A Brief Introduction to Functional Grammar
The following extract is taken from PETAA book A New Grammar Companion for Teachers, 2nd Edition, written by Dr Beverly Derewianka.
The approach to grammar adopted in this book draws heavily upon the pioneering work done by Professor Michael Halliday in the area of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Functional Grammar is built upon a series of assumptions about the way language works in context:
- Language is a dynamic, complex system of resources for making meaning.
- Language reflects the culture in which it has evolved. It is not a neutral medium, but expresses certain world views, values, beliefs and attitudes.
- Our language choices change from situation to situation, depending on the social purpose for which language is being used, the subject matter, who is involved, and whether the language is spoken or written.
- The emphasis in language study is on how people use authentic language in various contexts in real life to achieve their purposes. The particular focus of this book will be on the language needed for successful participation in school contexts.
- A knowledge of grammar can help us to critically evaluate our own texts and those of others (e.g. identifying point of view; examining how language can be manipulated to achieve certain effects and position the reader in different ways; knowing how language can be used to construct various identities or a particular way of viewing the world).
A functional approach looks at how language enables us to do things in our daily lives. To participate successfully in school and the community, for example, students need to know how to use language:
- for achieving different social purposes
- for sharing ideas about their experience of the world
- for making connections between these ideas
- for interacting with others
- and for constructing coherent texts in both spoken and written modes.
Achieving different social purposes
As they progress through school and life, learners need to be able to use language in order to achieve a range of social purposes such as describing, explaining, arguing or recounting. These different social purposes are expressed through different text types (or genres). Young children operate with a moderate range of text types, which generally have a relatively basic, unelaborated structure (eg recounts involving only a couple of events, arguments that are often unsupported by evidence, explanations of only a sentence or two in length). With teacher guidance over the years, students should be able to confidently interpret and employ a wide range of text types for a variety of social purposes, including texts that have a more complex, unpredictable structure. This provides students with a solid preparation for the demands of secondary school and life in the community.
The Australian Curriculum: English requires that students develop proficiency in a range of text types for a variety of purposes. While not dealing in detail with different text types, this book will refer to how different grammatical resources are drawn on in achieving different social purposes, such as the use of the past tense to refer to events in a recount or the use of the present tense to refer to ‘timeless’ actions in an information report.
Expressing ideas
A major function of language is to represent experience, to help us to express and understand what goes on in our lives. This is sometimes called the ‘observer’ function of language. In the school context, this includes using and understanding the language of the different areas of the curriculum. It is now well known that each disciplinary area has its own way of using language to develop knowledge and understandings relevant to that area. The language of science, for example, is quite different from the language of history. The language used in English literary texts is quite different from that of geography texts. Students need to be able to read and write texts that become increasingly technical, abstract, and subject‑specific as they move through the school system from primary to secondary school.
On entering school, students’ language will be concerned with more particular, everyday understandings (‘my family’, ‘our neighbourhood’). As they grow older, they need to be able to talk and write in more generalised terms (‘families’, ‘dinosaurs’) about less familiar topics which often require research (‘the planets’, ‘volcanic eruptions’) and specialist terminology (‘solar system’, ‘lava’). It cannot be taken for granted that this type of language will develop automatically.
Chapter 2 illustrates how grammar functions to represent experience: the kinds of activities taking place, the participants in those activities, and the circumstances surrounding those activities.
Connecting ideas
Not only do students need to know how to express ideas through language, they need to make connections between ideas. Simple connections can be made by using words such as and, but and so. However, if students are to be able to comprehend and produce more complex connections between ideas, they will need to deal with more sophisticated ways of reasoning and creating logical relationships through language. Knowing how to construct and interpret lengthy sentences that contain a number of ideas in complex relationships is a skill that continues to develop throughout secondary school.
Chapter 3 deals with the various ways in which ideas can be connected to make richer sentences.
Interacting with others
Another major function of language is to enable interaction. Through language we construct particular roles and relationships. Students need to be able to use language effectively to interact with a range of people. In the early years, they will use language in more informal, familiar ways with known peers and adults, freely expressing their feelings and attitudes. Gradually they will also need to learn ways of expressing themselves that are a bit more formal and detached, with a more subtle use of evaluative language and modality, particularly in the written mode.
In school, children need the skills of group interaction, the ability to take part in class discussions, the poise to talk with both familiar and unfamiliar adults. They need to know how to cope in situations with different degrees of authority and power. They need to know how to take on an expanding range of roles: group leader, observer, apprentice, mediator, initiator, questioner, co‑learner. They need to be able to evaluate their own interaction skills and to reflect critically on the ways in which others use language to interact with them in oral and written language (eg Are they being persuaded to accept a particular point of view? How is language being used to do this? How might they recognise this and resist if
necessary?). In many cases, children will need explicit assistance in developing these interpersonal skills.
Chapter 4 looks at how different grammatical categories are involved when making statements, asking questions, giving commands, expressing opinions, making judgements and engaging with others.
Creating coherent and cohesive texts
Finally, language functions to create texts that are cohesive and coherent. One of the major shifts in children’s language use over the primary years is from the spoken mode to the written mode. When students enter school, they are accustomed to using language in face‑to‑face oral interaction. It is spontaneous and immediate. It generally refers to the ‘here-and-now’ and to the surrounding context. There is a conversation partner who can provide support by asking questions, giving feedback, and requesting clarification. When moving to the written mode, students need to learn how to use language in quite different ways. Texts will involve a degree of planning, revising and reworking and will therefore be more highly structured. Because the writer has more time to construct the text, the sentences are generally more ‘crafted’, with greater complexity and density. And because a
written text needs to be able to stand on its own, the reader cannot get help from an interaction partner or the surrounding setting. The reader must use cues from the text itself to understand how it is developing. The writer needs to know how to guide the reader through the text. This involves quite sophisticated language skills (eg using the beginning of the sentence and paragraphs to indicate how the topic is developing, using text connectives, and compacting information so that it does not sound rambling). Moving successfully from spoken to written modes is one of the major achievements of primary schooling, requiring the development of a number of high‑level skills and strategies. Even in secondary school, however, the ability to create and comprehend highly complex texts continues to develop.
Chapter 5 deals with the ways in which texts are shaped in ways that make them more cohesive and coherent.