank you

S1 here we are

S2 thank you

S1 thank youS1 dollar seventy that´s two four and one´s five

thank you very much

S2 thank you

S1 they´ll be right I´ll fix those up in a momentS2 okay

Example C

• Field: stamps, buying and selling

• Tenor: customer and post-office clerk

• Mode: face-to-face, across counter

Of course we can be much more explicit!

Register Theory

Thus, stuying how people use languageforces us to recognize, first, that linguisticbehaviour is goal oriented (we can onlymake sense of talk if we assume it to bepurposeful); an, second, that linguisticbehaviour takes place within both a situation and a culture, in relation to whichit can be evaluated as appropriate orinappropriate. Eggins 2004:29

Envoi

• Register is reflected in lexical and grammatical

variation

• Register analysis means lexico-grammatical

analysis

• More precisely: the relative frequency of

particular lexico-grammatical features

• Framework for doing this: Systemic Functional

Grammar

Assignment

Please read chapter 3 Register Variationfrom

• Halliday, MAK; Hasan, Ruqaiya (1989): Language, Context and Text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Oxford: OUP.

(Liegt als Kopiervorlage im Handapparat der Fachbibliothek)

References

• Eggins, Suzanne (2004): An Introductionto Systemic Functional Linguistics, New York: Continuum.

• Halliday, MAK; Hasan, Ruqaiya (1989): Language, Context and Text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Oxford: OUP.