Representational/Informative

Function
 Language
serves as a crucial communication
tool for conveying information, describing
things, and sharing facts. It involves using
words and sentences to convey ideas, news,
concepts, or instructions, enabling us to
understand and exchange knowledge.
Halliday's Theory
According to Halliday (1975), language has
developed in response to three kinds of social-functional
needs: The first is to be able to construe experience in terms
of what is going on around us and inside us. The second is
to interact with the social world by negotiating social roles
and attitudes. The third and final need is to be able to create
messages with which we can package our meanings in
terms of what is New or Given, and in terms of what the
starting point for our message is, commonly referred to as
the Theme.
 Halliday's Theory

Halliday (1978) calls these language

functions metafunctions, and refers to
them as ideational, interpersonal and
textual respectively.
 Interpersonal
meta-function deals with
social world and also with
the relationship of
addresser and addressee

3 Meta-functions

Ideational Textual
meta-function meta-function about verbal
about natural world world.
 The Seven Functions of Language

Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that

language has for children in their early years. For him,
children are motivated to develop language because it
serves certain purposes or functions for them. The first
four functions help the child to satisfy physical,
emotional and social needs. Halliday calls them
instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and personal
functions.
 The Seven Functions of Language

Instrumental:
This is when the child uses language to express their
needs. (e.g."Want juice')

Regulatory:
This is where language is used to tell others what to
do. (e.g. 'Go away')
 The Seven Functions of Language

Interactional:
Here language is used to make contact with others and
form relationships (e.g. 'Love you, mummy')

Personal:
This is the use of language to express feelings, opinions, and
individual identity (e.g. 'Me good girl')
 The Seven Functions of Language
The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative, and
representational, all helping the child to come to terms with his
or her environment.
Heuristic: This is when language is used to gain knowledge
about the environment (e.g. 'What the tractor doing?")
Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories and jokes, and
to create an imaginary environment.
Representational: The use of language to convey facts and
information.
 Why Teaching Function
Teaching functions help learners be aware of
what they can do with language items they have
learned.
 In the classroom
It is important for learners to understand that one
form may have many different functions, and to see
how functions work in context, as the example above
shows. Many forms have sensitive functions and so
their appropriacy, formality and degree need to be
considered.
 With students
I believe that teaching functions is FAR more
useful for students and increases their motivation to
learn. Teaching functions affects students' motivation
as they can see that there is a REASON for learning
the language in the lesson above and beyond just
learning how to use, for example, the present perfect
continuous forms of verbs.
 Usage
Teaching students the English needed to find
and rent an apartment, for example, would be a
function. Most functions are stated like this: Asking
and Answering Questions about Renting an
Apartment. Or in occupational language it might be
the language required to deal with a customer
complaint at a business or to inquire about the details
of a service or product.
 Form vs Function
Form vs Function What is the form of each
sentence and what is the intended function?
 Why don't you close your mouth?
(question/ order)
 Could I use your phone? (question/ request)
 May I open the window? (question/ permission)
 Oh dear! (exclamation/ sympathy)