2 CH 1 Gerot Wignell - MakingSenseOfFunctionalGrammar
2 CH 1 Gerot Wignell - MakingSenseOfFunctionalGrammar
2 CH 1 Gerot Wignell - MakingSenseOfFunctionalGrammar
CHAPTER 1
GRAMMAR
What do you think when you hear the word ‘grammar’? As a student in
school you may have thought of it as a set of exercises to get right in English
class. Now, as a person who is studying language in some depth, you will find
that grammar is much more.
What is grammar?
Why do we need to know about grammar?
How can we characterise or talk about grammar?
What is Grammar?
Grammar is a theory of language, of how language is put together and how it
works. More particularly, it is the study of wordings. What is meant by
wording? Consider the following for a moment:
wording lexicogrammar
letters/sounds orthography/phonology
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
Why Grammar?
Why do we need to know about grammar? We need a theory of grammar or
language which helps us understand how texts work. As teachers we need to
knowhow texts work so we can explicitly help learners learn how to
understand and produce texts – spoken and written in various contexts for
various purposes.
This example is not to criticise students or teachers. The student would have
made the text ‘hang together’ in the first place had he known how. And the
teacher would have explained in good faith had he known explicitly how
texts, especially geography texts, worked. Systemic-functional grammar,
presented in this book, perhaps more than any other theory of language,
explains how texts, inluding texts read and written in schools, work.
Characterising Language
This is where viewpoints begin to diverge. Notice that we’ve not used the
term ‘the’ grammar of English. Instead, there are a number of grammars
which differ in how they characterise language, depending on the purposes of
the user. How people have characterised wordings, that is, devised theories of
grammar, depends on the kinds of questions they have asked about language,
on what they want to find out about it.
Consider for a moment the experience of six blind men meeting an elephant
for the first time. One blind man felt the tail and declared that an elephant
was like a rope; another felt the trunk and decided that an elephant was like
a hose. Another, feeling the ear, felt an elephant was like an umbrella. Each
blind man developed a theory what elephants are like.
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
Theories of language (grammars) are a bit like the blind men’s experience of
the elephant. Each ended up with somewhat different perspective. And like
the blind men’s experience, theories of language or grammar are not
inherently good or bad, right or wrong, true or false. Rather, grammars are
validated by their usefulness in describing and explaining the phenomenon
called language.
As teachers, wecan further ask whether the grammar helps learners and their
teachers to understand and produce texts. As discourse analysts, we can ask
how the grammar sheds light on how texts make meaning. To the extent that
grammar can help with these questions, it is more useful than another
grammar.
There are three grammars which have had a major influence on schools in the
western world in this century. These are as follows.
Traditional Grammar
Traditional grammar aims to describe the grammar of standard English by
comparing with Latin. As such, it is prescriptive. Students learn the names of
parts of speech (nouns, verbs, prepositions, adverbs, adjectives), parse
textbook sentences and leanr to correct so-called bad grammar. Writers are
taught, for example, not to start sentences with ‘and’, to make sure the
subject agrees with the verb (time flies – not time fly – like an arrow), to say
‘I did it’ and not ‘I done it’.
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
Formal Grammar
Formal grammars are concerned to describe the structure of individual
sentences. Such grammars view language as a set of rules which allow or
disallow certain sentence structures. Knowledge of these rules is seen as
being carried around inside the mind. The central question formal grammars
attempt to address is: ‘How is this sentence structured?’ Meaning is typically
shunted off into the too-hard box.
Functional Grammar
Functional grammars view language as a resource for making meaning.
These grammars attempt to describe language in actual use and so focus on
texts and their contexts. They are concerned not only with the structures but
also with how those structures construct meaning. Functional grammars
start with the question, ‘How are the meanings of this text realise?’
Traditional and formal grammars would analyse our earlier clause as follows:
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
In these last two clauses, the Participant (‘doer’) roles are realised by nouns,
the Processes (‘doing’) by verbs and the Circunstance by prepositional
phrases. But ‘flying’ and ‘telling’ are two quite different orders of ‘doing’,
and in the above clause ‘like an arrow’ tells how time flies, while ‘of a tragic
case’ tells what Tim was talking about.
Word class labels are certainly not useless,but they will only take you so far.
They do not account for differences or similarities to any extent.
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
EXERCISE
1. Each of the sentences immediately below consists of two clauses.
Underline each of two clauses in each sentence.
3. Identify in your own words what the purpose of each text below is.
Circle all the Processes – the words which tell you that something is
doing something, or that something is/was. Make a list of the doing
words for each text; likewise list all the being/having words for each
text.
How does the choice of Processed used in each text reflect the purpose
of the text?
Text 1
A man thought he was a dog, so he went to a psychiatrist. After a
while the doctor said he was cured. The man met a friend on the street.
The friend asked him, ‘How do you feel?’ ‘I’m fine’, the man said, ‘Just
feel my nose.’
(Goldsweig, 1970)
Text 2
Birds are the only animals with feathers. These structures make up the
greater part of the wing surface and also act as insulation, helping
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
them remain warm. Birds are the most active of the vertebrate animals
and they consequently consume large quantities of food.
(Source: Year 7 Science student)
Please excuse Lorelle; she has been under the doctor with pneumonia.
(Note from parent to roll-making teacher)
If fire alarm bell rings, evacuate quickly and quietly. (Official safety
notices on back of toilet doors, The University of Sidney)
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
We’d like to begin explaining the context – text connection with a propotion:
In a context of situation
In a context of culture
Take the utterance: ‘Just put it beside those other ones.’ The meaning
remains obscure until we know that it was said to a removalist who had just
lugged in another carton of household goods during moving one of us to
Brisbane. Knowing the context of situation makes the utterance intellegible.
Note that the meaning is also culturally situated. In the Anglo way of doing
things, it is permissible to hire total strangers to pack our materials goods
into boxes, haul them halfway across the country and then for these or other
total strangers to tolerate carrying and being told where to put these boxes
by women half their size! Removal is a cultural act no less than folk dancing.
The utterance ‘just put it beside the other ones’ is meaningful within a
context of culture and context of situation.
This applies to all of us. Suppose, like one of us, you grew up in mid-western
United States the eldest daughter in a large farming family. Being the eldest
daughter in this circumstance automatically casts one in the role of
‘momma’s little helper’. That’s who you are in the family. This turn largely
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
determines what you do within the family and what you say. Protesting that
you don’t want to do the ironing or that the baby is a smelly brat isn’t
allowed.
Context of situation can be specified through use of the register variables: field,
tenor and mode.
Tenor refers to the social relationships between those taking part. These are
specifiable in terms of
Think, for example, how you say ‘good morning’ to members of your family,
shop assistants, work colleagues. This simple actis very much a cultural one
and clearly bespeaks social relationships (tenor).
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
... we supervise the planting and inspect the harvest. And we buy only the
pick of the crop. Our experienced buyers look for lack of blemish, minimum
number of eyes, pure white ‘meaty’ interiors with firm frying consistency.
Mood
We inspect the growing plants every week. Declarative
Brock, get those plants inspected right now! Imperative
Consider which kind of people are allowed to order others about.
Modality
Fortunately, Brock is an inspector.
Unfortunately, Brock is an inspector.
Consider the Mood Adjuncts (italicized) which reveal attitude or
judgment.
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
meanings are realised through patterns of the Theme and cohesion. Textual
meanings are most centrally influenced by mode of discourse.
The linguistic differences between the following spoken and written texts
below relate primarily to differences in thematic choices and patterns of
cohesion.
This is yer phone bill and you hafta go to the Post Office
to pay it – uh, by next Monday – that’s what this box
tells ya – or they’ll cut yer phone off!
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The ability to predict from context to text is critically important for text
production (speaking or writing) and the ability to predict from text to
context is essential for text comprehension (listening or reading). To
understand something of the text – context relationship is to understand
something of how literacy is possible.
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
GENRE
When you read the incomplete McDonald’s text,you were able to reconstruct
the field, tenor and mode of that text. You also figured out that it was an
advertisement. That is, you understood the purpose of that text.
Advertisements are a particular text-type, or genre. A genre can defined as a
culturally specific text-type which results from using language (written or
spoken) to (help) accomplish something.
Particular purposes
Particular stages: distinctive beginnings, middles and ends
Particular linguistic features.
Most people appreciate to the fact that Narratives (stories) and Procedures (a
set of instructions for doing something), for example, differ in purpose and
the way they begin, develop and end. It is our observation that it is the
significance of characteristic linguistic features that unfortunately seems
least understood. Consider, however, what skewing characteristic linguistic
features does to the following text:
Men think they are dogs so they go to psychiatrists. After
a while the doctors say they are cured. The men meet
friends on the street. The friends ask them, ‘How do you
feel?’ ‘Fine’, the men say. ‘Just feel our noses.’
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MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
The original of this text is a type of Narrative. The purpose of the texts of
this genre is to relate an amusing or unusual experience in an entertaining
way. In Narrative, Participants are usually specific and individual. Processes
are usually Material (acting, behaving) with some Verbals (saying) and
Mental (feeling, thinking) type Processes as well. The verbs are in past tense.
In the above rendition, the Participants have been made generic, asthough
classes of things are under disscussion. The Process types have not been
changed, but all the verbs have been changed to present tense.
Use of generic Participants and present tense verbs are typical of Reports, not
Narratives. This is because generic Participants and use of present tense
verbs grammatically help Report achieve their purpose of describing the way
things (natural, social and synthetic) are, as in the following:
By the time you have worked your way through this book, we hope that you
will understand the significance of the linguistic features which realise
various genres. We further hope that you will know enough about the
grammar to feel confident to try describing genres not yet documented in
published materials. We hope that you will understand enough about the
genre – grammar connection to be able to intervene in a direct and
constructive way in the writing of students you teach. Above all, we hope
that you will look back at this chapter and say, ‘Well, that’s obvious’,
becouse inone way or another, we have foregrounded in this chapter
everything we want to teach you in the rest of this book.
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