UNIVERSIDAD DE SUCRE

Systemic functional
linguistics
Profesor Javier Armando Sierra-Gordillo
Today's Review of SFL

Outline Why grammar matters?

Three metafunctions of language

Workshop on metafunctions
 What is SFL?

SFL is concerned primarily with the choices the

grammar makes available to speakers and writers.
These choices relate the speaker's and writer's
intentions to the concrete forms of a language.
Principles of SFL
Language use is functional
Its function is to make meanings
These meanings are influenced by the social and cultural
context in which they are exchanged
The process of using language is a semiotic process, a process
of making meaning by choosing.
Conclusion
‘Language is a social fact’
‘We shall not come to understand the nature of
language if we pursue only the kinds of question about
language that are formulated by linguists’
‘Language is as it is because of the functions it has
evolved to serve in people’s lives.
Language has ‘metafunctions’, which in English are:
ideational, interpersonal, and textual.
Language is constituted as ‘a discrete network of
options’
Grammar matters
Listen to the interview with Lise
Fontaine and then answer the
following questions:
What two reasons does Lise give
for the importance of raising
one’s knowledge about
grammar?
Do you agree with Lise? Can you
think of any other reasons why it
may be worth while studying
grammar?
Grammatical choice
a concern with ‘meaning’ on one hand and a
concern with rules and standards on the
other (though sometimes, of course, both
concerns may be relevant at once). In this
course we will be chiefly interested in the
significance of grammar in making meaning,
rather than with the formal rules of
English for their own sake, or with the
social connotations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
grammar.
Imagine you are observing
a trial involving a child
witness. A barrister is
cross-examining the child.
Consider these two
alternative forms of
questioning and use the
blank text box to note
answers the questions
below.

Did you hit him first?

You hit him first, didn’t

you?

Think back to how you learned grammar at school,

either in English or other languages you learned. What
terms do you remember learning?

Function Form
Metafunctions Ideational
of ‘about something’
language

Textual
the speaker’s interpersonal
text-forming ’doing something’
potential
 ideational

coronavirus is real

coronavirus is not real

It organizes our
experiences of the
world
Interpersonal
1. the speaker-writer persona
2. the social distance
3. and relative social status
 Textual
Relates to the
mode of the
internal
organization and
communicative
nature of a text.