Vinh To

It is our great pleasure and honour to present to you this research collection, entitled Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory and Application in Global Contexts. The papers in this peer-reviewed conference proceedings have been selected from those presented at the 1st International Online Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFLIG) Interest Group Conference co-hosted by the University of Tasmania, the Australian Catholic University, Molloy College, and the University of British Columbia in November 2021. The 1st International Online SFLIG Conference (SFLIG 2021) was organised by an international team of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) scholars in Australia, Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe, and with the help of two ICT/data support staff from the University of Tasmania.

This collection includes 19 research papers from authors across the globe. It showcases a diversity of topics, reflecting the various strands of the conference under the broad theme of SFL theory and application in the contemporary global context. The political, health and environmental challenges the world faces make it ever more important to develop understandings of SFL theory and its real-world applications. The proceedings present research findings from projects investigating SFL concepts in different fields such as education, engineering, translation, politics, health, and media across the globe, including underrepresented research contexts such as Vietnam, Japan, Latin America, and Africa.

Please download the ebook using the DOI provided. We hope you will enjoy reading this research collection. May it provide you with inspiration and direction for future studies.

Editors: Vinh To, Thomas Amundrud and Sally Humphrey

Lexical metaphor is a familiar aspect of persuasive writing instruction in Australian primary schools. Another form of metaphor known as grammatical metaphor is far less commonly taught in school contexts, despite considerable research that describes it is a key feature of more advanced academic texts. This short paper adopted analytical frameworks from systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to investigate how one type of grammatical metaphor—known as interpersonal metaphor of modality— was used by Tasmanian primary school students who wrote the 16 highest scoring persuasive texts for the 2011 National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) standardised writing test. The findings highlight how the high scoring primary school students used various types of interpersonal metaphor of modality to persuade readers, with particular differences across the Year 3 and Year 5 cohorts. The paper suggests that if primary school teachers teach their students about grammatical metaphor alongside lexical metaphor, this may assist young writers to better understand valued persuasive language features, and to make use of them in their writing.

This paper makes visible particular persuasive language choices made by the highest scoring Tasmanian primary and secondary school students who completed the 2011 NAPLAN writing test. Specifically, it draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to consider how these students used different forms of nominalisation to persuade readers about the 2011 writing prompt: that too much money is being spent on toys and games. The paper explores how the use of nominalisation differed across the primary and secondary school years and draws links to the Australian Curriculum: English which introduces the nominalisation in Year 8. Recommendations are made for primary and secondary school teachers who wish to equip students with the language resources to deal with the demands of NAPLAN testing, but also to write persuasively in more authentic educational and social contexts.

Since the days of Ancient Greece, lexical metaphor has been recognised as a powerful rhetorical device for making texts more persuasive. While this valued language choice is highlighted in persuasive writing instruction by Australian primary and secondary school teachers throughout the school years, another category of metaphor known as grammatical metaphor is considerably less ubiquitous in school settings, despite a substantial body of literature describing it as a key resource for successful writing in academic and professional contexts.

A large number of frameworks and models have been created to help translate the highly philosophical theory of critical literacy into practice. How these frameworks have been translated into classroom practice is an area much unexplored. The present study critically reviewed the frameworks of critical literacy applied in the classroom practices of language arts and language education within the last twenty years. Adapting the classification put forward by Luke and Woods (2009), the review divides the frameworks into critical pedagogy, textual, and practical approaches. The application of the frameworks identified in this review defies the rigid divisions between critical and textual approaches because text still plays an important role. The additional category of practical approaches is created to refer to frameworks that combine the critical and textual approaches and include more key tenets of critical literacy with a stronger focus on classroom practices. The more recent framewor...

At the University of Tasmania, the Australian Curriculum: English (2012) has been the impetus for a major restructure of our three Bachelor of Education (Primary and Early Childhood) units in English. Historically, the education faculty at the University of Tasmania has faced the challenges of a high turnover of staff, and an old Literacy curriculum which did not foreground SFL. Additionally the pervading metaphor of how to teach English was "a balanced literacy diet". According to Lakoff and Johnson (2003), metaphors are ideological and structure both thinking and practice. The old metaphor of "a balanced literacy diet" resulted in "bite-sized chunks" of content divided up and taught in a piecemeal manner, starving the students of deep and interconnected understandings of the field. In our restructure we have reconceptualised the metaphor to become "a rich and integrated model of English teaching", and we have designed the units to tell one c...

The practice of critical literacy in EFL contexts answers the need for EFL pedagogy that considers the complex social and political dimensions of foreign language learning. Many teachers are still discouraged from practicing critical literacy due to the many challenges they encounter.  In this paper, we outline a practical framework that can help teachers navigate the complexity of practicing critical literacy in EFL contexts.  The framework consists of four resources of critical literacy practice, namely curriculum and standards, students’ experiences and background, local social issues, and text selection.  The classroom activities include text analysis and critique, bridging the word and the world, and social action. Particular issues in EFL pedagogy are addressed with implications for the practice of critical literacy.

Research writing is vital in higher education, particularly in research-orientated institutions. It has been widely discussed and instructional implications have been raised. However, research writing in the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is still a new discovery in the academic research discourse. There are different views on research writing and it depends on different factors such as subject areas, purposes, methodologies and perspectives. However, there are some common features of research writing which can be seen in the formality and complexity of written language. This presentation reports an exploratory study based on the analysis of four research abstracts to examine the grammatical complexity of research writing from the SFL perspective. The analysis focused on three grammatical features namely, lexical density, nominalisation and nominal groups. The findings show that the abstracts of research articles are of high density in terms of lexica...

University students studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are required to read and write specialised academic genres. Genre-based pedagogy, developed from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), teaches lexicogrammar and structure of these genres in context. The present study taught the structural staging of exposition and discussion genres to 17 students over a ten-week program, using the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) framework. Pre- and post-instruction essays were collected. Results show that, post-intervention, students preferred the structurally complex discussion genre when responding to a short essay question. There was a small improvement in the use of main genre stages, while the use of generic sub-stages showed the most improvement. Students’ pre-instruction use of main staging suggested some familiarity with argument genres from previous EFL learning, although incidences of sub-stage crossovers and repeated sub-stages in the pre-instruction essays showed a...

Conversation is the essence of human interaction. From the research point of view, conversation can play an important role in data collection. It has a motivating power in eliciting qualitative data, particularly for those who use thematic analysis and grounded theory as a research approach. Conversational Analysis has provided significant insights about the function and structure of conversation as a linguistic acti vity. This chapter discusses the important role of conversation in research and it also examines the challenges facing researchers in thei r use of conversation as a data collection tool. Interview is one of the most commonly used methods of data collection in qual itative research. Conversation can be a powerful method for data collection. This chapter will discuss the advantages and challenges of using conversation in data research collection.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to discuss the usefulness of Halliday’s linguistic theory known as Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in analysing qualitative data. In order to do this, it initially presents an overview of SFL, and then explains how and why four linguistic features namely, nominalisation, grammatical metaphor, thematic structure and lexical density are useful in examining qualitative data. The paper also discusses three social metafunctions of language known as the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions which are significant for understanding and interpreting texts.Design/methodology/approach– This paper employs SFL as the main theoretical framework to discussing the usefulness of this linguistics theory in qualitative data analysis.Findings– SFL can be seen as a paradigm shift in linguistic theory moving away from the traditional focus on syntax to the inclusion of the interface between language and pragmatics. The focus of SFL is lang...

This article is based on a research project funded by the University of Tasmania, titled: An Investigation into Teachers’ Use of Asian Literature. In preparing for this research, we investigated the academic literature about both Asian literature and teachers’ responses to the cross-curriculum priority. Two central problems were raised in respect to these ideas. The first issue was that of representation of Asian peoples and cultures in literature, and the second, related issue, was teachers’ uncritical acceptance of this representation. To investigate exactly what teachers were doing, we conducted a national survey on teachers’ selection and approaches to Asian Literature, followed by in depth interviews with Tasmanian teachers from early childhood, primary and secondary and senior secondary classrooms. 

Overall, our research findings demonstrated that primary teachers were actually engaging students in creative and critical approaches to literature, though they tended at times to devote a significant amount of time on response to literature and critical thinking in a very generalised manner, rather than examining texts for their ideological messages with children. In this article we will share two of the stories from primary school teachers to highlight their choices and practices around addressing the national cross-curriculum priority “Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia” through using Asian Literature. In these stories we will highlight the excellent work teachers are already doing, and we will also add suggestions for how teachers might take their work and elevate it to adopt a more critical stance in their work with children.

Grammatical intricacy is an important concept in charactering complexity of language (Halliday, 2008). However, this concept has not yet been fully investigated in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language (TEFL), particular in English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks in higher education. This paper aims to examine grammatical intricacy across textbook levels in a book series used in tertiary education in the Vietnamese context. This is part of a larger research project looking at linguistic complexity of English textbooks in the TEFL setting. The research employed Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the main theoretical framework and Halliday's method as a measure of grammatical intricacy to look at how this language feature was used in reading comprehension texts in four textbooks at different levels including elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. The findings revealed that grammatical intricacy increased in accordance with the book levels. Particularly, the mean scores of grammatical intricacy showed a gradual increase from the elementary to the intermediate book level; though they were not different significantly and the upper-intermediate textbook did not show the topmost grammatical complexity. These findings suggest that the use of grammatical intricacy in the investigated textbooks was appropriate for EFL learners across levels; however, the use of other linguistic features such as lexical density and nominalisation may potentially impact the use of simple clauses in the textbooks at a higher level. Thus, further investigations are recommended to fully explore the complexity of textbook language.

Theme choice in academic texts plays an important role to the reader's comprehension as it facilitates the coherence and cohesiveness of the text. However, research on thematic structure in academic settings in developing world has still received less attention. This paper reports findings on the use of thematic structure in four English textbooks in a book series used in tertiary education in the Vietnamese context. It employed functional grammar as the main theoretical framework to the analysis of different types of themes including simple themes, multiple themes and clausal themes in the 24 reading comprehension texts across four levels, specifically elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. The analysis revealed three main findings. First, simple themes, which include topical/unmarked and marked themes, were used most across levels, while multiple themes took the second position, and clausal themes were used the least. Second, the number of multiple and clausal themes increased in accordance with the textbook levels from low to high, though that of simple themes demonstrated a decreasing pattern. Third, among components of multiple themes, the frequency of experiential and textual themes was significantly high in all four books, compared with that of interpersonal themes. It is concluded that a variety of theme types were employed in reading texts across levels, contributing to the coherent organisation of the texts.

Introduction English textbooks play a crucial role in education in developing countries. They are often used as the guiding teaching material in the curriculum and effectively contribute to the quality of education (Besser, Stone, & Luan, 1999). Determining suitable teaching materials for the curriculum is crucial to a language education program. However, in the textbook market, it is getting harder to choose an appropriate English textbook for a course (Minoo & Nikan, 2012). Although extensive research in light of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has been carried out to investigate the language of government-approved English textbooks in schools in Australia and worldwide, the language of international textbooks chosen for teaching specific English skills in universities and language centers in non-English speaking countries has still been under research. With the diversity and availability of English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks in the book market, a question raised is that what criteria do English language educators and teachers in non-English speaking nations based on to choose EFL texts and textbooks for their students and language teaching curriculum, and how appropriate they are? It is supposed that there are a number of factors that educators and teachers can rely on when choosing EFL textbooks to teach general English to second language learners (L2Ls) such as content orientation, pedagogical principles, text types, and linguistic complexity. However, with reference to the context of teaching EFL in Vietnam, it seems that there are no unified and consistent criteria for education policy makers and educators to choose EFL textbooks for the language teaching curriculum in universities or language centers. It is not uncommon to see that Vietnamese educators and teachers of English choose texts and textbooks for their students based on the book levels proposed by textbook writers. For instance, after students sit in a placement test, depending on the results, they will be placed in classes of different levels including elementary, low intermediate, intermediate, and upper intermediate (Anderson, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d). Then, educators will choose a series of books consisting of four equivalent levels proposed by the writers as the course textbooks. As a result, students who sit in the elementary class will study the textbook written for elementary level in general. Likewise, the students who sit in intermediate class will study the textbook written for overall intermediate students.

This article examines how the language of science and non-science texts differred across levels in a book series which is used in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). Employing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the principal theoretical and analytical framework, this research examines linguistic features characterizing complexity, namely lexical density and nominalization of 24 reading texts in both science and non-science fields. The result shows that while the language grew more complex as the book levels advanced, the linguistic features of the science- oriented and non-science oriented texts were not significantly different in the same book level. Based on a discussion of the findings, this article suggests that English textbooks should include texts that use genre and field-appropriate language in order to help students acquire technical and specialised language to prepare them for success in higher education and the workplace.

This paper makes visible particular persuasive language choices made by the highest scoring Tasmanian primary and secondary school students who completed the 2011 NAPLAN writing test. Specifically, it draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to consider how these students used different forms of nominalisation to persuade readers about the 2011 writing prompt: that too much money is being spent on toys and games. The paper explores how the use of nominalisation differed across the primary and secondary school years and draws links to the Australian Curriculum: English which introduces the nominalisation in Year 8. Recommendations are made for primary and secondary school teachers who wish to equip students with the language resources to deal with the demands of NAPLAN testing, but also to write persuasively in more authentic educational and social contexts.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the usefulness of Halliday's linguistic theory known as Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in analysing qualitative data. In order to do this, it initially presents an overview of SFL, and then explains how and why four linguistic features namely, nominalisation, grammatical metaphor, thematic structure and lexical density are useful in examining qualitative data. The paper also discusses three social metafunctions of language known as the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions which are significant for understanding and interpreting texts. Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs SFL as the main theoretical framework to discussing the usefulness of this linguistics theory in qualitative data analysis. Findings – SFL can be seen as a paradigm shift in linguistic theory moving away from the traditional focus on syntax to the inclusion of the interface between language and pragmatics. The focus of SFL is language in use. It deals with texts in social contexts, which is the main focus in qualitative data analysis. Thus, SFL provides both research tools and theoretical insights for understanding and interpreting texts. Originality/value – This paper provides significant insights into language which are crucial for understanding and interpreting texts in social contexts. Introduction Data analysis in qualitative research methods deals with texts, i.e. words and meaning. Qualitative data include texts from interviews, conversations, documents, personal reflections and narratives. Traditionally, qualitative analysis uses different methods such as thematic analysis and grounded theory to analyse data. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) can offer an innovative framework for qualitative data analysis. The main reasons are that SFL is a theory of language which deals with language in use or authentic language. It is primarily interested in language in social contexts (Halliday and Martin, 1993). It deals with texts which is the main focus in qualitative data analysis. SFL brings useful linguistic concepts for the understanding of texts such as nominalisation, grammar metaphor, theme and rheme and lexical density (Halliday, 1985a, b, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). In terms of semantics, SFL is concerned with three interrelated metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual (Halliday and Hasan, 1985; Painter, 1989). Thus, SFL provides both research tools and theoretical insights for understanding and interpreting texts.

Adopting the Functional Grammar advanced by Halliday (1985a), this paper investigates the nominalisation of two IELTS writing test papers of candidates achieving band 7 and band 5. The study aims to identify the frequency of nominalisation employed in these texts and the distribution of verbal and adjectival nominalisations. The study also looks at the other aspects that contribute to the complexity of writing: lexical density and readability. The result shows that the numbers of nominalisation in the writing test paper at band 7 doubled the amount of the writing test paper at band 5. In the two texts, verbal nominalisation is mainly used while adjectival nominalisation is low. With reference to lexical density and readability, it is revealed that the text with higher marks was denser and more difficult to read whilst the lower‐graded text was less dense and easier to comprehend. Two conclusions are drawn from the findings. Firstly, nominalisation packed the information in a text and made it denser and difficult to read. Secondly, marking tends to reflex the complexity of grammatical features.

This paper aimed to examine the lexical density and readability of four texts from English textbooks known as Active Skill for Reading (Anderson, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d) at elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate levels. The study applied three methods in determining lexical density and readability as proposed by Halliday (1985), Ure (1971) and Flesch (1948). The analysis revealed that three of the four reading texts were of high lexical density, apart from the text for upper-intermediate level. In terms of readability, the levels of texts corresponded to readability levels. However the highest level did not entail the topmost readability. There was little evidence of an increase of lexical density and readability in accordance with the increase of text levels as well as little indication relating to the connections between text levels, readability and lexical density. With reference to the methods employed, Halliday's measurement of lexical density-based on the clause-had a significant correlation with Ure's measurement, and a medium relation with Flesch's Reading Ease Scale, whereas Ure and Flesch's formulas showed no correlation.

This chapter explores how a dissertation was structured according to the chosen research framework and research questions. In particular, the chapter attempts to address the following question: What is an appropriate structure for reporting a study of linguistic complexity in English textbooks, following the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach, and adopting mixed methods research? What Was the Study About? Within the diversified English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbook markets, choosing an appropriate textbook for a course at university or at language centres has become increasingly difficult (Minoo and Nikan 2012), and in many places, such as Vietnam, there are no consistent criteria for education policy makers and educators to choose texts and/or textbooks for their language teaching programs. This raises the need to investigate the appropriateness of the language used in available textbooks in the markets, based on established measures, to provide suggestions and implications for textbook choice and writing in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) context.

Research writing is vital in higher education, particularly in research-orientated institutions. It has been widely discussed and instructional implications have been examined. However, research writing in the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is still a new frontier in the academic research discourse. There are different views on research writing in terms of contributing factors such as subject areas, purposes, methodologies, and perspectives. However, there are some common features of research writing which can be seen in the formality and complexity of written language. This chapter discusses an exploratory study based on the analysis of four research abstracts to examine the linguistic complexity of research writing from the SFL perspective. The analysis focused on two grammatical features, namely lexical density and nominalisation. The research shows that the abstracts of research articles were of high density in terms of lexical words and information. It also reveals that the abstracts displayed high occurrences of nominalisation. It is concluded that lexical density and nominalisation are two typical linguistic features of research abstracts. The results suggest that lexical density and nominalisation can provide useful insights into research writing and may have pedagogical implications for teaching research writing.

This chapter aims at providing an overview of linguistic complexity from different approaches with particular reference to Chomsky's transformational generative grammar, Givon's model of markedness and Halliday's functional grammar. Initially, deep structure and syntactic ambiguity from Chomsky's transformational generative grammar are discussed. Secondly, Givon's model of markedness is explained in detail. Finally, the discussion proposes the reason why it is necessary to look at linguistic complexity in the light of functional grammar in the context of teaching English. Four linguistic concepts namely, lexical density, grammatical metaphor, nominalisation and thematic structure are the focus of the discussion.

The traditional Grammar Translation Approach was the primary teaching method in second language teaching in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, with the arrival of the Reform movement in the nineteenth century and the appearance of the Natural Method, Conversation Method, Direct Method and Communicative Approach of language teaching in the twentieth century, many criticisms regarding teaching translation were raised. Recent research findings on the effectiveness of applying translation in language teaching have shown that translation plays a notable role in language education. This chapter examines the significance of Systemic Functional Linguistics theory advanced by Halliday (1985, 1994) to the teaching of translation.