The Functional Perspective On Language And Discourse

Over the last forty years, the functionalist approach to linguistic description and explanation has given rise to several major schools of thought that share two crucial assumptions: (i) form is not independent of meaning/function or language use; and (ii) linguistic description and explanation need to take into account the communicative function of language. This volume offers readers interested in functional linguistics a selected sample of studies that jointly prove the efficacy of the analytical tools and procedures broadly accepted within the functionalist tradition in order to investigate language and discourse, with special focus on key pragmatic/discourse notions such as contextualization, grammaticalisation, reference, politeness, (in-)directness, discourse markers, speech acts, subjective evaluation and sentiment analysis in texts, among others. In addition, this volume offers specific corpus-based techniques for the objective contextualisation of linguistic data, which is crucial given the central role allotted to context in both functional linguistics and pragmatics/discourse analysis.

The ten papers in this volume focus on Subject and Theme. Theme began its life as a semantic notion in the work of Vilém Mathesius, while Subject has traditionally been seen as just a syntactic entity. More recently two related perspectives on these concepts have attracted linguists' attention: the formal criteria for their recognition and the relations between the two concepts. Using the systemic functional model as their point of departure, the papers in the present volume consider the two notions in a wider context by relating them to the interpersonal and textual metafunctions of language. By contrast with the current linguistic approaches, the primary focus here is neither simply on formal recognition criteria nor on the relation of these elements to each other; instead, the notions of Subject and Theme are examined from the point of view of their function in the economy of discourse, with studies of their significance in English and French, as well as in a range of non-Indo-European languages. Definitions of the concepts are offered on the basis of their discourse functions, which are also important in selecting the formal recognition criteria and in understanding their mutually supportive role vis à vis each other. Most of the papers in the volume are a selection from presentations made at the 19th International Systemic Functional Congress at Macquarie University.

This book, a tribute to Angela Downing, consists of twenty papers taking a broadly functional perspective on language, with topics ranging from the general (grammar as an evolutionary product, text comprehension, integrative linguistics) to particular aspects of the grammars of languages (Bulgarian, English, Icelandic, Spanish, Swedish). The more specific papers are sequenced according to Halliday’s division into ideational, textual and interpersonal aspects of the grammar, and cover a wide range of areas, including aspect, argument structure, noun phrase/nominal group structure and nominalisations, pronominal clitics, theme in relation to writing skills, discourse structures and markers, the role of attention in conversation, the functions of topic, phatic communion, subjectification, formulaic language and modality. A recurrent theme in the volume is the use of corpus materials in order to base functional descriptions on authentic productions. Overall, the volume constitutes a panoramic but nevertheless detailed view of some important current trends in functional linguistics.

Functionalism, as characterized by Allen, (2007:254) "holds that linguistic structures can only be understood and explained with reference to the semantic and communicative functions of language, whose primary function is to be a vehicle for social interaction among human beings." Since the 1970s, inspired by the work of Jespersen, Bolinger, Dik, Halliday, and Chafe, functionalism has been attached to a variety of movements and models making major contributions to linguistic theory and to various subfields within linguistics, such as syntax, discourse, language acquisition, cognitive linguistics, typology, and documentary linguistics. Further, functional approaches have had a major impact outside linguistics in fields such as psychology and education, both in terms of theory and application. The main goal of functionalist approaches is to clarify the dynamic relationship between form and function (Thompson 2003:53). Functionalist perspectives have gained more ground over the past decades with more linguists resorting to functional explanations to account for linguistic structure. The authors in this volume present the current state of functional approaches to linguistic inquiry expanding our knowledge of language and linguistics.

This volume offers a variety of viewpoints on the functional approach to the study of language. After an exposition of the Prague School functionalism, and Dik's and Halliday's functional approaches, it presents a wider area of text-linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, theoretical, descriptive and applied issues from a functional point of view, testifying of the very wide-spread and in-depth impact of functionalist thought on the present-day linguistic scene.

This book offers a model of classroom discourse analysis that uses systemic functional linguistic theory and associated genre theory to develop a view of classroom episodes as 'curriculum genres', some of which operate in turn as part of larger unities of work called 'curriculum macrogenres'. Drawing on Bernstein's work, Christie argues that two registers operate in pedagogic discourse: a regulative register, to do with the goals and directions of the discourse; and an instructional register, to do with the particular 'content' or knowledge at issue. Each can be shown to be realized in distinctive clusters of choices in the grammar. The operation of the regulative register determines the initiation, pacing, sequencing and evaluation of the overall pedagogic activity. The book sets out the its methodology in detail by reference to a number of classroom texts, and a range of school subjects. Overall, schools emerge as sites of symbolic control in a culture.