Key Concepts in Systemic Functional Linguistics – serie

Neo-Firthian theories — which include Systemic Functional Linguistics and its congeners — have, unlike other functionally oriented theories, engaged minimally with linguistic typology and have made little impact on the wider discipline. This book offers a programmatic and Neo-Firthian informed typological investigation that points to potential mutual enrichments of linguistic typology and Neo-Firthian theories. On the one hand, this book identifies the inadequacies of the dominant ‘atheoretical’ approaches to linguistic typology, and shows how these can be circumvented through a firm foundation in a Neo-Firthian theoretical framework. On the other hand, it contends that Neo-Firthian approaches must take typology seriously as a criterion of theoretical adequacy, and be able to account for the full range of grammatical phenomena and their variation across languages, as well as those features that are universal. Case studies illustrate this argument through a selection of grammatical phenomena — in particular, grammatical relations, the noun phrase, complex sentence constructions, optional case marking and grammatical classification. This book will be of interest to typologists, and well as to linguistics working within Systemic Functional Linguistics and other functional theories.

Investigating the gamut of changes that occurred in the course of the English language’s development, Historical Linguistics and the History of English analyses its metamorphosis scaffolded by systemic functional linguistics. Providing an introductory model for the historical description of languages within the systemic functional framework, English professor Michael Cummings utilizes the history of English as a guiding exemplar. At the centre of the model are the historical relationships among successive states of semantics and of lexico-grammar. He takes the reader through a systemic functional analysis of their own modern English and introduces analyses of the historical dialects, while noting differences and similarities. Each successive chapter begins with an analysis of a type of grammatical unit in modern English, then continues with corresponding analyses through the historical dialects Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. The types of grammatical units covered are the nominal group, the verbal group, the interpersonal clause, the experiential clause, and the textual clause.Historical Linguistics and the History of English is a vital introduction to the history of the English language from a systemic functional perspective and will be of interest to scholars and students at all levels.

Every day we negotiate our social relations. This may involve small, seemingly inconsequential chats with friends, families, and colleagues that perform our relationships. Or they may involve large, communal events that bring us together or tear us apart. In all cases, we negotiate these social relations through the language, paralanguage, and related systems of meaning that we use. This book introduces a new model for analysing how people negotiate social relations through the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It focuses on SFL's conception of social context and in particular on the interpersonal component of context known as tenor. Drawing on decades of SFL research, tenor is reworked as a resource for meaning – with the aim of describing in some detail how we go about building and maintaining sociality.The book begins by considering how language varies in relation to social context and the different perspectives we can take to explore this variation. It then introduces our model of tenor as a resource for negotiating social relations. The model comprises three main systems. Positioning considers how people put forward meanings, react to them, and position each other when we talk. Orienting looks at the nature of the meanings we negotiate, attending to the vast background of shared values that underpin our talk, help us build communities, and hold them together. Tuning deals with how we raise or lower the stakes of what is being said, how we broaden or narrow the scope of what it applies to, and how we vary the spirit in which the meanings are being put forward. Taken together, these systems provide us with resources for enacting social relations as we align and disalign with people and communities of various kinds. Examples focus in particular on a range of meanings associated with motherhood, including language and paralanguage (both gesture and emoji) in spoken, written, and social media texts.

In a series of publications in the 1960s culminating in the 1967 book Intonation and the Grammar of English and the three articles Notes on Transitivity and Theme, Halliday proposed a system of information structure. Tonic items were presented as New or as if they were not recoverable from the context and cotext. Post tonic items were Given or recoverable. The status of pre-tonic items was ambiguous and needed to be considered in context.Halliday’s view has proven to be reliable over the past 50 years but this book aims to revise it. The book argues that Halliday’s system was premised on two views both of which have been questioned over the years. The first is that Halliday’s notion of recoverability was influenced by Shannon and Weaver’s mathematical theory of information predictability where information can be encoded in terms of bits which are transmitted from source A to source B. This is not how SFL theory sees language functioning. Languaging is not simply the transmitting of information but rather a social semiotic practice which interactants deploy to affiliate with others while pursuing their individual needs. Secondly the binary division of information as either New (1 bit) or Given (0 bit) has been questioned in recent years by work which has looked at presuppositions and implications. In addition to these issues the book argues that Halliday’s definition blurs the important distinction between referentiality and identification. The book concludes by presenting an updated Hallidayan model which is sensitive to the above issues.

In a series of publications in the 1960s culminating in the 1967 book Intonation and the Grammar of English and the three articles Notes on Transitivity and Theme, Halliday proposed a system of information structure. Tonic items were presented as New or as if they were not recoverable from the context and cotext. Post tonic items were Given or recoverable. The status of pre-tonic items was ambiguous and needed to be considered in context.Halliday’s view has proven to be reliable over the past 50 years but this book aims to revise it. The book argues that Halliday’s system was premised on two views both of which have been questioned over the years. The first is that Halliday’s notion of recoverability was influenced by Shannon and Weaver’s mathematical theory of information predictability where information can be encoded in terms of bits which are transmitted from source A to source B. This is not how SFL theory sees language functioning. Languaging is not simply the transmitting of information but rather a social semiotic practice which interactants deploy to affiliate with others while pursuing their individual needs. Secondly the binary division of information as either New (1 bit) or Given (0 bit) has been questioned in recent years by work which has looked at presuppositions and implications. In addition to these issues the book argues that Halliday’s definition blurs the important distinction between referentiality and identification. The book concludes by presenting an updated Hallidayan model which is sensitive to the above issues.

This book provides an original, full-scale, exploration in applying the principles and practices of Systemic-Functional Linguistics at the level of word phonology in English, German, Welsh and Tera (Nigeria). The relationship between lexicogrammar and word phonology is demonstrated, and the place of word phonology is set within the full range of a hierarchy of phonological expression. The function of phonology is given a new understanding in its relationship to lexicogrammar, and the notion of system is given extensive illustration in the numerous networks that are proposed. The special characteristic features of Systemic Phonology are compared with with the theory and structures of other approaches to phonology. The choice of the four languages is deliberate: English as the most described language in the world; German as a language in the same linguistic family as English; Welsh as another Indo-European language, but from a different linguistic family; and Tera as a language with absolutely no family connection to the others. The principal units of word phonology are the foot and its equivalent in non-stress languages, the syllable, the phoneme and allophone. Allophonic variants are included, since their phonetic realization is determined by the phonology of a language, rather than on purely phonetic criteria.

This book provides an original, full-scale, exploration in applying the principles and practices of Systemic-Functional Linguistics at the level of word phonology in English, German, Welsh and Tera (Nigeria). The relationship between lexicogrammar and word phonology is demonstrated, and the place of word phonology is set within the full range of a hierarchy of phonological expression. The function of phonology is given a new understanding in its relationship to lexicogrammar, and the notion of system is given extensive illustration in the numerous networks that are proposed. The special characteristic features of Systemic Phonology are compared with with the theory and structures of other approaches to phonology. The choice of the four languages is deliberate: English as the most described language in the world; German as a language in the same linguistic family as English; Welsh as another Indo-European language, but from a different linguistic family; and Tera as a language with absolutely no family connection to the others. The principal units of word phonology are the foot and its equivalent in non-stress languages, the syllable, the phoneme and allophone. Allophonic variants are included, since their phonetic realization is determined by the phonology of a language, rather than on purely phonetic criteria.

Every day we negotiate our social relations. This may involve small, seemingly inconsequential chats with friends, families, and colleagues that perform our relationships. Or they may involve large, communal events that bring us together or tear us apart. In all cases, we negotiate these social relations through the language, paralanguage, and related systems of meaning that we use. This book introduces a new model for analysing how people negotiate social relations through the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It focuses on SFL’s conception of social context and in particular on the interpersonal component of context known as tenor. Drawing on decades of SFL research, tenor is reworked as a resource for meaning – with the aim of describing in some detail how we go about building and maintaining sociality.The book begins by considering how language varies in relation to social context and the different perspectives we can take to explore this variation. It then introduces our model of tenor as a resource for negotiating social relations. The model comprises three main systems. Positioning considers how people put forward meanings, react to them, and position each other when we talk. Orienting looks at the nature of the meanings we negotiate, attending to the vast background of shared values that underpin our talk, help us build communities, and hold them together. Tuning deals with how we raise or lower the stakes of what is being said, how we broaden or narrow the scope of what it applies to, and how we vary the spirit in which the meanings are being put forward. Taken together, these systems provide us with resources for enacting social relations as we align and disalign with people and communities of various kinds. Examples focus in particular on a range of meanings associated with motherhood, including language and paralanguage (both gesture and emoji) in spoken, written, and social media texts.

This book offers a comprehensive account of Systemic Functional Translation Studies (SFTS) — a research area that applies Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to study translation, and to relate researches by scholars in the community of both SFL and translation studies. The important trends as well as contributions in SFTS are summarised. Various topics in SFTS are covered in the six chapters of this book, including the basic issues and concepts in SFTS; the relationship between SFTS, the cognate functional approaches, translation studies and translation practice; SFTS and different modes of meaning; registerial variation and SFTS; technologies and SFTS as well as a future outlook on SFTS. The objectives of this book include to provide a comprehensive introduction to SFTS; to relate SFTS to translation studies; to summarise the important contributions and limitations of SFTS; and to offer directions for future researches in SFTS, reflecting on what is currently missing from the SFL theory.

Systemic Functional Linguistics is unique among linguistic theories in treating the concept of system as the central organising principle of language (and also of other semiotic systems, including context), most theories being focussed on syntagmatic structure. This book introduces the notion of system as the foundation of the systemic functional architecture of language, relating the general notion of system in systems thinking (holistic approaches) to the principle that language is organised as a system of systems (the polysystemic principle) and, by another step, to the technical sense of system in SFL as the basic category of paradigmatic patterning - i.e. the organisation of language as a resource for making meaning. The concept of system is then used to explore the emergence of complexity in language (within different semogenetic timeframes), to show how it is manifested in the organisation of all subsystems of language (the fractal principle), to illustrate the system at work in the development of language descriptions and in the process of text analysis, to reveal the power of the system in different areas of application, e.g. in computational modelling, in educational analysis and curriculum development, in multilingual and multimodal studies. Finally, challenges are identified e.g. in the relationship between the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic one, in the representation of logical iteration and interpersonal continua; and current and new opportunities are suggested.