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    Language Meta Functions

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    alejandras100
    Halliday developed a theory that analyzed language into three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational metafunction represents the natural world, the interpersonal represents social relationships, and the textual represents information flow. Each metafunction analyzes clauses differently - ideational looks at processes, participants, and circumstances, interpersonal looks at mood and residue, and textual looks at theme and rheme. While the metafunctions can be diagrammed in layers, they are actually independent dimensions of language. Each metafunction has a principal system in SFG networks that is most important for analyzing that aspect of meaning.

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    Language Meta Functions

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    alejandras100
    265 views2 pages
    Halliday developed a theory that analyzed language into three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational metafunction represents the natural world, the interpersonal represents social relationships, and the textual represents information flow. Each metafunction analyzes clauses differently - ideational looks at processes, participants, and circumstances, interpersonal looks at mood and residue, and textual looks at theme and rheme. While the metafunctions can be diagrammed in layers, they are actually independent dimensions of language. Each metafunction has a principal system in SFG networks that is most important for analyzing that aspect of meaning.

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    Halliday developed a theory that analyzed language into three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational metafunction represents the natural world, the interpersonal represents social relationships, and the textual represents information flow. Each metafunction analyzes clauses differently - ideational looks at processes, participants, and circumstances, interpersonal looks at mood and residue, and textual looks at theme and rheme. While the metafunctions can be diagrammed in layers, they are actually independent dimensions of language. Each metafunction has a principal system in SFG networks that is most important for analyzing that aspect of meaning.

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    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    265 views2 pages

    Language Meta Functions

    Uploaded by

    alejandras100
    Halliday developed a theory that analyzed language into three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational metafunction represents the natural world, the interpersonal represents social relationships, and the textual represents information flow. Each metafunction analyzes clauses differently - ideational looks at processes, participants, and circumstances, interpersonal looks at mood and residue, and textual looks at theme and rheme. While the metafunctions can be diagrammed in layers, they are actually independent dimensions of language. Each metafunction has a principal system in SFG networks that is most important for analyzing that aspect of meaning.

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    Metafunctions

    Halliday developed a theory of the fundamental functions of language, in which he analyzed


    lexicogrammar into three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Each of the three
    metafunctions is about a different aspect of the world, and is concerned with a different mode of
    meaning of clauses. The ideational metafunction is about the natural world in the broadest sense,
    including our own consciousness, and is concerned with clauses as representations. The interpersonal
    metafunction is about the social world, especially the relationship between speaker and hearer, and is
    concerned with clauses as exchanges. The textual metafunction is about the verbal world, especially
    the flow of information in a text, and is concerned with clauses as messages. Malinowski's influence
    (see Figure 1.1) seems clear here: the ideational metafunction relates to the context of culture, the
    interpersonal metafunction relates to the context of situation, and the textual metafunction relates to
    the verbal context.

    In each metafunction an analysis of a clause gives a different kind of structure composed from a
    different set of elements. In the ideational metafunction, a clause is analyzed into Process,
    Participants and Circumstances, with different participant types for different process types (as in Case
    Grammar). In the interpersonal metafunction, a clause is analyzed into Mood and Residue, with the
    mood element further analyzed into Subject and Finite. In the textual metafunction, a clause is
    analyzed into Theme and Rheme (as in the Prague School).

    Figure 1.7: Metafunctional layering

    Figure 1.7, taken from [Matthiessen & Bateman 1991], shows an analysis of the sentence ``In this job,
    Anne, we're working with silver'' into three different structures in the three metafunctions. This kind
    of diagram is called a ``metafunctional layering'' diagram in SFG, but the metafunctions do not have
    any kind of relative ``depth'', rather they are different dimensions.

    The metafunctional theory is part of the ``functional'' side of SFG, but it is also important in the
    ``systemic'' side of SFG. Each metafunction has a principal system in the networks for clauses, verbal
    groups and nominal groups. For example the TRANSITIVITY system is the principal system for the
    ideational metafunction in the clause network. These principal systems are shown in Figure 1.8, taken
    from [Matthiessen & Bateman 1991].

    Figure 1.8: Principal systems

    An important theoretical point is that in general, in the system networks, the systems within each
    metafunction are closely interconnected, but are largely independent of systems in the other
    metafunctions. System interconnections across metafunctions are rare. This is illustrated in Figure 1.9,
    taken from [Matthiessen & Halliday to appear].

    Figure 1.9: Independence of metafunctions

    In this network fragment, there are normal dependency relationships within the MOOD region of the
    interpersonal metafunction, between the MOOD-TYPE and INDICATIVE-TYPE systems and
    between the INDICATIVE-TYPE and INTERROGATIVE-TYPE systems, and there is also a further
    interconnection: the TAGGING system can be entered either from the imperative feature of the
    MOOD-TYPE system or from the declarative feature of the INDICATIVE-TYPE system. But there
    are no interconnections at all between the MOOD region of the interpersonal metafunction and the
    TRANSITIVITY region of the ideational metafunction.

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