系統功能語言學在語言教學中的應用

劉銀屏 / 上海電機學院外語學院

系統功能語言學在語言教學中的應用

劉銀屏 / 上海電機學院外語學院

Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG) is of great significance in theoretical and practical aspects,which has got universal acceptation and been applied into more and more fields.Based on the three metafunctions of Functional Grammar proposed by Halliday,the paper attempts to probe into how to apply the theories of SFG to critical discourse analysis,and to language teaching.

系統功能語言學；語言教學

1.Introduction

Functional Grammar is a major linguistic theory,which has received special attention from researchers working in natural language generation.Contributions towards the development of it are associated with the Prague School,notably linguists such as Mathesius and Firbas.The most significant and systematic work,however,is Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) which is dedicated to exploring links between lexico-grammatical structure and social structure.It focuses not on texts as decontextualized structural entities in their own right,but rather on the mutual predictive relationships between texts and the social purposes they realize.The basis of Hallidayan linguistics is a very strong notion of "function".It is evident that language can perform a great variety of functions such as greeting,questioning,persuading,etc.Halliday brings the functional theory closer to the details of language by proposing three metafunctions: the ideational,the interpersonal,and the textual.In the latter half of the 20thcentury,SFG represented by M.A.K.Halliday was one of the most internationally influential linguistic theories.Nowadays,it has penetrated into a number of linguistic fields such as stylistics,conversational analysis,critical discourse analysis and language teaching.The paper intends to probe into how the 3 metafunctions of SFG is applied to critical discourse analysis and language teaching.

2.In language teaching

The three metafunctions have important pedagogical instructions on English teaching.

Ideational function is mainly embodied in interpreting and recognizing words’ meaning in lexical teaching.The analysis of transitivity and mood of ideational function is helpful to solve some linguistic confusion that traditional grammar fails to do.For instance,traditional grammar regards adverbs are divided into two types: optional and obligatory.Let’s look at the two sentences: “Helen kissed Henry on the platform.” and “Sharon put the books on the platform.”According to traditional grammar the verb in the second sentence is obligatory,the elimination of it the sentence will become unacceptable.Such an analysis,however,is only limited within sentences,which lacks of generalization.Whereas the transitivity analysis of SFG seems more plausible,which put the context in it.In SFG,‘on the platform’ in the former sentence is termed as circumstance,but in the latter as the participant in the process,the role of location.As the third participant,the verb is required by the process ‘put’,but rather by the process ‘kiss’.Through the analysis as such the students will know how to understand the structure of the same form but with different meanings and hence naturally rule out their confusions.

Interpersonall function reflects the person to person relationship and regulates the choice of conversational turns.Language is a social activity,so it is also used to express speakers’ attitudes towards people and events and embody the relationship of social roles between the speaker and the audience.

At present our teaching pattern including in Chinese teaching remains that teacher acts as active role,while the students are in the passive position,which leads to the imbalance between the roles of the teacher and students,i.e.it is only the teacher who has the right to choose conversational turns.Certainly,in this case,there is no communication existing in the classroom.If that,dose the class have any difference from the teaching programs on TV or radio? The answer is negative.Therefore,reforming teaching methods become a current pressing demand.Then the introduction of interpersonal function view is a good attempt to teaching reform.It can help teachers to change their teaching views and attitudes and create an active and vivid role relationship.Accordingly,the students’ consciousness of social status and roles will be strengthen and therefore they can easily make a successful communication.

Textual function provides theoretical instruction on text analysis in linguistics and breakthroughs the tradition of linguistic study—based on sentence and words.The theory consists of theme structure,information structure and cohesion such as ellipsis,substitution,conjunction and lexical cohesion,which are important to interoperate texts as well as the basis of doing an excellent writing.If the learners can apply these textual devices,their ability to reading and writing will much improve.Specifically speaking,by theme analysis they can make out how themes,the departure points of the message,influence meaning expressions;by information structure they can understand the relation of given information to new information; by cohesive devices they can create a coherent text.Take an example:

a) By John he was helped.

b) He was helped by John.

The 2 sentences have different point of departure,that is,‘by John’ and ‘he’ respectively.In spite of the same basic meaning,therefore,their foregrounds are distinct.From the analysis above we can see a good master of textual function is a necessary step for improving learners’ reading and writing skills.:

3.Conclusion

Halliday’s three metafunctions,that is,ideational,interpersonal and textual functions,nowadays,has been widely applied inside and outside linguistics.The paper based on the functional view of SFG the thesis has found some enlightening implications in language teaching,both in the English as foreign language and in the native language.It is hoped that the paper,through the discussion can be of some help and offer some guidance to language teaching.

Reference:

[1]M A K Halliday An Introduction to Functional Grammar [M].London: Edward Arnold,1994.1994.

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