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Systemic Functional Grammar: (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004)

Systemic functional grammar (SFG) views language as a network of systems for making meaning. It analyzes language through three metafunctions: the ideational for construing experience, the interpersonal for enacting social relations, and the textual for organizing meanings coherently. Grammatical systems offer choices that construct different meanings. SFG also views grammar and vocabulary as a continuum called lexicogrammar. Children's grammar serves seven functions including instrumental use to manipulate the environment, regulatory control of events, and imaginative creation.

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442 views10 pages

Systemic Functional Grammar: (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004)

Systemic functional grammar (SFG) views language as a network of systems for making meaning. It analyzes language through three metafunctions: the ideational for construing experience, the interpersonal for enacting social relations, and the textual for organizing meanings coherently. Grammatical systems offer choices that construct different meanings. SFG also views grammar and vocabulary as a continuum called lexicogrammar. Children's grammar serves seven functions including instrumental use to manipulate the environment, regulatory control of events, and imaginative creation.

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Yanyan Salamat
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

(HALLIDAY AND MATTHIESSEN, 2004)


Prepared by:
MOHAMIDDIYN O. SALAMAT
Content
 Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG)
 Metafunctions
a. Ideational Metafunction
b. Interpersonal Metafunction
c. Textual Metafunction
 Children’s grammar
SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL
GRAMMAR (SFG)
• It is a form of grammatical description originated by 
Michael Halliday. It is part of a social semiotic approach to
language called systemic functional linguistics.
• In these two terms, systemic refers to the view of language as
"a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for
making meaning"; functional refers to Halliday's view that
language is as it is because of what it has evolved to do.
• Thus, what he refers to as the multidimensional architecture of
language "reflects the multidimensional nature of human
experience and interpersonal relations."
• Some interrelated key terms underpin Halliday's approach to grammar, which forms
part of his account of how language works. These concepts are: system, (meta)function,
and rank. Another key term is lexicogrammar. In this view, grammar and lexis are two
ends of the same continuum.
• Analysis of the grammar is taken from a trinocular perspective, meaning from three
different levels. So to look at lexicogrammar, it can be analyzed from two more levels,
'above' (semantic) and 'below' (phonology). This grammar gives emphasis to the view
from above.
• For Halliday, grammar is described as systems not as rules, on the basis that every
grammatical structure involves a choice from a describable set of options. Language is
thus a meaning potential. Grammarians in SF tradition use system networks to map the
available options in a language. In relation to English, for instance, Halliday has
described systems such as mood, agency, theme, etc. Halliday describes grammatical
systems as closed, i.e. as having a finite set of options. By contrast, lexical sets are open
systems, since new words come into a language all the time.[
• All languages have resources for construing experience
(the ideational component), resources for enacting humans' diverse and
complex social relations (the interpersonal component), and resources for
enabling these two kinds of meanings to come together in coherent text
(the textual function).
• Traditionally the "choices" are viewed in terms of either the content or the
structure of the language used. In SFG, language is analyzed in three ways
(strata): semantics, phonology, and lexicogrammar. SFG presents a view of
language in terms of both structure (grammar) and words (lexis). The term
"lexicogrammar" describes this combined approach.
METAFUNCTION
S
• Halliday refers to his functions of language as metafunctions. He proposes
three general functions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual.
• The term Metafunction originates in systemic functional linguistics and
is considered to be a property of all languages. 
Systemic functional linguistics is functional and semantic rather than
formal and syntactic in its orientation. As a functional linguistic theory, it
claims that both the emergence of grammar and the particular forms that
grammars take should be explained "in terms of the functions that
language evolved to serve". While languages vary in how and what they
do, and what humans do with them in the contexts of human cultural
practice, all languages are considered to be shaped and organized in
relation to three functions, or metafunctions.
FUNCTIONS OF METAFUNCTIONS

1. The Ideational
2. The Interpersonal

3. The Textual
Ideational Interpersonal Textual
Metafunction Metafunction Metafunction

It is the function It relates to a text's aspects The textual metafunction


of tenor or interactivity relates to mode; the
for construing internal organization and
human experience. . Like field, tenor
communicative nature of a
comprises three component
It is the means by areas: the speaker/writer 
text. This comprises
textual interactivity,
which we make persona, social distance, spontaneity and
sense of "reality" and relative social status. communicative distance.
CHILDREN’S GRAMMAR
Michael Halliday (1973) outlined seven functions of language with regard to the grammar
used by children:
• the instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to
happen;
• the regulatory function of language is the control of events;
• the representational function is the use of language to make statements, convey facts and
knowledge, explain, or report to represent reality as the speaker/writer sees it;
• the interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance;
• the personal function is to express emotions, personality, and “gut-level” reactions;
• the heuristic function used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment;
• the imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas.
THANK YOU
AND GOD BLESS
US ALL!

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