 British and Australian linguistics

• Culture may be considered irrelevant to language development, if

such development is thought to be a biological universal.
Alternatively, language can be related to sociocultural hierarchies,
or language can be considered part of more general cultural
patterns.
• In Britain and Australia, and in occasional outposts elsewhere,
further linguistic traditions have appealed directly to the concept
of culture to provide explanations of linguistic behaviour. One
prominent school that adopts this approach is ‘systemic-
functionalism’, which derives mainly from the work of the British
linguist Michael Halliday
• Compared to the North American tradition in linguistics, this
European and Australian school has a greater interest in
‘performance’ than ‘competence’ – the preferred source of data is
not native-speaker intuition but examples of discourse, situated in
their concrete social and cultural contexts.
• The main principles of systemic-functional linguistics may be
summarized as follows.
 First of all, language is considered to be a system of choices.
› That is, a speaker may choose from a limited set of expressions
the one deemed most appropriate to a particular situation, that is,
he or she may choose to thank another person by using one of
various expressions such as Ta; Gee, thanks; thank you; thank you
very much; thank you so much; thanking you for your kind
consideration and so on.
  Secondly, the choice made will depend on situational factors,
usually referred to as the ‘context of situation’.
› In any situation, the number of options available to a speaker is
limited. The range of options available constitutes the ‘system’
at that point in the language. The systemic-functional linguist is
interested in describing the options available, and in giving a
functional explanation for why a particular choice is made in a
particular utterance or written text.
• The characterization of the ‘context of situation’ will determine
whether the researcher adopts a mode of investigation known as
‘register analysis’ or ‘genre analysis’.
 Register analysis
- is adopted by linguists wishing to account for the influence of the
immediate situation upon the shape of a stretch of language.
 Three main situational variables are taken into consideration, usually
referred:
field- factors refer respectively to the topic of the discourse (what
is written about)
tenor- relationship between participants in the discourse (who is
communicating, and to whom)
mode-channel or type of discourse whether it is a written editorial
or a spoken conversation (the form of communication)
For example:
all the expressions listed above fall into the field of ‘ex-pressing thanks’.

‘ta’ would imply informality (tenor)

conversational speech (mode),
while ‘thanking you for your kind consideration’ would imply
formality (tenor)
and written text, probably a letter (mode).

• This was the period in which ‘English for Special/Specific Purposes’

(ESP) courses and textbooks began to blossom, and register analysis
gave materials designers a way of abstracting ‘the language of
science’ or ‘the language of business’ from the seemingly inchoate
mass of ‘general English’.
• Learners could now be taught about the features relevant to, say, an
oral business presentation, or a written technical report.
• Ironically, the impact of register analysis and the rise of ESP courses
and materials gave credence to the idea that language could be
described and taught without reference to a wider culture.
• If the vocabulary and grammar of the typical scientific report, for
example, could be described and taught, then a set of teaching
techniques that were purely instrumental could be devised and
implemented across cultures.
• While register analysis has been influential in the communicative
approach, particularly in its earlier manifestations, it is genre analysis
that holds more promise for an intercultural approach.
 Genre analysis
− Register analysis helped identify predict-able aspects of varieties of
specialized English, but consideration of the variables of field, tenor and
mode does not itself tell us why a text had been produced in the first
place.
− The social purposes that a text serves can also contribute to the
explanation of why it has the form it does.
− When considering the social purposes of a text, we are putting it into its
context of culture, and this process came to be known as genre analysis.
− deals in greater detail with the procedures of genre analysis than is
possible here; however, it is worthwhile noting from the outset that there
are different ways of analysing genre.
− Within the systemic-functional tradition, texts are broken down into goal-
directed stages, the purpose of each of which is realised by particular
linguistic exponents.
• Genre analysts in this tradition seek specialist information from
members of the discourse community that the texts serve about
how members of that community see the texts functioning.
• Despite differences in methodology, both schools of genre analysis
are concerned with why texts exist and they both seek to determine
the cultural function of texts.
• By focusing on the reasons why particular texts exist, they attempt
to justify linguistic choices through reference to cultural contexts.
Critical discourse analysis
− One branch of linguistics that has regularly employed
systemicfunctional analyses of texts is critical discourse analysis (CDA).
− CDA is relevant to a discussion of the intercultural approach in part
because it is sometimes argued that language education should
promote critical awareness.
− In other words, an intercultural approach should not simply provide
information about the target culture, but it should provide a set of skills
that allows the learner to evaluate critically products of the target
culture, and, where relevant, the home culture.
− CDA promises to provide learners with such skills, since its proponents
claim that it is a socially responsive mode of text analysis, CDA attempts
to come to a deep understanding of how language is used by combining
textual and sociological analysis and political critique.
• As Fairclough states (1995: 97):
• The approach I have adopted is based upon a three-dimensional
conception of discourse, and correspondingly a three-dimensional
method of discourse analysis. Discourse, and any specific instance
of discursive practice, is seen as simultaneously
(i) a language text, spoken or written,
(ii) discourse practice (text production and text
interpretation),
(iii) sociocultural practice
• Fairclough’s ‘three-dimensional’ model of analysis informs many of the
examples of discourse discussed
(1) a generic text conforming to certain formal conventions,
(2) a dynamic flow of conversational turns, each of which can only
be understood in the unique context of the other turns, and
(3) a means by which the participants actively enact their
individual status in the sociocultural institution of the family.
• visual and cultural texts are also considered as forms, as discourse
practices and as sociocultural events, although sometimes the focus is
more on one ‘dimension’ than the other.
• Fairclough analyses draws upon various key concepts, including genre,
orders of discourse and hegemony.
• He defines ‘genre’, in sys-temic-functional terms, as texts designed to fulfil
socially ratified purposes, such as interviews or editorials.
• The concept of an ‘order of discourse’ is adapted from social theorists such as
Foucault and refers to the language associated with a particular social domain,
such as academia, religion, marketing, and so on.
• It is broadly similar to the concept of ‘field’ in register analysis, and
encompasses different genres.
• As such, the ‘order of discourse’ is extremely pertinent to the teaching of English
for Specific Purposes.
• Where a CDA perspective differs from a traditional ‘register’ or ‘genre’
approach to discourse, is in its recognition of the differences in power
enjoyed by different members of discourse communities.
• ‘academic’ and ‘scientific’ English are considered across a
spectrum of perspectives: from the ‘authority’ who can enlighten
students or general readers from a secure institutional base, to
the writer of research articles who has to impress gatekeepers
and fellow members of the ‘peer’ community.
• The equations of power and the modes of persuasion depend
absolutely on the context in which writing occurs.
• The concept of ‘hegemony’ is often discussed in CDA.
• It is taken from the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci followed
Marx in arguing that the governments of capitalist societies function to
sustain the domination of the working class by a small, elite class.
• In other words, in a hegemonic society, the elite dominates the masses
not by force or coercion, but by ongoing persuasion. Clearly, even
reasonably stable societies exhibit stresses and strains, as the various
factions within them contest the distribution of status, power and
resources.
• In Gramsci’s model, language – through which persuasion is articulated
and consent negotiated – becomes a key social issue. Language is the
weapon of hegemonic cultures in which an unequal distribution of power
is maintained by negotiation and consent.
• The teaching of English language itself comes into any discussion of
hegemonic practices that threaten non-anglophone cultures and non-
English modes of expression, as recent voices in ELT have reminded us.
• . Proponents of English as a ‘global lingua franca’ face reasonable
accusations that the near monopoly English enjoys in the world’s
information-driven economy disenfranchises at least as many as it
empowers.
• The arguments are complex and it is not the function of this volume to
explore them in detail.
• However, one of the hopes of the present volume is that by
embedding language teaching in an explicitly intercultural curriculum,
rather than vice versa, the home language and the home culture of the
learners (and of the many non-native teachers) will be valued in the
classroom alongside the often glamorized target language, English.