1/2/23, 8:35 PM Overview of Systemic Functional Linguistics

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Overview of Systemic
Functional Linguistics
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By Richard Nordquist
Updated on October 16, 2021

Systemic functional linguistics is the study of the relationship between

language and its functions in social settings. Also known as SFL, systemic
functional grammar, Hallidayan linguistics, and systemic linguistics.

Three strata make up the linguistic system in SFL: meaning (semantics), sound
(phonology), and wording or lexicogrammar (syntax, morphology, and lexis).

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1/2/23, 8:35 PM Overview of Systemic Functional Linguistics

Systemic functional linguistics treats grammar as a meaning-making resource

and insists on the interrelation of form and meaning. This field of study was
developed in the 1960s by British linguist M.A.K. Halliday (b. 1925), who had
been influenced by the work of the Prague School and British linguist J.R. Firth
(1890-1960).

Purpose of Systemic Linguistics

"SL [systemic linguistics] is an avowedly functionalist approach to language,
and it is arguably the functionalist approach which has been most highly
developed. In contrast to most other approaches, SL explicitly attempts to
combine purely structural information with overtly social factors in a single
integrated description. Like other functionalist frameworks, SL is deeply
concerned with the purposes of language use. Systemicists constantly ask the
following questions: What is this writer (or speaker) trying to do? What
linguistic devices are available to help them do it, and on what basis do they
make their choices?" (Robert Lawrence Trask and Peter Stockwell, Language
and Linguistics: The Key Concepts. Routledge, 2007)

Principles of SFL
Functional linguistics holds that:

Language use is functional

Its function is to make meanings

These meanings are influenced by the social and cultural context in which
they are exchanged

The process of using language is a semiotic process, a process of making

meaning by choosing.

Functional-Semantic Approach to Language

"While individual scholars naturally have different research emphases or
application contexts, common to all systemic linguists is an interest in language
as social semiotic (Halliday 1978)--how people use language with each other in
accomplishing everyday social life. This interest leads systemic linguists to
advance four main theoretical claims about language: These four points, that
language use is functional, semantic, contextual and semiotic, can be

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1/2/23, 8:35 PM Overview of Systemic Functional Linguistics

summarized by describing the systemic approach as a functional-semantic

approach to language."
(Suzanne Eggins, An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, 2nd ed.
Continuum, 2005)

Social-Functional "Needs"
"According to Halliday (1975), language has developed in response to three
kinds of social-functional 'needs.' The first is to be able to construe experience
in terms of what is going on around us and inside us. The second is to interact
with the social world by negotiating social roles and attitudes. The third and
final need is to be able to create messages with which we can package our
meanings in terms of what is New or Given, and in terms of what the starting
point for our message is, commonly referred to as the Theme. Halliday (1978)
calls these language functions metafunctions and refers to them as ideational,
interpersonal and textual respectively.
"Halliday's point is that any piece of language calls into play all three
metafunctions simultaneously."
(Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola, "Grammar: A Neglected Resource in
Interaction Analysis?" New Adventures in Language and Interaction, ed. by
Jürgen Streeck. John Benjamins, 2010)

Choice as a Systemic Concept

"In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) the notion of choice is
fundamental. Paradigmatic relations are regarded as primary, and this is
captured descriptively by organizing the basic components of the grammar in
interrelated systems of features representing 'the meaning potential of a
language.' A language is viewed as a 'system of systems,' and the linguist's task
is to specify the choices involved in the process of instantiating this meaning
potential in actual 'texts' through the resources available for expression in the
language. Syntagmatic relations are viewed as derived from systems by means
of realization statements, which for each feature specify the formal and
structural consequences of selecting that particular feature. The term 'choice' is
typically used for features and their selection, and systems are said to display
'choice relations.' Choice relations are posited not only at the level of individual
categories such as definiteness, tense and number but also at higher levels of
text planning (as in, e.g., the grammar of speech functions). Halliday often
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