Systemic functional linguistics

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics that considers language as a social semiotic system. It was devised by Michael Halliday, who took the notion of system from J. R. Firth, his teacher (Halliday, 1961). Firth proposed that systems refer to possibilities subordinated to structure; Halliday 'liberated' choice from structure and made it the central organising dimension of SFL. In more technical terms, while many approaches to linguistic description place structure and the syntagmatic axis foremost, SFL adopts the paradigmatic axis as its point of departure. Systemic foregrounds Saussure's 'paradigmatic axis' in understanding how language works. For Halliday, a central theoretical principle is then that any act of communication involves choices. Language is above all a system; SFL maps the choices available in any language variety using its representation tool of a 'system network'. Functional signifies the proposition that language evolved under pressure of the functions that the language system must serve. Functions are taken to have left their mark on the structure and organisation of language at all levels, which is achieved via metafunctions. Metafunction is uniquely defined in SFL as the 'organisation of the functional framework around systems', i.e., choices. This is a significant difference from other 'functional' approaches, such as Dik's functional grammar (FG, or as now often termed, functional discourse grammar) and lexical functional grammar. To avoid confusion, the full designation—systemic functional linguistics—is typically used, rather than functional grammar or functional linguistics. For Halliday, all languages involve three simultaneously generated metafunctions: one construes experience of our outer and inner worlds (ideational); another enacts social relations (interpersonal relations); and a third weaves together these two functions to create text (textual--the wording). The point of departure for Halliday's work in linguistics has been the simple question: 'how does language work?'. Across his career he has probed the nature of language as a social semiotic system; that is, as a resource for meaning across the many and constantly changing contexts of human interaction. In 2003, he published a paper setting out the accumulated principles of his theory, which arose as he engaged with many different language-related problems. These principles, he wrote, 'emerged as the by-product of those engagements as I struggled with particular problems',:1 as various as literary analysis and machine translation. Halliday has tried, then, to develop a linguistic theory and description that is appliable to any context of human language. His theory and descriptions are based on these principles, on the basis that they are required to explain the complexity of human language. There are five principles: As the name suggests, the notion of system is a defining aspect of systemic functional linguistics. In linguistics, the origins of the idea go back to Ferdinand de Saussure, and his notion of paradigmatic relations in signs. The paradigmatic principle was established in semiotics by Saussure, whose concept of value (viz. 'valeur'), and of signs as terms in a system, 'showed up paradigmatic organization as the most abstract dimension of meaning'. System is used in two related ways in systemic functional theory. SFL uses the idea of system to refer to language as a whole, (e.g. 'the system of language'), a usage that derives from Hjelmslev. In this context, Jay Lemke describes language as an open, dynamic system. There is also J.R. Firth's notion of system, in which linguistic systems furnish the background for elements of structure. Halliday argues that system in the sense Firth used it was a conception only found in Firth's linguistic theory. In this use of system, grammatical or other features of language are best understood when described as sets of options. According to Halliday, 'The most abstract categories of the grammatical description are the systems together with their options (systemic features). A systemic grammar differs from other functional grammars (and from all formal grammars) in that it is paradigmatic: a system is a paradigmatic set of alternative features, of which one must be chosen if the entry condition is satisfied.' System was a feature of Halliday's early theoretical work on language. He considered it one of four fundamental categories for the theory of grammar—the others being unit, structure, and class. The category of system was invoked to account for 'the occurrence of one rather than another from among a number of like events'. At that time, Halliday defined grammar as 'that level of linguistic form at which operate closed systems'.