Halliday - A Functional Basis of Language

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“The social functions of language

clearly determine the pattern of language varieties, in the sense of

what have been called  “diatypic” varieties, or 'registers'; the

register range, or linguistic repe;toire, of a community or of an

individual is derived from the range of uses that language is put to

in that particular culture or sub-culture.”

“range of uses”

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“But diatypic variation in language, the existence of different

fields and· modes and tenors of discourse, is part of the resources

of the linguistic systern; and the system has to be able to accommodate

it.”

“So even if we start from a

consideration of how language varies-how we make different

selections in meaning, and therefore in grammar and vocabulary,

according to the context of use-we are led into the more fundamental

question of the relation between the functions of language

and the nature of the linguistic system.”

“Is the social functioning of langua~g

reflected in linguistic structure-that is, in the internal organization

oflanguage as a syste:m?

Malinowski  - uses of language left imprint on structure (war) – moved – ALL adult speech was highly sophisticated AND no matter how abstract a language gets, it is used in some very elementary ways

progression of language?

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interest – for a time in mechanism vs. meaning (so study sounds)

“For this purpose, language acquisition, or

rather language development, to revert to the earlier term

-'acquisition' is a rather misleading metaphor, suggesting that

language is some sort of property to be owned-needs to be seen

- as the mastery of linguistic functions”

“If language development is regarded as ths..Q.evelopment of a

meaning potential it becomes possible to consider the Malinowskian

thesis seriously, since we can begin by looking at the

relation between the child's linguistic structures and the uses he is

putting language to.”

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social functions of language?

“The language of bidding may be thought of as a system of

meaning potential, a range of options that are open to the player

as performer (speakerTand as receiver (addressee~. The potential

is shared; it is neutral as between speaker and hearer, but it

presupposes speaker, hearer and situation. It is a linguistic

system: there is a set of options, and this provides an environment

·for each option in tern1s of the others-the system includes not

merely the option of saying 'four hearts' but also the specification

of when it is appropriate.”

“communicative competence” – saying four hearts in the right place

Must be bridge?

“We are likely to

find ourselves entangled in this problem, of trying to force a

distinction between . meaning and function, if we insist on

characterizing language. subjectively as the ability, or competence,

of the speaker, instead of objectively as a potential, a set of

alternatives.”

“meaning potential” – what speaker/ hearer CAN, not what he KNOWS

“restricted language” – games etc.

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already dated  - I need notes for some of this!

“Buying and selling in a shop, going to the doctor, and many of the

routines of the working day all represent situation types in which

the language is by no means restricted as a whole, the transactional

meanings are not closed, but nevertheless there are certain

definable patterns, certain options which typically come into play.”

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(talk about weather not strictly transactional) – THAT would be interesting!

“Ta-say this is no more than to point out that

the fact that a teacher can behave with his students otherwise than

in his contextual role as a teacher does not contradict the existence

of a teacher-student relationship in the social structure.”

Pointlessness of  “list of uses”

young child – internal form/ function lang. used to serve

“I want” – chart

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In the instrumental component there are just five of these: the response element, the object

of desire, the service desired, the amenity and the quantifier.

case grammar

“(as in system structure

theory) rather than 'cases'; they are specific to the

context (i.e. to the particular function of language, in this instance),

and they account for the entire structure, whereas cases

are contextually undifferentiated and also restricted to elements

that are syntactically dependent on a verb.”

“This c.onsists of a rneaning potential, represented as a. \

network of options, which are derived from a particular social

function and are realized, in their turn, by structures whose

~ements relate directly to the meanings that are being expressed.”

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“I shall suggest, however,

that in principle the san1e is: true of the elements of structure of the

adult language: that these also have their origin in th~ social

functions of language, though in a way that is less direct and

therefore less immediatdy apparent.”

regulatory function – “This is the

use of language to control the behaviour of others, to manipulate

the persons in the environtnent; the 'do as I tell you' function.

Here we find a basic distinction between a demand for the other

person's company and a dernand for a specific action on his or her

part.”

“The third example is of the 'interactional' function (Figure 3).

This is the child!s use of language as a means of personal interaction

with those around him; the 'me and you' function of

language.”

-          greeting

-          calling

factors: who is it? intonation

(What about the body? – messages there – communications)

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“Nevertheless the functions

we have suggested are distinguishable from one another; and this

is important, because itt is through the gradual extension of his

meaning potential into new functions that the child's linguistic

horizons become enlarged.. In the instrumental function, it does

not matter who provides the bread or turns the tap on; the

intention is satisfied by the provision of the object or service in

question”

“When the chHd has learnt

to use language to some extent in any of these functions, however

limited the grammatical and lexical resources he can bring to

bear, then he has built up a meaning potential for that function

and has mastered at least a minimal structural requirement-it

may be a 'configuration' of only one element-for purposes of

expressing it.” Reminds me of the paper on sexual scripts I had read last semester

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“Language is what it is because of what it has to do”

Language for adults: functionally complex – serving more than one function at once.

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“trounced” – defeat plus “I am pleased”

“adult language which corresponds to the functional components,

the syst~ms of meaning potential, that mak~ up the e~rly

stages in the child's language development? “

“Among the

child's uses of language there appears, after a time, the use of

language to convey new information: to communicate a content

that is (regarded by the speaker as) unknown to the addressee.”

(representational function - informative)” In the

course of maturation this function is increasingly emphasized,

until eventually it comes to dominate, if not the adult's use of

language, at least his conception of the use of language.”

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Adults don’t grasp that the child is not dominantly using informational in language. (language in its imaginative function –hmmmn….does this limit what imaginative is?

“Similarly, failures have been reported when actors have recorded '

foreign language courses; their renderings focus attention only on

the use of language to convey information, and it seems that when

learning a foreign language, as when learning the mother tongue,

it is necessary to take other uses of language into account, especially

in the beginning stages.”

“There is an immense

functional diversity in the adult's use of language; immense, that

is, if we simply ask 'in what kinds of activity does language play

a part for him?'. But this diversity of usage is reduced in the

internal organization' of the adult language systen1-in the

grammar, in other words-to a very small set of functional

components. Let us call these for the moment 'macro-functions' to

distinguish them from the functions of the child's emergent

language system, the instrumental, the regulatory and so on.”

“With the very young child, 'function' equals 'use'; and there is

.no grammar, no intermediate/level of internal organization in

language, only a content and an expression. With the adult, there

are indefinitely man uses…” only 3 to 4 functions.

Macro functions (for adults) take the form of “grammar”

“The grammatical systexn has as it

were a functional input and a structuFal output; it provides the

mechanism for different functions to be combined in one utterance

in the way the adult requires.”

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macro functions

1. representational

“But just as earlier, in talking of the use of

language to convey information, I preferred the more specific

term 'informative', so here I shall also prefer another term-but

this time a different one, because this is a very distinct concept.

Here we are referring to the linguistic expression of ideational

content; let us call this macro-function of the adult language

system the 'ideational' function. For the child, the use of language

to inform is just one instance of language use, one function among

many. But with the adult, th.. e ideational element in language is

present in all its uses; no tnatter what he is doing with language he

will find himself exploiting its ideational resources, its potential for

expressing a content in terms of the speaker's experience and that

of the speech community.”

“Nigel had already begun to use language also in the

personal, the heuristic and the imaginative functions; it was

noticeable that language was becoming, for him, a means of

organizing and storing his experience. Here we saw the beginnings

of a 'grammar' -that is, a level oflexicogrammatical organization,

or linguistic 'form'; and of utterances having more than one

function.”

Fascinating

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Language – “need to impose order on the environment and to define his own person in relation to and in distinction from it”

personal- heuristic function: ideational

develops along with lexical./ grammatical resources

ideational function continues to evolove: as adults “we are using “function” in a more generalized sense “than when we refer to the specific functions that make up the language of the young child”

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“Functions such as “instrumental” and “regulatory” are really the same thing as the “uses of language”

encoding our experiences in the form of an ideational content – “specifies the available options in meaning but also determines the nature of their structural realizations”

“clause is a structural unit, and it is the one by which we express a particular range of ideational meanings, our experience of process – the processes of the external world, both concrete and abstract, and the processes of our own consciousness, seeing, liking, thinking, talking and so on…”

“transivity is simply the grammar of the clause in its ideational aspect.

structure forming elements: agent, process, phenomenon

all related to the general function of expressing process.

“There are three basic elements to all process structures—the process itself, the participants in the process, and the circumstances associated with the process. Halliday distinguishes six process types. The three main process types are:

1.      material (i.e., what is going on outside oneself)

2.      mental (i.e, inner experience—awareness of our own states of being and reaction to our outer experience)

3.      relational (i.e., classifying and identifying one experience with other experiences).

·         Stated differently, material processes basically involve a participant (the Actor/Agent) doing something to another participant (the Goal/Object). Mental processes involve the human senses—perception, affection, and cognition. Relational processes relate two terms in a variety of ways (similar to how the verb “to be” is used in English). The other three process types are located at the boundaries between the main process types. Behavioral processes border the material and mental, being outward expressions of inner workings. Verbal processes straddle the mental and relational: symbolic relationships are recognized and constructed in human consciousness. Existential processes border the relational and the material: phenomena are recognized to exist or to happen.”

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“The clause, however, is not confined to the expression of

transitivity; it has other functions besides. There are non-ideational

Iements in the adult language system, even though the adult

~speaker is·often reluctant to recognize them. Again, however, they

~regrouped together as a single 'macro-function' in the grammar,

~overing a whole range of particular uses of language. This is the

macro-function that we: shall refer to as the 'interpersonal'; it

embodies all use of language to express social and personal

relations, including all forn1s of the spea~er's intrusion into the

speech situation and the speech act.”

Adults – language – interpersonal level – hard to count

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“What we know as 'grammar' is the linguistic device for hooking

up together the selections in meaning which are derived from the

various functions of language, and realizing them in a unified

structural form. Whereas with the child, in the :first beginnings of

the system, the functions remain unintegrated, being in effect

1 functional varieties of speech act, with one utterance having just

: one function, the linguistic units of the adult language serve all

1 (macro-) functions at once.

‘But

these components are not put together in discrete fashion such

that we can point to one segment of the clause as expressing one

type of mean1ng and another segment as expressing another.’

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