Making sense of functional grammar

MAKING SENSE OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (GEROT – WIGNELL)
Edited by Berti Nurul Khajati, for the Limited Community of STKIP Panca Sakti BEKASI Page 1
CHAPTER 1
GENRE AND GRAMMAR,
TEXT AND CONTEXT

GRAMMAR
What do you think when you hear the word ‘grammar’? As a student in
school you may have thought of it as a set of exercises to get right in English
class. Now, as a person who is studying language in some depth, you will find
that grammar is much more.
This section is organised around the questions:
 What is grammar?
 Why do we need to know about grammar?
 How can we characterise or talk about grammar?
What is Grammar?
Grammar is a theory of language, of how language is put together and how it
works. More particularly, it is the study of wordings. What is meant by
wording? Consider the following for a moment:
Times flies like an arrow.
This string of language means something; the meaning is accessible through
the wording, that is, the words and their orders; and the wording in turn, is
realised or expressed through sound or letters.
Folk terminology Linguistic terminology
meaning semantics
wording lexicogrammar
letters/sounds orthography/phonology
In some theories of grammar, lexicogrammar is called ‘syntax’, which is
studied independentlyof semantics. In other theories of grammar, wordings
are characterised such that they are able to explain meaning. More on this in
a moment.

Why Grammar?
Why do we need to know about grammar? We need a theory of grammar or
language which helps us understand how texts work. As teachers we need to
knowhow texts work so we can explicitly help learners learn how to
understand and produce texts – spoken and written in various contexts for
various purposes.
Several years ago one of us overhead a conversation between a Year 9
student and his geography teacher. The student was asking the teacher why
he had received a low mark for his project. The teacher responded that the
work ‘just didn’t hang together’. The boy asked, ‘But how do I make it hang
together?’ The teacher responded by suggesting that the student make the
work cohere.
This example is not to criticise students or teachers. The student would have
made the text ‘hang together’ in the first place had he known how. And the
teacher would have explained in good faith had he known explicitly how
texts, especially geography texts, worked. Systemic-functional grammar,
presented in this book, perhaps more than any other theory of language,
explains how texts, inluding texts read and written in schools, work.
Characterising Language
This is where viewpoints begin to diverge. Notice that we’ve not used the
term ‘the’ grammar of English. Instead, there are a number of grammars
which differ in how they characterise language, depending on the purposes of
the user. How people have characterised wordings, that is, devised theories of
grammar, depends on the kinds of questions they have asked about language,
on what they want to find out about it.
Consider for a moment the experience of six blind men meeting an elephant
for the first time. One blind man felt the tail and declared that an elephant
was like a rope; another felt the trunk and decided that an elephant was like
a hose. Another, feeling the ear, felt an elephant was like an umbrella. Each
blind man developed a theory what elephants are like.

Theories of language (grammars) are a bit like the blind men’s experience of
the elephant. Each ended up with somewhat different perspective. And like
the blind men’s experience, theories of language or grammar are not
inherently good or bad, right or wrong, true or false. Rather, grammars are
validated by their usefulness in describing and explaining the phenomenon
called language.
As teachers, wecan further ask whether the grammar helps learners and their
teachers to understand and produce texts. As discourse analysts, we can ask
how the grammar sheds light on how texts make meaning. To the extent that
grammar can help with these questions, it is more useful than another
grammar.
There are three grammars which have had a major influence on schools in the
western world in this century. These are as follows.
Traditional Grammar
Traditional grammar aims to describe the grammar of standard English by
comparing with Latin. As such, it is prescriptive. Students learn the names of
parts of speech (nouns, verbs, prepositions, adverbs, adjectives), parse
textbook sentences and leanr to correct so-called bad grammar. Writers are
taught, for example, not to start sentences with ‘and’, to make sure the
subject agrees with the verb (time flies – not time fly – like an arrow), to say
‘I did it’ and not ‘I done it’.
Traditional grammar focuses on rules for producting correct sentences. In so
doing, it has two main weaknesses. Firstly, the rules it prescribes are based
on the language of a very small group of middle-class English speakers. Thus
it can be used to discriminate against the language of working class,
immigrant and Aboriginal students. (Consider Jeff Fenech’s heartfelt ‘I love
youse all’.) Secondly,the rules deal only with the most superficial aspects of
writing. Following the rules in no way guarantees that written
communication will be effective, for the rules say nothing about purpose or
intended audiences for writing.

Formal Grammar
Formal grammars are concerned to describe the structure of individual
sentences. Such grammars view language as a set of rules which allow or
disallow certain sentence structures. Knowledge of these rules is seen as
being carried around inside the mind. The central question formal grammars
attempt to address is: ‘How is this sentence structured?’ Meaning is typically
shunted off into the too-hard box.
Functional Grammar
Functional grammars view language as a resource for making meaning.
These grammars attempt to describe language in actual use and so focus on
texts and their contexts. They are concerned not only with the structures but
also with how those structures construct meaning. Functional grammars
start with the question, ‘How are the meanings of this text realise?’
Traditional and formal grammars would analyse our earlier clause as follows:
Time flies like an arrow.
noun verb prepositional phrase
Tim told of a tragic case.
Systemic-functional grammar, on the other hand, labels elements of the
clause in terms of the function each is playing in that clause rather than by
word class.
Time flies like an arrow.
Participant:
Actor
Process:
Material
Cirumstance:
Manner
Tim told of a tragic case.
Participant:
Sayer
Process:
Verbal
Circumstance:
Matter

In these last two clauses, the Participant (‘doer’) roles are realised by nouns,
the Processes (‘doing’) by verbs and the Circunstance by prepositional
phrases. But ‘flying’ and ‘telling’ are two quite different orders of ‘doing’,
and in the above clause ‘like an arrow’ tells how time flies, while ‘of a tragic
case’ tells what Tim was talking about.
Word class labels are certainly not useless,but they will only take you so far.
They do not account for differences or similarities to any extent.
To sum up the main differences in perspective among the above three
grammars, the following table is presented.
Formal (+Traditional) Functional
Primary How is (should) this sentence How are the meanings
concern be structured? of this text realised?
Unit of
analysis sentence whole texts
Language syntax semantics
level of
concern
Language = a set of rules for sentence = a resource for meaning
construction making
= something we know = something we do

EXERCISE
1. Each of the sentences immediately below consists of two clauses.
Underline each of two clauses in each sentence.
Get out of here or I’ll scream.
Mike plays trombone and Pete sax.
She gets crabby when her back hurts.
The passenger, who was wearing a seatbelt, wasn’t hurt.
The passenger who was wearing a seatbelt wasn’t hurt, but the lady in
the back got a nasty bump.
2. ‘Time flies like an arrow’ was segmented as follows:
Time flies like an arrow
How would you segment: ‘Fruit flies like a ripe banana?’
3. Identify in your own words what the purpose of each text below is.
Circle all the Processes – the words which tell you that something is
doing something, or that something is/was. Make a list of the doing
words for each text; likewise list all the being/having words for each
text.
How does the choice of Processed used in each text reflect the purpose
of the text?
Text 1
A man thought he was a dog, so he went to a psychiatrist. After a
while the doctor said he was cured. The man met a friend on the street.
The friend asked him, ‘How do you feel?’ ‘I’m fine’, the man said, ‘Just
feel my nose.’
(Goldsweig, 1970)
Text 2
Birds are the only animals with feathers. These structures make up the
greater part of the wing surface and also act as insulation, helping

them remain warm. Birds are the most active of the vertebrate animals
and they consequently consume large quantities of food.
(Source: Year 7 Science student)
4. Change the wording of the following to make them less ambiguous.
Caution! This door is alarmed! (K-Mart, Chatswood, New South
Wales)
Please excuse Lorelle; she has been under the doctor with pneumonia.
(Note from parent to roll-making teacher)
If fire alarm bell rings, evacuate quickly and quietly. (Official safety
notices on back of toilet doors, The University of Sidney)

THE CONTEXT – TEXT CONNECTION
It was suggested above that we need a model of language that helps us
understand how texts work to make meaning; this in turn enables us to
facilitate learners’ interpretation and production of texts. Systemic-funcional
grammar can do this. How? Because of the way this model of language
explains the connections between context and text.
We’d like to begin explaining the context – text connection with a propotion:
All meaning is situated
 In a context of situation
 In a context of culture
Take the utterance: ‘Just put it beside those other ones.’ The meaning
remains obscure until we know that it was said to a removalist who had just
lugged in another carton of household goods during moving one of us to
Brisbane. Knowing the context of situation makes the utterance intellegible.
Note that the meaning is also culturally situated. In the Anglo way of doing
things, it is permissible to hire total strangers to pack our materials goods
into boxes, haul them halfway across the country and then for these or other
total strangers to tolerate carrying and being told where to put these boxes
by women half their size! Removal is a cultural act no less than folk dancing.
The utterance ‘just put it beside the other ones’ is meaningful within a
context of culture and context of situation.
Context of culture determines what we can mean through
 Being ‘who we are’
 Doing ‘what we do’
 Saying ‘what we say’
This applies to all of us. Suppose, like one of us, you grew up in mid-western
United States the eldest daughter in a large farming family. Being the eldest
daughter in this circumstance automatically casts one in the role of
‘momma’s little helper’. That’s who you are in the family. This turn largely

determines what you do within the family and what you say. Protesting that
you don’t want to do the ironing or that the baby is a smelly brat isn’t
allowed.
Context of situation can be specified through use of the register variables: field,
tenor and mode.
Field refers to what is going on, including
 Activity focus (nature of social activity)
 Object focus (subject matter)
So field specifies what’s going on with reference to what.
Tenor refers to the social relationships between those taking part. These are
specifiable in terms of
 Status or power (agent roles, peeror hierarchic relations)
 Affect (degree of like, dislike or neutrality)
 Contact (frequency, duration and intimacy of social contact)
Think, for example, how you say ‘good morning’ to members of your family,
shop assistants, work colleagues. This simple actis very much a cultural one
and clearly bespeaks social relationships (tenor).
Mode refers to how language is being used, wether
 The channel of communication is spoken or written
 Language is being used as a mode of action or reflection
For example, a mother talking her young child through a toilet-training
session is spoken channel, language as action. Dr. Chris Green writing about
toilet training in his book Toddler Taming is written channel, language as
reflection.
As language moves from action to reflection there is a progressive distancing
from the actual event and the experience becomes increasingly vicarious.

Understanding Texts – Reconstructing the
Context
When we (over)hear or read a text, we can reconstruct its context of
situation. For example:
... we supervise the planting and inspect the harvest. And we buy only the
pick of the crop. Our experienced buyers look for lack of blemish, minimum
number of eyes, pure white ‘meaty’ interiors with firm frying consistency.
What is the topic of the above text? Field
Who/what kind of person produced this text? For whom? Tenor
Do you think the original was written or spoken? Mode
We are able to reconstruct this context of situation because there is a
systematic relationship between context and text. The wordings of texts
simultaneously encode three types of meaning: ideational, interpersonal and
textual.
Ideational meanings are meanings about phenomena – about things (living
and non-living, abstract and concrete), about goings on (what the things are
or do) and the circumstances surrounding these happenings and doings.
These meanings are realised in wordings through Participants, Processes and
Circumstances. Meanings of this kind are most centrally influenced by the
field of discourse.
Field: growing quality potatoes for french fries.
We buy only the pick of the crop
Participant:
Actor
Process:
Material
Participant:
Goal
Field: polar bears
Polar bears are expert hunters
Participant:
Carrier
Process:
Attributive
Participant:
Attribute

Interpersonal meanings are meanings which express a speaker’s attitudes and
judgments. These are meanings for acting upon and with others. Meanings
are realised in wordings through what is called mood and modality. Meanings
of this kind are most centrally influenced by tenor of discourse.
Mood
We inspect the growing plants every week. Declarative
Brock, get those plants inspected right now! Imperative
 Consider which kind of people are allowed to order others about.
Brock, do you really expect me to believe this crop?
Mr. Brock, I find your position untenable.
 Consider the degree of informality or formality.
Mr. Brock is fine, upstanding employee.
Brock is lazy, incompetent fool.
 Consider the attitudinal lexis (in italics) which expresses affect, the
degree of like or dislike.
Modality
Fortunately, Brock is an inspector.
Unfortunately, Brock is an inspector.
 Consider the Mood Adjuncts (italicized) which reveal attitude or
judgment.
The crop might be inspected.
The crop should be inspected.
The crop must be inspected.
 Consider the modal operators (italicised) which reveal the speaker’s
certainty.
Textual meanings express the relation of language to its environment,
including both the verbal environment – what has been said or written before
(co-text) and the non-verbal, situational environment (context). These

meanings are realised through patterns of the Theme and cohesion. Textual
meanings are most centrally influenced by mode of discourse.
The linguistic differences between the following spoken and written texts
below relate primarily to differences in thematic choices and patterns of
cohesion.
Textual meaning, or texture, is like a sweater. Two sweaters might be made
using the same pattern, with wool of the same type. But one is knitted using
large, loose stitches. This is like spoken language. The other is knitted finely,
with close stitches. This is like written language. Both garments are made of
the same materials and serve to keep their owners warm. But the texture of
each is different.
The relationship between context, meanings and wordings can be
summarised as shown on the following:
This is yer phone bill and you hafta go to the Post Office
to pay it – uh, by next Monday – that’s what this box
tells ya – or they’ll cut yer phone off!
All phone bill must be paid by the date shown or service
will be discontinued.
Context Text
Semantics Lexicogrammar
(meaning) (wordings)
Field Ideational Transitivity
(what’s going on) (Processes,
Participants,
Circumstances)
Tenor Interpersonal Mood & Modality
(social relations) (speech roles,
attitudes)
Mode Textual Theme, Cohesion
(contextual
coherence)

Because of the bi-directionality between situation and meaning, and meaning
and wording, in turn, we can predict from the text to context, as you’ve done
above. We can also move from context to text, as we do in writing or
speaking.
Given the following contextual configuration, we can predict, within reason,
how the text might go:
Field activity focus = request for repair
object focus = security screen door in rented unit
Tenor status = real estate agent and elderly,
widowed tenant
affect = favourable, agent and deceased
husband were long time friends
contact = occasional
Mode channel = spoken; language as action
The ability to predict from context to text is critically important for text
production (speaking or writing) and the ability to predict from text to
context is essential for text comprehension (listening or reading). To
understand something of the text – context relationship is to understand
something of how literacy is possible.

GENRE
When you read the incomplete McDonald’s text,you were able to reconstruct
the field, tenor and mode of that text. You also figured out that it was an
advertisement. That is, you understood the purpose of that text.
Advertisements are a particular text-type, or genre. A genre can defined as a
culturally specific text-type which results from using language (written or
spoken) to (help) accomplish something.
Think, for example,of a typical doctor-patient consultation. This
consultation has a purpose. It takes place through a series of stages, and uses
language in particular ways. So there isusually some sortof greeting; an
invitation from the doctor for the patient to describe symptoms; an
examination, during whichthe doctor tells the patient what the problem is, if
known,and how it will be treated. If not known, the doctor explains that a
referral is necessary. The consultation closes with some kind of leave-taking.
This is how it is down in an English-speaking culture. In a community in
which health consultation depends on reading entrails of chickens, this genre
would be replaced by one rather different in staging and language used.
So genresare culture specific, and have associated with them:
 Particular purposes
 Particular stages: distinctive beginnings, middles and ends
 Particular linguistic features.
Most people appreciate to the fact that Narratives (stories) and Procedures (a
set of instructions for doing something), for example, differ in purpose and
the way they begin, develop and end. It is our observation that it is the
significance of characteristic linguistic features that unfortunately seems
least understood. Consider, however, what skewing characteristic linguistic
features does to the following text:
Men think they are dogs so they go to psychiatrists. After
a while the doctors say they are cured. The men meet
friends on the street. The friends ask them, ‘How do you
feel?’ ‘Fine’, the men say. ‘Just feel our noses.’

The original of this text is a type of Narrative. The purpose of the texts of
this genre is to relate an amusing or unusual experience in an entertaining
way. In Narrative, Participants are usually specific and individual. Processes
are usually Material (acting, behaving) with some Verbals (saying) and
Mental (feeling, thinking) type Processes as well. The verbs are in past tense.
In the above rendition, the Participants have been made generic, asthough
classes of things are under disscussion. The Process types have not been
changed, but all the verbs have been changed to present tense.
Use of generic Participants and present tense verbs are typical of Reports, not
Narratives. This is because generic Participants and use of present tense
verbs grammatically help Report achieve their purpose of describing the way
things (natural, social and synthetic) are, as in the following:
By the time you have worked your way through this book, we hope that you
will understand the significance of the linguistic features which realise
various genres. We further hope that you will know enough about the
grammar to feel confident to try describing genres not yet documented in
published materials. We hope that you will understand enough about the
genre – grammar connection to be able to intervene in a direct and
constructive way in the writing of students you teach. Above all, we hope
that you will look back at this chapter and say, ‘Well, that’s obvious’,
becouse inone way or another, we have foregrounded in this chapter
everything we want to teach you in the rest of this book.
All animals cells have a number of parts in common.
They all have a cell membrane. This is a thin ‘sack’ that
controls which chemicals can enter and leave a cell. The
liquid contents are divided into the nucleus and
cytoplasm....

CHAPTER 2
MOOD

THE CLAUSE AS AN EXCHANGE
In the last chapter, it was stated that clauses simultaneously encode three
strands of meaning: ideational, textual and interpersonal. Ideational
meanings, meanings about things and ideas, are realised in the clause by
options from TRANSITIVITY: Processes, Participants and Circumstances.
Textual meanings, those which make language contextually and co-textually
relevant, are realised in lexicogrammar through Thematic and Information
systems as well as through cohesion. And thirdly, there are meanings
through which social relations are created and maintained. These
interpersonal meanings are realised in the lexicogrammar through selections
from the system of MOOD.
Here we shall begin focusing on the MOOD system. Thus, we are talking
about the clause as an exchange.
Making an utterance isan interactive event inherently involving a speaker or
writer and an addressee (listener or reader).
A speaker, in uttering, selects a speech role for her or himself, and,
simultaneously and thereby, allocates a speech role to the addressee.
If a speaker gives you some information, as we’re trying to do now,he or she
is inherently inviting you to receive that information. If as speaker he or she
offers you some goods (offers you a chopcolate, for example), or some services
(offers you type up and distribute class lists), the speaker is inherently
inviting you to receive those goods and services. Or if he or she demands
information of you, inherently you are invited top give that information.
And if he or she demands some goods or services of you (‘ooh, scratch my
back just there, please’), you are thereby invited to render that service or
provide the goods.
We can diagram the foregoing as follows:

give invite to receive
role
demand invite to give
goods and services objects and actions
commodity
information language itself
Combinations of options:
give goods and services = offer
give information = statement
demand goods and services = command
demand information = question
Of course, the addressee has some discretion:
+ _
offer accept reject
statement acknowledge contradict
command undertake refuse
question answer disclaim
These options are available even when the speaker is talking to him or
herself, assuming roles of both speaker and addressee, in an inferion dialogue.
Speakers are aware of the degree of latitude addressees have for responding.
To restrict the addressee’s discretion a bit, the speaker can add a ‘Mood tag’
to an utterance. So we have:
- Stay for a cup of coffee, won’t you?
- We aren’t out of milk, are we?
- You won’t touch Mummy’s scissors, will you?
These Mood tags have the function of explicitly signalling that a response is
required, and what kind of response it is expected to be.

Exercise 2.1
In the mother-child chewing gum text below, identify offers (give: goods and
services); commands (demand: goods and services); statements (give:
information); questions (demand: information). What do the speakers roles
suggest about the power relations inherent in the interaction?
Mother : Who put chewing gum on the carpet?
Child : I didn’t!
Mother : Who did?
Child : Michael did.
Mother : No!
Child : Yes.
Mother : No.
Child : Yes!
Father : It wasn’t Michael.
Mother : It was not Michael.
Child : It wasn’t me.
Mother : Well then who else had chewing gum?
Child : Nobody!
Mother : That’s right, so who was it?
Father : That will never come off there.
Mother : Yes, it will. Daddy’s got chewing gum on him. Who put it on
the floor?
Child : I didn’t (smaller voice)
Mother : Yes you did.
(Hasan 1983)

THE MOOD ELEMENT
In the chewing gum text, the verbal encounter is a kind of to and fro
argument centering around who did or did not put chewing gum in the
carpet.
C : I didn’t
M: Who did?
C : Michael did.
The above bits are called the Mood element. theMood element consists of two
parts:
 The Subject, whichis realised by a nominal group
 The Finite element, which is part of the verbal group.
I didn’t
Who did
Michael did
The remainder of each clause, if there is a remainder, is called the Residue.
It wasn’t Michael
That will never come off there
The Finite element is one of the small number of verbal operators expressing
tense, modality and polarity. These are listed on the next page.
Subject Finite
Mood
Subject Finite
Mood
Residue

Finite verbal operators
Temporal:
past present future
did, was does, is will,shall
had, used to has would, should
Modal:
low median high
can, may will, would must, ought to
could, might is to, was to need,
(dare) has to, had to
(Halliday 1994:76)
These Finite verbal operators also have negative counterparts, e.g. didn’t,
won’t, can’t, wouldn’t, mustn’t.
Sometimes the Finite element and the lexical verb are fused. This happens
when the verbs is in:
 Simple past or simple present: ate = did eat; eats = does eat
 Active voice: they eat pizza = they do eat pizza vs pizza is eaten
 Passive polarity: they eat = they do eat vs they don’t eat
 Neutral contrast: go away = do go away.
This fusion of the Finite element and lexical verbs becomes apparent in the
Mood tag:
A panda eats bamboo, doesn’t it?
The orchestra played well, didn’t it?
Pandas have big feet, don’t they?
In Declarative clauses, the Subject is that element which is picked up by the
pronounce in the Mood tag.
Subject it = panda
it = orchestra
they = pandas

Exercise 2.2
In the clauses below, identify the Subject and the Finite elements.
Remember the easiest way this is to convert the clause into Declarating
mood (a statement) if it isn’t already Declarative, then add the Mood tag.
1. Panda bears eat bamboo, (don’t they?) Subject = panda bears
Finite = do
2. Bamboo shoots are eaten by pandas.
3. The panda cup is really cute.
4. What pandas eat is bamboo shoots.
5. There are two pandas in Taronga Park Zoo.
6. It is cold where pandas live.
7. To be eaten by a bear would be awful.
8. Eating a bear would be just awful!
9. It is bamboo shoots that pandas eat.
10.It is’t wise to annoy a bear.
11.It is tragic that bamboo forests are being destroyed.
We have said that the Mood element consists of Subject and Finite. What is
the function of eachthese elements?
The Finite element has the function of anchoring or locating an exchange
with reference to the speaker and making a proposition something that can
be argued argued about. It does this in three ways: through primary tense,
modality and polarity.
Primary tense means past, present or future at the moment of speaking.
‘Now’ is the reference point.
That special order came yesterday.
The coming was before the time of speaking.
That special order will come tomorrow.
The coming is after the time of speaking.

Through primary tense, we can argue over when an event did/will/should
occur:
That special order came yesterday.
Has it arrived already?
Or
We needed it last Friday.
Modality indicates the speaker’s judgment of the probabilities or the
obligations involved in what he or she saying:
The special order may come tomorrow.
It had better!
Or
But we placed the order only three days ago.
Polarity, positive or negative:
There’s a unicorn in the garden! No, there isn’t.
There’s no life in Mars. There might be.
Finiteness combines the specification of polarity with the specification of
either temporal or modal reference to the speech event:
You shouldn’t be there = negative polarity, median modality.
He wasn’t well = negative polarity, past tense.
The Subject is that upon which the speaker rests his case in exchanges of
information, and the one responsible for insuring that the prescribed action is
or is not carried out in exchanges of goods and services.
Pandas eat bamboo (don’t they)
I’ll make some toast (shall I)
Turn that radio down (will you)

‘Pandas’, ‘I’ and ‘you’are the ones on which the validity of the information is
made to rest in each clause in turn. Please note that validity doesn’t equal
truth value; in ‘Turkeys eat bamboo’ turkeys is Subject, even though the
statement is untrue.
The Mood element – the Subject + Finite – thus the burden of the clause as
an interactive event. It remains constant, as the nub or the exchange,unless
some positive step is made to change it. So, for example, in the chewing gum
text above there is a shift in Subject in Turn 4 from ‘who/I’ to ‘Michael’. And
there is a shift in the Finite between ‘It wasn’t me’ and ‘Well, then, who else
had chewing gum?’

Exercise 2.3
The following clauses were selected from a text about Henry Ford. Locate
the Subject and Finite elements in the five clauses following the sample
clause.
Henry Ford built his first car in his backyard
1. as the work proceeded
2. a kindly neighbour moved his coal supply out of his car
3. It could not reverse
4. the driver must have been very uncomfortable
5. then men like Ford started to use the production line
Subject Finite (past) Predicator Complement Adjunct
Mood Residue
Pred.
Mood Residue
Pred. Complement Adjunct
Mood Residue
Pred.
Mood Residue
Pred. Complement
Mood Residue
Predicator Complement
Mood Residue

RESIDUE
In talking about clauses as exchange,so far we’ve talked only about the Mood
element, consisting of Subject and Finite.
We shall continue our disscussion of MOOD by turning now to the notion
Residue.
Let us begin with the first clause about Henry Ford:
Henry Ford built his first car in his backyard.
This clause displays a typical pattern of elements in the Residue, namely:
Predicator, Complement(s), Adjunct(s).
We’ll look at these elements in turn.
Predicator
The Predicator is the verb part of the clause, the bit which tells what’s doing,
happening or being. Thus, the Predicators in the above five clauses are:
‘build’, ‘proceed’, ‘move’, ‘reverse’, ‘have been’, ‘start to use’.
There are also non-finite (‘to’ + verb and verb + ‘ing’) clauses containing a
Predicator butno Finite element, for example:
so as to give Henry more room
giving Henry more room
Subject Finite(past) Predicator Complement Adjunct
Mood Residue
Predicator Complement Complement
Residue
Predicator Complement Complement
Residue

Complement
The Complement answers the question ‘is/had what’, ‘to whom’, ‘did to what’.
Thus, in the examples provided above, the following items are Complements:
this have the potential to be Subject.
Henry Ford built his first car in his backyard.
his first car answers the question: did to (built) what?
a kindly neighbour moved his coal supply out of his half.
his coal supply answers the question: is (have been) what?
Then men like Ford started to use the production line.
the production line answers the question: did to (started to use) what?
so as to give Henry more room.
Henry answers the question: to whom?
more room answers the question: did (to give) what?
The car had four bicycle wheels.
four bicycle wheels answer the question: had what?
It was a slow process.
a slow process answers the question: is what?
In the clause: His first car Henry Ford built in his backyard
His first car is still Complement, despite the different word order in the
clause, because it answers the question: did to what?
His first car Henry Ford built in his backyard.
Complement Subject Fin. Pred. Adjunct
Mood
Residue

Adjuncts
Circumtstantial Adjuncts answer the question ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘by
whom’.
Henry Ford built his first car in the backyard of his home
A kindly neighbour moved his coal supply out of his half
in the backyard of his home and out of his half are Adjuncts, answering the
question ‘where’.
In: The symphony was played badly by an amateur orchestra during a concert
Saturday night at the Performing Arts Centre
‘badly’ is an Adjunct, answering the question ‘how’
‘by an amateur orchestra’ is an Adjunct, answering the question ‘ by whom’
‘during a concert’ and ‘Saturday night’ are Adjuncts, answering the question
‘when’
‘at the Performing Arts Centre’ is an Adjunct, answering the question
‘where’.
These are called Circumstantial Adjuncts. There are several other types of
Adjuncts. One of these is centrally relevant to the analysis of MOOD. The
two which fall outside of Mood structure are Conjunctive Adjuncts and
Comment Adjuncts.
Conjunctive Adjuncts include items such as ‘for instance’, ‘anyway’,
‘moreover’, ‘meanwhile’, ‘therefore’, ‘nevertheless’.
Those Conjunctive Adjuncts have a textual function and so fall outside of
analysis of MOOD. That’s why ‘as’, ‘so as’, and ‘then’ in
as the work proceeded so as to give Henry more room
then men like Ford started to use the production line
are left unanalysed.
Subject Fin. Pred. Pred. Comp. Comp.
Subject Fin. Pred. Complement

Comment Adjuncts express the speaker’s comment on what he or she is
saying.
Comment Adjuncts include such items as ‘frankly’, ‘apparently’, ‘hopefully’,
‘broadly speaking’, ‘understandably’, to my surprise’. They express
interpersonal rather than textual meanings but fall outside of Mood-Residue
structure. Hence, ‘unfortunately’ in the clause below is shown as a Comment
Adjunct (and ‘however’ as a Conjunctive Adjunct) but neither fall within the
Mood-Residue structure.
Unfortunately however they were too late
Mood Adjuncts, on the other hand, both express interpersonal meanings and
do fall within MOOD structure, more particularly within the Mood elements.
Mood Adjuncts relate specifically to the meaning of the finite verbal
operators, expressing probability, usuality, obligation, inclination or time.
The principal items funcioning as Mood Adjuncts include the following:
Adjuncts of polarity and modality:
(a) Polarity: not, yes, no, so
(b) Probability: probably, possibly, certainly, perhaps, maybe
(c) Usuality: usually, sometimes, always, never, ever, seldom,
rarely
(d) Readiness: willingly, readily, gladly, certainly, easily
(e) Obligation: definitely, absolutely, possibly, at all cost, by all
means
Adjuncts of temporality:
(f) Time: yet, still, already, once, soon, just
(g) Typically: occasionally, generally, regularly, mainly
Adjuncts of mood:
(h) Obviousness: of course, surely, obviously, clearly
(i) Intensity: just, simple, merely, only, even, actually, really
(j) Degree: quite, almost, nearly, scarcely, hardly, absolutely,
totally, utterly, entirely, completely
Comment Adjunct Conjunctive Adjunct Subj. Fin Comp.
Mood Residue

Thus, in the following, ‘surely’, ‘of course’, and ‘already’ are analysed as
Mood Adjuncts and are included in the Mood element:
Surely he wasn’t being serious
Of course she had already met him
She had already met him of course
Be aware that the same word can function differently in different structural
configurations:
She can’t hear clearly on the phone
where ‘clearly’ is a Circumstantial Adjunct, telling ‘how’.
Clearly the man was innocent
Here ‘clearly’ is a Mood Adjunct, indicating speaker’s certainty.
Mood Adjunct Subj. Finite Pred. Complement
Mood Residue
Mood Adjunct Subj. Finite Mood Adjunct Pred. Complement
Mood Residue
Subj. Finite Mood Adjunct Pred. Complement Mood Adjunct
Residue
Mood
Subj. Finite Predicator Circumstantial Adjunct Circ. Adjunct
Mood Residue
Mood Adjunct Subject Finite Complement
Mood Residue

MOOD TYPES
declarative
indicative polar
Mood interrogative
imperative Wh
Mood in English is realised by the positionin the clause of the Subject and
Finite. Note how these two elements ‘move around’, depending on the mood
of the examples below.
Indicative Mood
Indicated mood is realised by ( ) the features Subject + Finite. The order of
the Subject and Finite realises Declarative and Interrogative.
Declarative
unmarked: Subject + Finite
The car had four bicycle wheels
marked: Finite + Subject
Then came the production line
Subject Finite Complement
Pred. Finite Subject
Residue Mood

Interrogative
Polar (Yes/No Questions): Finite + Subject
Did Henry Ford build his first car in the backyard?
Should I be using unleaded petrol in my car?
Wh-Questions: Querying Subject Wh/Subject ^ Finite
Who built a car in his backyard?
What is that thing?
What happened one morning in May 1896?
Querying Residue: Wh+Fin+Subj where C/Wh (Complement is queried) or
A/Wh (Adjunct is queried)
What did Henry Ford build?
Finite Subject Predicator Complement Circ. Adjunct
Mood Residue
Finite Subject Predicator Complement Circ. Adjunct
Mood Residue
Subject/Wh Fin. Pred. Complement Circ. Adjunct
Mood Residue
Subject/Wh Finite Complement
Mood Residue
Subject/Wh Finite Pred. Circ. Adjunct
Mood Residue
Complement/Wh Finite Subject Predicator
Mood
Residue

What did Ford do in 1896?
Where did Ford build his first car?
Exclamatives: Wh+S+F+P where C/Wh or A/Wh
What big eyes you have!
How banal these examples are!
How you ‘ve grown!
Complement/Wh Finite Subject Predicator Circ. Adjunct
Mood
Residue
Adjunct/Wh Finite Subject Predicator Complement
Mood
Residue
Complement/Wh Subject Finite
Residue Mood
Complement/Wh Subject Finite
Residue Mood
Adjunct/Wh Subject Finite Predicator
Mood
Residue

Imperatives
In Imperatives the Mood element may consist of Subject + Finite, Subject
only, Finite only, or they may have no Mood element. There will always be a
Predicator.
Don’t you put it there. (Subject + Finite)
Let’s put it there. (Subject)
Don’t put it there. (Finite)
Put it there. (No Subject or Finite)
Commands are variable in their realisation:
Turn it down! (Imperative)
Will you turn it down please? (Polar Imperative)
You really ought to turn it down. (Declarative)
Why don’t you turn it down? (Wh-Interrogative)
Offers also don’t have a typical grammatical realisation.
Have a chocolate! (Imperative)
Like a coffee? (Polar Interrogative)
I’ll make some toast. (Declarative)
I’ll turn it up, shall I? (Declarative+tag)
As we can see, there is no one-to-one correspondence between semantic and
grammatical categories. Despite this, we rarely have any trouble
distinguishing between commands and questions: for example, when a
mother carrying a load of groceries into the house says to her son ‘Can you
move your gym boots?’ The context provides an interpretative frame and
only rarely do misunderstand the speech function of an utterance. This is one
reason why we need a theory of language in which context is a central
notion. As Halliday suggests:
There is rarely any misunderstanding, since the listener operates on the basic
principle of all linguistic interaction – the principle that what the speaker
says makes sense in the context in which he is saying it.
(Halliday 1994:95)

Exercise 2.4
Check your understanding of MOOD by analysing the following text, which
is divided into clauses for you.
Key:
S = Subject C = Complement
F = Finite A = Circumstantial Adjunct
MA = Mood Adjunct M = Mood
P = Predicator R = Residue
1. Once a man was walking in a park
2. when he came across a penguin.
3. He took him to a policeman
4. and ( ) said, 5. ‘I have just found this penguin.’
6. ‘What should I do? 7. The policeman replied,
8. ‘Take him to the zoo.’
9. The next day the policeman saw the same man in the same park
10. and the man was still carrying the penguin with him.

11. The policeman was rather surprised
12. and ( ) walked up to the man 13. and ( ) asked,
14. ‘Why are you still carrying that penguin about?
15. Didn’t you take it to the zoo?’
16. ‘I certainly did’ 17. replied the man,
18. ‘and it was a great idea
19. because he really enjoyed it
20. so today I ‘m taking him to the movies!’

CHAPTER 3
TRANSITIVITY

INTRODUCTION
In this chapter we shall talk about the clause as representation. Through the
system of TRANSITIVITY, we shall be exploring the clause in its
who=does=what=to=whom, who/what=is=what/who, when, where, why, or
how function!
There are, in fact, three semantic categories which explain in a general way
how phenomena of the real world are represented as a linguistic structures.
These are:
 Circumstances
 Processes
 Participants
CIRCUMSTANCES
Circumstances answer such questions as when, where, why, how, how many
and as what. They realise meanings about:
Time (temporal): tells when and is probed by when? how often? how long?
e.g. He goes to church every Sunday.
Place (spatial) tells where and is probed by where? how far? e.g. He goes to
church every Sunday.
Manner: tells how
 Means: tells by what means and is probed by what with? e.g. He goes
by taxi.
 Quality: tells how and is probed by how? e.g. He loved her madly,
deeply, truly!
 Comparison: tells like what and is probed by what like? e.g. He was
jumping around like a monkey on a roof.

Cause: tells why
 Reason: tells what causes the Process and is probed by why? or how?
e.g. The sheep died of thirst.
 Purpose: tells the purpose and is probed by what for? e.g. He went to
the shop for cigarettes.
 Behalf: tells for whose sake and is probed by for whom? e.g. He went
to the shop for his mother.
Accompaniment: tells with(out) who or what and is probed by who or what
else? e.g. I left work without my briefcase.
Matter: tells about what or with reference to what and is probed by what
about? e.g. This book is talking about functional grammar.
Role: tells what as and is probed by as what? e.g. He lived a quiet life as a bee
keeper.
These are illustrated in the following made-up text:
No more will be said about Circumstances here; however, you are encouraged
to note the analysed examples throughout the remainder of this chapter.
Last Saturday night (Circ:time) the local council held a fancy
dress ball for charity (Circ:cause) in the Town Hall (Circ:place).
The Lord Mayor, who came with his current lady
(Circ:accompaniment), was dressed as Old King Cole
(Circ:role). He ponced around regally (Circ:manner), and then
made a politically correct speech about the homeless
(Circ:matter).

PROCESSES
Processes are central to TRANSITIVITY. Participants and Circumstances
are incumbent upon the doings, happenings, feelings and beings. This
suggests that there are different kinds of goings on,which necessarily involve
different kinds of Participants in varying Circumstances.
There are indeed seven different Process types identified by Halliday:
Material doing bodily, physically, materially
Behavioural behaving physiologically and psychologically
Mental sensing emotionally, intellectually, sensorily
Verbal saying lingually, signally
Relational being equal to, or some attribute of
Existential existing there exists
Meteorological weathering
Processes are realised by verbs. Traditionally verbs have been defined as
‘doing words’. But as the above list indicates, some verbs are not doing words
at all, but rather express states of being or having. Moreover, there are
different orders of doings and beings. For example, to write a funny story, to
tell a funny story and to hear a funny story are three different orders of
meaning. And to suggest that ‘Barry Tuckwell is the finest living horn
player’ is to define or assign a unique identity to Barry Tuckwell. To say that
‘Barry Tuckwell is a fine horn player’ is to ascribe a quality to him which
also applies to some other horn players. The statement places Barry
Tuckwell in a class orgroup composed of fine horn players. So just as there
are different orders of doing, there are different orders of being. The Process
types listed above chapture the differences in orders of doing and being (i.e.
of meaning) possible in English.

Non-Relational Processes:Processes of Doing
Material Processes
Material Processes are Processes of material doing. They express the notion
that some entity physically does something – which may be done to some
other entity.
So clauses with a Material Process obligatorily have a doing (Process) and a
doer (Participant).
The fuel ignites
Participant Process
The youngster wiggled in his heart
Participant Process Circumstance
The entity who or which one does something is the Actor.
There optionally is an entity to which the Process is extended or directed.
This entity which may be done is the Goal.
The exhausted bushwalker dropped his pack
Participant:
Actor
Process:
Material
Participant:
Goal
The youngster wiggled his loose tooth
Participant:
Actor
Process:
Material
Participant:
Goal
The Goal is most like the traditional direct object, which we’ve told only
transitive verbs may take. This is interesting since more than 40% of verbs in
the dictionary are listed as being both transitive and intransitive. Have the
dictionary writers made a mistake? Yes and no. The reason for the non-
congruence is that verbs in and of themselves are not transitive or
intransitive. Clauses are.

There are two varieties of Material Processes: creative and dispositive. In the
creative type, the Goal is brought about by the Process.
Handel wrote the Messiah
Actor Material Goal
In the dispositive type, we have doings and happenings.
Kerr dismissed Whitlam
Actor Material Goal
The bushwalker tripped
Actor Material
The gun discharged
Actor Material
Material Processes ‘take’ both the active voice (as above) and the passive.
Whitlam was dismissed by Kerr
Goal Material Actor
The gun was discharged
Goal Material
With the some of these, we are more used to meeting the Process in the
middle voice (one participant).
The fuel ignites
Actor Material
The gun discharged
Actor Material
How do we recognise a Material Process? Use the ‘do’ probe. What did X do?
(to Y?) What happened to Y?

Use of these probes tells us that in the following nursery rhyme, all the
Processes are Material:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
Actor Material Circ:place
to fetch a pail of water
Material Goal
Jack fell down
and broke his crown
Material Goal
and Jill came tumbling after
There is no further Participant which may be incumbent on Material
Processes, called Range.
Mental Processes
Mental Processes are ones of sensing: feeling, thinking, perceiving. There are
three types: affective or reactive (feeling), cognitive (thinking) and
perceptive (perceiving through the five senses).
These Processes differ from Material ones as much as the letter are physical,
moving, overt doings. Mental Processes are mental, covert kinds of goings-
on. And the Participant involved in Mental Processes is not so much acting
or acting upon in a doing sense, as sensing – having feelings, perceiving or
thinking.

Thus, the Participant roles in Mental Processes are Senser and Phenomenon.
The Senser is by definition of a conscious being, for only those who are
conscious can feel, think or see. We can of course attribute or impute
cosciousness to non-sensate beings: e.g. That toaster doesn’t like me, I swear.
The Phenomenon is that which is sensed: felt, thought or seen.
That toaster doesn’t like me
Participant:
Senser
Process:
Mental
Participant:
Phenomenon
We can have clauses with Senser and Phenomenon:
Mark likes new clothes
Senser Mental:Affect Phenomenon
Senser only: Mark understood
Senser Mental:Cognitive
Phenomenon only: Loneliness hurts
Phenomenon Mental:Affect
Notice that several of these are bi-directional:
Mark likes nice clothes
Nice clothes please Mark
Phenomenon Mental:Affect Senser
I don’t understand this stuff
Senser Mental:Cognition Phenomenon
This stuff baffles me
Phenomenon Mental:Cognitive Senser

Note that this is not the same distinctionas active and passive voice. The
four examples immediately above are all active, but can ‘take’ the passive,
and indeed the ‘please’type usually do:
Nice clothes please Mark (active)
Mark is pleased by nice clothes (passive)
This stuff baffles me (active)
Phenomenon Mental:Cognition Senser
I am baffled by this stuff (passive)
In the above examples, all of the Phenomena are things, but thePhenomenon
may equally well be a fact.
I realise the difficulties
I realise the fact that there are difficulties
The fact that they were cruel incensed Mark
Mental Processes, like Verbal Processes, have the potential to project.
Projection occurs when one clause suggests that something was thought or
said (the projecting clause) and another, separate clause indicates what it
was that was thought or said (the projected clause). The projecting and
projected clauses are each analysed in their own right. In the pairs below, the
first clause example does not project while the second does.

1. I realise the difficulties
I realise
Senser Mental:Cognition
(that) there are difficulties
Existential Existent
2. I know the man who called on you
I know
Senser Mental:Cognition
(that) someone called on you
Actor Material Goal
Behavioural Processes
Behavioural Processes are Processes of physiological and psychological
behavior, like breathing, dreaming, snoring, smiling, hiccuping, looking,
watching, listening, and pondering.
There is one obligatory Participant: the Behaver. Like a Senser, the behaver
is a conscious being. But the Process is one of doing, not sensing. So we can
have:
She lives in the fast lane
Behaver Behavioural Circumstance:place

He snores loudly
Behaver Behavioural Circumstance:Manner
We can have the enacted behaviour mentioned:
He heaved a great sigh
Behaver Behavioural Range
He threw a tantrum
Range specifies the range or scope of the Process, defining its coordinates or
domain. Range appears in several guises, so we shall return to it below. But
in Behaviour Processes, Range names the behaviour enacted.
Sometimes it it difficult to distinguish Behavioural Processes and Range
from Material Processes with Goal or Range. Several examples of each are
provided below to illustrate the difference.
He did the shopping
He took a nap
He threw a tantrum
He drew a ragged breath
He drove a hard bargain
He shopped
He took two cases
He threw the spear
He drew a picture
He drove a Porsche
Actor Material Goal
In the first set, the Processes are physiological or psychological and the
Range element names the actual process. In the second set someone or
something is actually acting, sometimes upon someone or something else.

Verbal Processes
Verbal Processes are processes of saying, or more accurately, of symbolically
signalling. Very often these are realised by two distinct clauses: the
projecting clause encodes a signal source (Sayer) and a signalling (Verbal
Process) and the other (projected clauses) realises what was said. As with
Mental Processes which project, the projected and projecting clauses are each
analysed in their own right.
She said I don’t like brussel sprouts
She explained that she didn’t like brussel sprouts
The Sayer (signal source) need not to be a conscious being.
The sign says ‘No Smoking’
The alarmed clock screamed ‘Get up’
There are three other Participants that may be incumbent upon Verbal
Processes:
 Receiver: the one to whom the verbalisation is addressed
 Target: one acled upon verbally (insulted, complimented, etc)
 Range/Verbiage: a name of verbalisation itself
John told Jenny a rude joke
Sayer Verbal Receiver Verbiage
Keating slurred Howard
Sayer Verbal Target
Sayer Verbal Senser Mental:Affect Phenomenon
Sayer Verbal Senser Mental:Affect Phenomenon
Sayer Verbal
Sayer Verbal
Material
Material

Examples of Verbal Processes are listed below. Some are used only for
reporting: He denied (that) he had had anything to do with it and others for
both reporting: He said that he had had nothing to do with it and quoting: He
said, ‘I had nothing to do with it’.
Reporting Quoting (and Reporting)
insinuate, imply, remind, say, tell, remark, observe,
hypothesize, deny, continue, point out, report,
make out, claim announce, shout, cry, ask,
pretend, maintain demand, inquire, query,
interrupt, replay, explain,
protest, warn, insist
There is one further Participant role that needs to be discussed. This is
Beneficiary.
The Beneficiary is the one to whom or for whom the Process is said to take
place.
In Material Processes the Beneficiary is either the Recipient or the Client.
Recipient is the one to whom goods are given. The Client is the one for whom
services are provided.
1. I sold the car to John
Actor Material Goal Recipient
I sold (to) John the car
Actor Material Recipient Goal
2. They threw a farewell party for Jane
Actor Material Goal Client
They threw (for) Jane a farewell party
Actor Material Client Goal

To find out if a prepositional phrase with to or for is a Beneficiary or not, see
if it could occur naturally without the preposition, as in the second example
in each of the above pairs.
In Verbal Processes the Beneficiary is Receiver, a Participant role we’ve
already met. The Receiver is the one who is being addressed. The Receiver is
also sometimes called the addressee.
You promised the doctor you ‘d quit smoking
Range
Range is the element that specifies the scope or domain of the Process.
The Range in Material Processes typically occurs in the middle clauses, those
with Actor only, no Goal.
She dropped a curtsy
Actor Material Range
She dropped an egg
Actor Material Goal
Another distinction is that Material Processes with Goal can ‘take’
resultative attributes, while Material Processes with Range cannot.
Kelly shot Fuller dead
Actor Material Goal Resultative Attribute
She dropped a curtsy dead
Actor Material Range
Sayer Verbal Receiver Actor Material

Also in Material Processes with Goals, the Goal can be changed into an
appropriate pronoun and still make sense in context:
Kelly shot Fuller dead. Kelly shot him dead.
This doesn’t work with Material Processes with Range:
He dropped a curtsy. He dropped it.
The ‘doing’ type Processes, their meanings and key Participants are
summarised below.
Process Type Category Meaning Participants
Material doing, happening Actor, Goal
Behavioural behaving Behaver, Range
Mental sensing Senser, Phenomenon
Verbal saying, signalling Sayer, Target, Receiver

Exercise 3.1
Analyse the following short text for TRANSITIVITY. You will need first to
identify the Processes and then assign the appropriate Participant roles.
Then identify the Circumstantial elements, if present.
I was driving along the coast road when the car suddenly lurched to
one side. At first I thought a tyre had gone but then I saw telegraph
poles collapsing like matchsticks. The rocks came tumbling across the
road and I had to abandon the car. When I got back to town, well, as I
said, there wasn’t much left.
(Adkins and McKean 1983:21)
I was driving along the coast road
when the car suddenly lurched to one side.
********
At first I thought (that) a tyre had gone
but then I saw telegraph poles
collapsing like matchsticks.
The rocks came tumbling across the road
and I had to abandon the car.
When I got back to town,

well, as I said there wasn’t much left.
Relational Processes: Processes of Being and Having
Relational Processes involve states of being (including having). They can be
classified according to whether tey are being used to identify something
(Barry Tuckwell may be the finest living horn player) or to assign a quality
to something (Barry Tuckwell is a fine horn player).
Processes which establish an identity are called Identifying Processes and
Processes which assign a quality are called Attributive Processes. Each has its
own characteristic Participant roles. In Attributive these are Carrier and
Attribute.
Barry Tuckwell is a fine horn player
In Identifying Processes the Participants roles are Token and Value.
Barry Tuckwell may be the finest living horn player
Relational Processes can be further sub-classified according to whether they
are: intensive, possessive or circumstantial.
Intensive Paul Keating is arrogant.
Possessive Paul Keating has dark hair.
Circumstantial
Circumstance as Attribute The yolk is in the centre.
Circumstance as Process Albumen sorrounds the yolk.
The options available to Relational Processes can be shown as presented on
the next page:

Attributive: Carrier, Attribute
Identifying: Token, Value
Relational Processes
Intensive
Possessive
Circumstantial
This network indicates that all Relational Processes are either Attributive or
Identifying, and at the same time, are either intensive, possessive or
circumstantial. This gives a paradigm of six possibilities.
Cytoplasm is sort of a jelly-like material
Carrier Attributive:intensive Attribute
Plant cells have a cell wall
Carrier Attributive:possessive Attribute
The shell appears transparent
The yolk is inside the albumen
Carrier Attributive:circumstantial Attribute
The nucleus is the brain of the cell
Token Identifying:intensive Value
The transducer is Dr Buick’s
All cells contain cytoplasm
Token Identifying:possessive Value
Tuesday was the deadline
Albumen sorrounds the yolk
Token Identifying:circumstantial Value

Relational Processes play a key role ineducation in subjects such as science,
geography, mathematics and economics. It ti through these Processes that
these subjects create an ordered technical vocabulary, and a way of
classifying the world. They are fundamental in how the above-mentioned
subjects construct the world.
It is sometimes difficult to tell whether a Relational Process is Identifying or
Attributive. Perhaps the easiest way to distinguish between them is that
Identifying Processes are reversible. That is, the clause can be reversed in
order and the semantic relationship still holds. For example:
Barry Tuckwell may be the finest living horn player
The finest living horn player may be Barry Tuckwell
Value Identifying:intensive Token
In each case the role (the finest living horn player) and the occupant (Barry
Tucwell) are the same.
If we take a difficult case such as:
A whale is a mammal
Carrier Attributive:intensive Attribute
We find that, while it is reversible – a mammal is a whale – the relationship
does not hold from the original. That is, while all whales a are mammals, all
mammals are not whales, as ‘a mammal is a whale’ suggests. The clause – a
whale is a mammal – is assigning class membership, not identification.
The reversibility test works because Identifying Processes have a passive
voice; that is, the clause can be made passive. However, is does not change
its form when it is passive so a further test is to substitute a Relational
Process which does change. For example:
The nucleus is the brain of the cell
The nucleus comprises the brain of the cell

The brain of the cell is comprised of the nucleus
Value Identifying:intensive Token
Exercise 3.2
Halliday defines Value as a referent, function or status, and Token as the
sign, name, form, holder, occupant. In general terms, the Value will be more
abstract, general and will provide the category. Token is more concrete, more
specific and provides the instance.
Try identifying the Token and Value in each of the following clauses. You
could use one colour for Token and another for Value.
1. Six undergraduate students served as subjects for the experiment.
2. Increased responsiveness may be reflected in feeding behaviour.
3. His attitude constitutes the greatest barrier to progress.
4. X = 2
5. This outline represents my first attempt at a plan of the course.
6. The kulaks were the one who employed others.
7. That’s one of the points that Galbraith mode.
8. The Board of Directors are the decision makers.
9. The first to arrive will be Fred.
10.The fuels of the body are carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

Listed here are some of the more common Relational Processes:
Attributive Identifying
be become go be become equal
get turn grow add up to play act as
keep stay remain call mean define
look appear seem represent spell express
smell taste feel form give constitute
sound end up turn out imply stand for symbolise
last weigh concern realise indicate signify
cost has belong to betoken take up span
need require resemble occupy own
include involve contain
comprise provide cause
Attributive
Old, unused fruit is/becomes/goes/gets/turns/grows mouldly.
The hunters kept/stayed/remain very still.
The light through the clouds looked/appeared/seemed like liquid gold.
That smells/tastes/feels/sounds lovely.
Plants have/need/require cell walls.
Identifying
X is/equals/represents/stands for/signifies/means the horizontal axis.
The main parts comprise/constitute/form the human brain.
The nucleus is/acts as the brain of the cell.
Virures cause/are involved in most outbreaks of flu.
This type of embrochure is called/is known as/is termed Einsetzen.
Before you accuse us of contradiction, note that the same word can
function as different Processes, depending on its meaning incontext.

So for example:
She smelled the lovely flowers
Senser Mental:Percept Phenomenon
The baking bread smelled delicious
Carrier Attributive:circ Attribute
She felt badly about his defeat
Senser Mental:Affect Circ:Manner Circ:Matter
Feel this lovely, soft towel!
Mental:Perception Phenomenon
He felt crook
Carrier Attribute:intens Attribute
The new uniforms felt scratchy and hot
Carrier Attribute:intens Attribute
Existential Processes
Existential Processes are processes of existence.
There ‘s a unicorn in the garden
Existential Existent Circumstance:Place
‘There’ has no representational function; it is required because of the need
for a Subject in English.
Existential Processes are expressed by verbs or existing: ‘be’, ‘exist’,
‘arise’ and the Existent can be a Phenomenon of any kind.
There ensued a protracted legal battle

If in an Existential clause containing a Circumstantial element the
Circumstantial element is Thematic, the word ‘there’ may be ommited:
On the matinee jacket was a blood-stain
Circumstance:place Existential Existent
There was a blood-stain on the matinee jacket
Existential Existent Circumstance:place
Existential ‘there’ is not to be confused with Circumstantial ‘there’:
There ‘s your book (right where you left it)
Attrib:Circ. Attributive Carrier
There ‘s even a book about great Australian dunnies
Existential Existent Circumstance:matter
‘There’ in ‘There’s your book’ tells where the book is. ‘There’ in ‘There’s
even a book about great Australian dunnies’ is telling you that such a
book exists.
Meteorological Processes
The ‘It’ has no representational
function, but does-provide a Subject.
These are analysed as Process:
Meteorological.
The text overleaf is analysed for you. As in main scientific and technical
texts, many of the Processes are Relational.
Hepatitis B is a viral disease which affects the liver.
Carrier Attrib:intens Attributive
It ‘s hot
It ‘s windy
It ‘s five o’clock
Meteorological

It is one of the most prevalent STDs worldwide.
Token Id:intens Value Circ:place
There are over 300 million carriers.
Extential Existent
Because the virus causes no symtomps
Token Id:circ. Value
most people don’t know
Senser Mental:cognition
(that) they have the disease.
Carrier Attrib:possessive Attribute
In its acute form, Hepatitis B causes many severe symptoms.
Circ:place Token Id:circ. Value
These include weakness, fatigue, fever and vomiting.
Tiken Id:intens Value
Although this form is not usually fatal
Carrier Attrib:intens Attribute
the victim frequently requires hospitalisation.
Carrier Attrib:possessive Attribute
(Adapted from an information brochure sponsored by SmithKline
Beecham Biologicals)

Exercise 3.3
Analyse the following text for TRANSITIVITY. Most, but not all of the
Processes are Relational or Existentional.
Whale are sea-living mammals.
Some species of whales are very large indeed
and the blue whale << >> is the largest animal to have lived on earth.
<< which can exceed 30 m in length >>
The whale looks rather like a fish.
but there are important differences in its external structure;
its tail consists of a pair of broad, flat, horizontal paddles
(the tail of a fish is vertical)
and it has a single nostril on top of its large, broad head.
The skin is smooth and shiny
and beneath it lies a layer of fat (the blubber).
This is up to 30cm in thickness

and serves to conserve heat and body fluids.
(Adapted from Adkins and McKean 1983:26)
EXTRA PARTICIPANTS AND
CAUSATION
In many Process types there is the possibility of the Process being initiated
externally. For instance we often find Material clauses like:
The devil made me do it.
Here there is a third Participant called the Initiator and the Participant roles
in the clause would be analysed as follows:
The devil made me do it
Initiator
Actor
Material Goal
A similar situation can be found in Relational Processes:Attributive. Here
the additional Participant is called the Attributor. So we would analyse the
following clause as:
She drives me crazy
Attributor Attributive Carrier Attribute
In Identifying clauses, the additional Participant is called the Assigner (the
one who assigns the identity).
They call me Bruce
Assigner Id: Value Token

In Mental Process tha additional Participant is called the Inducer. For
example:
She made me rethink my attitudes
Inducer
Senser
Mental Phenomenon
In each of the examples in this series, the Process is coded as having an
external cause; i.e. another Participant is necessary to bring the Process into
being.
Summary of Processes and Incumbent Participants:
Process ---------------------------Participant--------------------------
type er ed causer other
Material Actor Goal Initiator Beneficiary, Range
Behavioural Behaver Range
Mental Senser Phenomenon Inducer
Verbal Sayer Verbiage Target
Identifying Token Value Assigner
Attributive Carrier Attribute Attributor

CHAPTER 4
CLAUSES AND CLAUSE
COMPLEXES

INTRODUCTION
Systemic functional grammar talks about clauses and clause complexes
rather than sentences. Why the terms ‘clause’ and ‘clause complex’ when
most people already know the word ‘sentence’?
The sentence is a unit of written language; it does not apply to spoken
language. People do not speak in sentences. It you’ve ever tried to transcribe
audiotaped or videotaped language material, you will have come up against
this fact very quickly. People do, however, speak in message, which are
realised grammatically in clauses and clause complexes. Hence, the latter
terms are equally applicable to spoken and written language, and therefore
are preffered.
Rank scale: Traditional vs Systemic Functional
Traditional (written) Systemic Functional (written and spoken)
sentence clause
phrase group
word word
A clause can be defined as the largest grammatical unit, and a clause
complex is two more clauses logically connected.
These points are illustrated in the following example:
John invited the Wilsons to the party but they didn’t come which made
John rather indignant as he had thought he was doing them a favour.
The text comprises one sentence (everything between the initial upper case
letter and the full-stop), but five clauses:
John invited the Wilsons to the party
but they didn’t come
which make John rather indignant
as he had thought
he was doing them a favour.
These five clauses together comprise a clause complex.

RECOGNISING CLAUSE BOUNDARIES
Because MOOD, TRANSITIVITY and THEME – RHEME are analysed at
clause level, it is essential to know where clauses begin and end. The
following outline attempts to define ‘clauseness’ and to classify types of
clauses.
Minor vs Major Clauses
A minor clause has no Predicator; major clause do. The principal types of
minor clause are as follows:
Address (vocative) Rhonda, sweety cakes.
Greeting Hi! Good day!
Exclamations Oh burger! Streuth!
None of the above has a Predicator, and so each one is a minor clause.
In the example about John and the Wilsons, on the other hand, each
segment has a Predicator (in bold) and so each is a major clause.
as he had thought
Major Clauses: Independent vs Dependent
While each clause in the above text is a major clause, some of them are
independent and some of them are dependent.
Independent clause ‘can stand alone’. Dependent clauses ‘can’t stand alone’
in that particular environment. So in the following, ‘although Tony is

intellegent’ is a dependent clause; it cannot stand alone. ‘he failed’, however,
is independent; it can stand alone.
Although Tony is intelligent, he failed.
However, if we had:
Tony is intelligent.
However, he failed.
both would be independent clauses.
Independent clauses realise speech functions – that is, make statements, ask
questions, command and exclaim – whereas dependent clauses pick up Mode
of the primary clause. So, in the following example, the dependent clause
‘who is highly intelligent’ has no Mood of this own; it picks up the
interrogative mood of ‘Why did Tony, <<who is highly intelligent>>, fail?’
The whole clause complex is Interrogative. It is not the case that ‘Why did
Tony fail’ (the independent clause) is interrogative and ‘who is highly
intelligent’ (the dependent clause) declarative.
Exercise 4.1
Identify the independent and dependent clauses below.
as he had thought

Independent Clauses: Non-Elliptical vs
Elliptical
Elliptical clauses have bits ‘ellipsed’, that is, left out. But these bits are
recoverable from the accompanying text.
Non-Elliptical Elliptical
Who is the best man? Michael Jones (is the best man)
Are they having a reception? Yes (they are having a reception)
Joanne’s mother began to cry and (she) was handed a hanky
In the elliptical examples above, we know that Michael Jones is the best
man, not the captain of the local cricket team, because ‘is the best man’ is
recoverable from the accompanying text.
Major: Dependent Clauses
A major dependent clause must EITHER be initiated by a
 Subordinating relator: e.g. since, if, although, because e.g. as he had
thought
 A relator Wh-word: e.g. who, which, when e.g. which made John
rather indignant
 Relative word that e.g. (that) he was doing them a favour
OR
the verbal group functioning as the Predicator of the dependent clause must
be in one of the following forms:
perceptive (infinitive) to to + verb
imperfective (participial) ing verb + ing

Independent Dependent
You must flick this switch to get the other connection
It’s my invention to keep sandwiches in
She stood there cooking meals from dawn to dusk
He avoided detection hiding himself in the thicket
Major: Dependent Clauses: Embedded vs
Non-Embedded
Embedding is a mechanism whereby an element (in ourc case, a clause)
comes to function within the structure of a group, which itself is a
constituent of a clause. So we get:
Non-embedded: It’s my own invention – to keep sandwiches in
Embedded: I needed something (to keep sandwiches in)
In the first example – to keep sandwiches in is not embedded. Instead, it is a
dependent clause, one which adds a kind of afterthought. In the second, ((to
keep sandwiches in)) is embedded, and therefore, does not function as a
dependent clause in its own right, but rather acts more like a word qualifying
or modifying the meaning of ‘something’.
Non-embedded: The prisoner, who hid in the thicket, escaped
Embedded: The prisoner who hid in the thicket escaped, but his
accomplice was recaptured.
Here, the first who hid in the thicket is not embedded; it is a dependent clause
which adds more information about the event under discussion. There are
two pieces of information in this clause complex: ‘The prisoner escaped’ and
‘said prisoner hid in the thicket’. In the second clause complex who hid in the
thicket is embedded. This embedded bit serves to define which prisoner it was
who hid in the thicket to distinguish this prisoner from some other. In this
example there are again two pieces of information, but they are as follows:
‘The prisoner who hid in the thicket escaped,’ and ‘his accomplice was
raptured.’

When analysed, for example, for TRANSITIVITY, the difference between
embedded and non-embedded clauses looks like this:
The prisoner, who hid in the thicket, escaped
The prisoner escaped
Actor Material
who hid in the thicket
The prisoner who hid in the thicket escaped, but his accomplice was
recaptured.
The prisoner ((who hid in the thicket)) escaped
Actor Material
but his accomplice was recaptured
Goal Material
The characteristic functions of an embedded elements are as:
 Qualifier in a nominal group
e.g. The prisoner ((who hid in the thicket))...
I need something ((to keep sandwiches in))
 Head of a nominal group (nominalisation)
e.g. That you are sorry isn’t enough
To know Garfield is to love him
Knowing Garfield is loving him
 Qualifier in an adverbial group
e.g. Bitting off more ((than you can chew)) is silly
Carrier Attrib:intens Attribute

CLAUSE COMPLEXES
A clause considered from the viewpoint of TRANSITIFITY, MOOD and
THEME – RHEME is a multivariate structure: that is, one made up of units
of different rank. A clause complex, on the other hand, is a univariate
structure (one made upof units of the same rank). A clause complex is
comprised of two or more clause logically connected, or put another way, a
clause complex is a sequence of processes which are logically connected.
Clauses can be combined through one of two logico-semantic relations:
Expansion or Projection. We will consider Expansion first.
Expansion
Expansion links Processes by providing additional information. It involves
three types of relationship: Elaboration, Extension and Enhancement.
Elaboration
This involves four relationships: specifying in greater detail, restatement,
exemplification, and comment. The types of logical relationship covered
under Elaboration are the ‘i.e.’, ‘e.g.’ and ‘namely’ type. Elaboration is
shown through the sign =. For example:
This stew is awful = it’s too salty
This stew is awful = it’s completely off
I’ve played in several orchestras
= I’ve played in the Darwin Shympony and the Brisbane Sinfonia
Barry Tuckwell may be the world’s best living horn player
= he’s very, very talented
In each case above, the second clause is a sort of paraphrase or afterthought
of the first. You can think of Elaboration as the ‘that is to say’ relationship.

Extension
This extends the meaning of one clause by adding something new. It involves
‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘or’ type relationships and is marked by a + sign. For
example:
I play a French horn
+ and my sister plays oboe
I love French horn
+ but I’m less rapt with saxophones
I could practise this evening
+ or I could lazily watch TV
In each of these cases, the second clause adds a new, but more related
meaning to the first. You could think of Extension as the ‘moreover’ or
‘furthermore’ relationship.
Enhancement
This involves circumstantial relationships where the circumstantial
information is coded as new clause rather than within a clause. This can be
temporal, conditional, causal, concessive, spatial or manner. It is marked
through an x sign. For example:
I went to rehearsal
x after I lectured all day (temporal)
You don’t have time to practise
x if you teach both day and night (causative)
We didn’t have rehearsal on Monday
x because it was a public holiday (causal)
We had rehearsal on Monday
x although it was a public holiday (concessive)

We reheased at Kedron Park High School
x where we always rehearse (spatial)
I’m developing a more pleasing sound
x by changing my embouchure (manner)
Projection
Projection links clauses by having one process projected through another
either by quotingor reporting. Both meanings (ideas) and wordings
(locutions) can be projected. A projected wording is marked with “ and a
projected idea is marked with ‘. We can also project propositions
(information) or proposal (goods and services). Projection occurs through
Mental and Verbal Processes. For example:
Verbal:
The conductor said
“ The next concert is in July
The conductor said
“ That the next concert is in July
Mental:
I thought
‘ the next concert is in July
I thought
‘ that the next concert was to be in July
I don’t want
‘ to play in a brass band
The grammatical criterion for distinguishing between types of Mental
Processes is whether they can project or not, and if they can project, what
they can project. Mental Processes of perception (see, hear, etc.) do not
project. Mental Processes of cognition (think, remember, consider) can

project propositions by both quoting and reporting. Mental Processes of
reaction (want, desire) can project proposals.
Taxis
Expansion and projecton combine with systems of interdependence, or taxis,
to make up the systems for joining clauses in English.
Taxis refers to the dependency status of the clauses in a clause complex. The
term hypotaxis is used to refer to relationships in which one clause is
dependent on another. In traditional grammar this is called subordination.
The term parataxis is used when one clause follows on from another. In
traditional grammar this is called coordination.
In hypotaxis we refer to clauses as being either dominant or dependent.
Status is marked thriugh Greek letters. Alpha marks the dominant clause.
Clauses are marked alpha, beta, gamma, and so on.it is important to note
that the alpha, or dominant clause, does not necessarily come first in the
clause complex.
In parataxis we refer to clauses as being initiating or continuing. Clauses are
marked by number: 1, 2, 3, and so on.
We can summarise the choices involved in the system network as shown on
the following page:

Parataxis (numbers)
Taxis
Hypotaxis (Greek letters)
Elaboration ( = )
Expansion Extension ( + )
Enhancement ( x )
Logico-
semantic
Relation
Locution ( “ )
Projection
Idea ( ‘ )
From this system network, we can draw up the following paradigm:
Projection
Paratactic
Locution 1 I said
“ 2 I can’t do this assignment
Idea 1 I thought
‘ 2 I can’t do this assignment
Hypotactic
Locution α I said
“ ß that I couldn’t do this assignment
Idea:proposition α I thought
‘ ß that I couldn’t do this assignment
α I decided
‘ ß to do the assignment
Idea:proposal α I don’t want
‘ ß to do the assignment

In relationship of expansion both the taxis and the logico-semantic
relationship can be identified through the marker which joins the clauses, for
example:
Elaborating Extending Enhancing
Paratactic that is to say and, but so, then
or (rather) not only for, thus
in other words but also or else
for example except still
for instance or, yet otherwise
in fact, like
Hypotactic which whereas as, while
while when, where
instead because, if
besides even though
rather than despite
Expansion
Paratactic
Elaboration 1 I tidied up my messy desk
= 2 it needed it
Extension 1 I tidied up my messy desk
+ 2 and finished revising a paper
Enhancement 1 I tidied up my messy desk
x 2 so I have somewhere to write again
Hypotactic
Elaboration α I tidied up my messy desk
= ß which took the better partof the morning
Extension α I tidied up my messy desk
+ ß whereas Des prepared lecture notes
or

+ ß Whereas Des prepared lecture notes
α I tidied up my messy desk
Enhancement α I tidied up my messy desk
x ß because I couldn’t find the meeting agenda
or
x ß Because I couldn’t find the meeting agenda
α I tidied up my messy desk
Clause complexes, of course, are not limited to two clauses. In natural spoken
discourse clause complexes can extend to a dozen or so clauses and the
relationship among the clauses can be very complex mixtures of all the above
possibilities.
A handy rule of thumb for deciding whether clauses are joined by parataxis
or hypotaxis is this: try too change the order of the clauses. If the
conjunction moves with the clause, it is most likely hypotaxis. For example:
Parataxis
1 I play the French horn
+ 2 and my sister plays the oboe
1 My sister plays the oboe
+ 2 and I play the French horn
Hypotaxis
α We had orchestra rehearsal
x ß even though it was a public holiday
x ß Even though it was a public holiday
α we had orchestra rehearsal

Analysis of Clause Complexes
When analysing clause complexes:
 List each clause vertically down the page, lettering each clause
complex (A, B, C, etc.) and numbering each clause in the clause
complex (i, ii, iii, iv, etc.)
 Display analysis on left-hand side of text
 Begin a new layer (indent) whenever there is a change in taxis or a
change in logico-semantic relation.
So, for example, using the guidelines, step by step, the clause complexes
below are analysed as follows:
(A)(i) α Each level of government has its set duties
(ii) = ß which it must carry out
(B)(i) 1 α She never enjoys parties
(ii) x ß if her boyfriend’s not there
(iii) x 2 so we didn’t invite her
(C)(i) 1 The babysitter said
(ii) “ 2 α “Don’t make a noise
(iii) x ß When you come in tonight
(D)(i) 1 there’s so many roads in this forest
(ii) =2 they’re just climbing everywhere
(iii)=3 1 it’s like a honeycomb
(iv) +2 and we didn’t crash
(v) +3 α but we got bogged in sand twice
(vi) x ß 1 because all the early cars went through
(vii) + 2 and they hooned around the corner
(E)(i) 1 John invited the Wilsons to the party
(ii) + 2 α but they didn’t come
(iii) = ß α which made John rather indignant
(iv) x ß α as he had thought
(v) ‘ß he was doing them a favour

Exercise 4.2
Try analysing the following clause complexes.
If it’s in your family, you must consult a doctor or you
will endanger future generations.
They asked if they could state their case, which was quite
a straightforward one but the director just said, ‘You’ll have to ask
John; he’s the boss.’
Jogging is bad for you; it jars yous spine and damages your feet when
you run on a hard surface which can be a problem for life.
Exercise 4.3
Try analysing the clause complexes in the penguin text which you have
already analysed for MOOD.

CHAPTER 5
THEME AND RHEME

THE CLAUSE AS MESSAGE
In this chapter we look at how we structure information in English, what, we
put where and why. To do this we will consider each clause as a message,
which is in turn part of a larger message, the text. Each clause, if you like, in
a stream of messages is related either to the preceding or following discourse
or to the context. A message comes from somewhere and leads to somewhere.
Theme and Rheme
In English, where we put information in a clause tells us about where the
clause is coming from and where it is going to. In an English clause there are
two points of prominence, the beginning and the end. The beginning of a
clause is where weput information which links the clause to what has come
before. For example, we find conjunctions at the beginning of clauses because
they provide a logical link with what has gone before. We also find
information about the topic of the clause, what the clause is about. This
information is contained in the first nominal group in the clause. There are
exceptions to this, such as when a prepositional phrase precedes the first
nominal group. This will be discussed later. The topical information is also
usually related to something which has been introduced earlier in a text or is
retreivable from the text.
Look at the following example from the Bruce Springsteen song ‘TheRiver’.
I come from down in the valley
Here we find ‘I’ at the beginning, tell us that the clause is about ‘me’ (the
singer). This is the Theme of the clause and in this case it relates the text to
its context. We retrieve the identity of ‘I’ from outside the text, i.e. the
person singing the song (adopting the role of the main participant in the
song). ‘I’ is the Theme of the clause.
The new information in the clause ‘down in the valley’ is, in this case, a
prepositional phrase (realising a Circumstance) and comes at the and.

If we move on to the next line: where Mister, when you’re young
we find the new information from the previous line picked up as Theme
(‘where’). Information which was already available in the text is further
developed.
In English the Theme can be identified as that or those element(s) which
come(s) first in the clause.this represents the point of departure of this
message from the previous one. The rest of the clause is called the Rheme.
New information is tipically contained in the Rheme.
Theme, is broadly speaking, what the clause is going to be about.or in terms
of Theme and Rheme, Theme represents ‘This is what I’mtalking about’ and
the Rheme is ‘This is what I’m saying about it’. In terms of looking at a
clause as a message, the Theme looks backwards, relating the current
message to what has gone before. The Rheme points both backwards and
forwards by picking up on information which is already available and adding
to it by presenting information which was not there before. The interaction
of Theme and Rheme governs how the information in a text develops. This
will be illustrated later in the discussion of texts.
Information prominence can be summarised in the following diagram:
Theme Rheme
thematic prominence information prominence
As thematic prominence decreases, informative prominence, or Newness,
increases.

Types of Theme
The rest of the discussion in this chapter is focused on Theme.
The Theme can be divided into a number of categories: Ideational, Textual
and Interpersonal. A clause can have any, all or none of these categories
present.
Ideational
The Ideational, or Topical Theme is usually but not always the first nominal
group in the clause. Topical Themes may also be nominal group complexes,
adverbial groups, prepositional phrases or embedded clauses. In the
unmarked case the Topical Theme is also the Subject. A Topical Theme
which is not the Subject is called a Marked Topical Theme. The term marked
is used because it stands out. It attracts attention because it is not what we
normally expect to find.
Unmarked Topical Themes
Nominal group as Theme
Jack went up the hill
Theme Rheme
Nominal group complex as Theme
Jack and Jill went up the hill
Theme Rheme
Embedded clause
((What Jack and Jill did)) was go up the hill
Theme Rheme

Marked Topical Themes
Adverbial as Theme
Down Jack fell
Theme Rheme
Prepositional phrase as Theme
Up the hill Jack and Jill went
Theme Rheme
Complement as Theme
His crown he broke
Theme Rheme
The Themeof a clause extends to and includes the Topical Theme. Therefore,
elements which precede the Topical Theme are also thematic but elements
which come after the Topical Theme are not.
Textual Themes
Textual Themes relate the clause to its context.
They can be Continuatives and/or Conjunctive Adjuncts and Conjunctions.
The line between Conjunctions and Conjunctive Adjuncts is often a fine one.
One difference is that Conjunctive Adjuncts are more free tomove in a clause
whereas Conjunctions are pretty well restricted to being at the beginning.
Thus, in the example below, the Conjunction ‘but’ remains at the beginning
of the second clause in each pair. The Conjunctive Adjunct ‘nevertheless’ can
occur in various positions in the clause:
The procedure was simple
but, nevertheless was very effective.

The procedure was simple,
but was, nevertheless, very effective.
The procedure was simple
but was very effective nevertheless.
Conjuntions tend to provide Textual Themes within a clause complex and
are called Structural Themes. Conjunctive Adjuncts, on the other hand, tend
to (but don’t always) join text outside of clause complexes. They tend to
have more of a text-organising function.
Continuatives are a small set of items which, if they are there, are always at
the beginning of the clause and signal that a new move is beginning. For
example:
well, right, OK, now, anyway, of course
Right, what we need to do today is revise for our test.
Cont. Topical
Theme Rheme
These relate to the context of speaking in that they signal to the listeners
that someone is about to start, resume or continue speaking.
Conjunctives relate the clause to the preceeding text by providing a logical
link between the messages.
Well, on the other hand, we could wait
Cont. Conjunctive Topical
Theme Rheme
Likewise Conjunctions almost always occur at the beginning of a clause and
carry the logico-semantic relations between clauses.
Well, on the other hand, if we wait until Tuesday...
Cont. Conjuntive Structural Topical
Theme Rheme

Interpersonal Themes
Interpersonal elements occuring before the Topical Theme are also thematic.
They may be Modal Adjuncts, Vocatives, Finite or Wh-elements.
Modal Adjunct:
Perhaps we can wait until next week
Modal
Interper. Topical
Theme Rheme
Vocatives:
Vocatives (a name or nickname used to address someone) are only thematic if
they occur before the Topical Theme, a Finite verb or a Modal Adjunct.
Dearly beloved we are gathered here today
Vocative Topical
Theme Rheme
Mary, we decided to wait until next week
Vocative Topical
Theme Rheme
In the clause below the person’s name is not used as a Vocative; therefore it
is Topical and not Interpersonal.
Mary decided to wait untilnext week
Topical
Theme Rheme
Anyway Mary we decided to wait until next week?
Cont. Vocat. Topical
Text. Int. Topical
Theme Rheme

Mary, didn’t we decide to wait until next week?
Voc. Finite Topical
Interper. Topical
Theme Rheme
But, Mary, surely we can wait until next week
Conj. Voc. Modal Top.
Text Interpersonal Top.
Theme Rheme
The maximum possible Theme in a clause would be something like:
Well, but aternatively Mary surely wouldn’t the best thing be to wait?
Cont. Str. Conj. Voc. Modal Finite Topical
Textual Interpersonal Topical
Theme Rheme
Clause as Theme in a Clause Complex
In a hypotactic clause complex, if the dependent clause comes first then the
dependent clause is treated as the Theme for the whole clause complex. Each
clause also has its own Theme – Rheme structure.
If the dependent clause comes first
Theme
then it is the Theme for the whole Clause Complex.
Rheme
If the dependent clause comes first
Str Topical
Theme Rheme
Rheme

then it is the Theme for the whole Clause Complex.
Str Topical
Theme Rheme
Rheme
Thematic Equatives
These occur in certain Identifying clauses where the Theme and Rheme are
equated with each other. They almost always involve nominalisation.
What we wanted to do was wait until next week
Theme Rheme
Predicated Themes
These are taken from it + be + ...
It was the lectures ((who made the decision))
Theme Rheme
Theme
Theme Rheme
Rheme
It was suggested ((that they wait))
Theme Rheme
Theme
Str. Top.
Theme Rheme
Rheme

THEME AND MOOD
So far most of the examples discussed have been clauses wich have
Declarative Mood. We also need to consider Theme in Interrogatives,
Imperatives and Exclamatives.
Theme in Interrogatives
Polar: Here the Finite precedes the Subject and is thus thematic if the
Subject is also Topical Theme.
Did we decided to wait?
Fin. Subj
Theme Rheme
In an example like:
On Saturday will you be going?
Topical
Theme Rheme
‘On Saturday’ is a Marked Topical Theme. The Finite comes after so it is not
thematic.
In the case of Wh-Interrogatives, the Wh-element alone is thematic.
What time is the exam?
Theme Rheme
Who are you trying to kind?
Theme Rheme

Theme in Imperatives
There are two ways of treating Theme in Imperative clauses:
Either as Rheme only
Write your name in the upper right hand corner
Rheme
Or treat the Process as Theme
Write your name in the upper right hand corner
Theme Rheme
We can see the rationale for treating the Process as Theme if we look at a
text that is orientated towards ‘doing’, such as a set of instructions:
Plug the flex into a 240 Volt AC outlet.
Switch the power on.
Push the button on the control panel...
Here the focus is on the ‘doing’, not on who is doing it, so we could argue
that the Process is thematic. This is the preffered option in this book.
Theme in Exclamatives
This consists of Wh-element plus either a nominal group or an adverbial
group.
What a beautiful day it is
Theme Rheme
How divinely he dances
Theme Rheme

Theme Components
Metafunction Components of Theme
Textual Continuative (well, OK, etc)
Structural (conjunction or
Wh-relative*)
Conjunctive (adjunct)
Interpersonal Modal (adjunct)
Finite
Wh-interrogative*
Ideational Topical (Subject, Complement
or Circumstantial Adjunct)
*Note: Wh-relatives and interrogatives are also Topical elements.

THEME AND TEXT
We have already suggested that dependent (hypotactic) clauses which
precede the independent clause they modify are considered thematic in the
clause complex.
Another extension of the principle of Theme is to the topic sentence of a
paragraph. We could look at the topic sentence as the Theme of the
paragraph. Or we ciuld extend it further by regarding the introductory
paragraph of an expository essay, as the Theme for the rest of an essay.
What we find here is the same pattern repeated on different scales but the
proportional relationship hold.
theme : clause = topic sentence : paragraph = introduction : essay.
Theme and New Information
Another important aspect of how texts develop is through the interaction of
Theme and New Information. Once information has been presented in a text
it is then available to be developed. Information can either be picked up as
Theme or it can be accumulated as New. This is illustrated with a short text.
The example is taken from a song ‘Finishing Touches’ by Warren Zevon.
I ‘m getting tired of you
Th New
You ‘re getting tired of me
Th New
It ‘s the final actof our little tragedy.
Th New
In this text the Participants are introduced in the first line, the singer as
Theme and the addressee as New. In the second line the positions are
reversed, the addressee as Theme and the singer as New. The final line
summarises all information in the previous two lines as ‘it’ presents this as

Theme, then, using a Relational Identifying Process, adds new information
which also summarises the previous text, using ‘our’ as a Possessive Deictic
to include the Participants and ‘final act’ and ‘little tragedy’ in a nominalised
form to reformulate all the previous information as New. This is just a small
example, but it illustrates interaction between Theme and New information
in the development of a text.
THEME AND TEXT DEVELOPMENT
The following two texts are anwers to the question ‘Are governments
necessary in Australia?’. The texts have been written for this book but are
based on genuine answers to the same question set for a year nine class in an
inner suburban school in Sydney.
The texts are analysed for the Theme below with a discussion of the
differences in Theme patterns following. If only component of the Theme is
Topical then only ‘Theme’ is written.
TEXT 1
I think
Theme Rheme
governments are necessary
Theme Rheme
because if there weren’t any
Str. Str.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
there wouldn’t any law
Theme Rheme

and people would be killing each other.
Str.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
They help keep the system in order for certain things.
Theme Rheme
If there wasn’t any federal government
Str.
Text Topical
Theme Rheme
there wouldn’t be anyone to fix up problems in the country.
Theme Rheme
It ‘s the same with the state governments.
Theme Rheme
If the state govenments didn’t exist
Str.
Text Topical
Theme Rheme
there wouldn’t be anyone to look after the schools,
Theme Rheme
vandalism and fighting would occur every day.
Theme Rheme
The local government is important
Theme Rheme
to look after rubbish
Rheme

because otherwise everyone would have diseases.
Str. Str.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
TEXT 2
In Australia there are three levels of government,
Marked Topical
Theme Rheme
the federal government, state governments and local governments.
Rheme
All of these levels of government are necessary.
Theme Rheme
This is so far a number of reasons.
Theme Rheme
First, the federal govenrment is necessary for the big things.
Conj.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
They keep the economy in order
Theme Rheme
and look after things like defence.
Str.
Text
Theme Rheme
Similarly the state governments look after the middle-sized things.
Con.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme

For example they look after law and order,
Conj.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
preventing things like vandalism in schools.
Rheme
Finally, local governments look after the small things.
Conj.
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
They look after things like collecting rubbish,
Theme Rheme
otherwise everyone would have diseases.
Str
Textual Topical
Theme Rheme
Thus for the reasons above we can conclude
Conj
Text Marked Topical
Theme Rheme
that the three levels of govenrment are necessary.
Str
Text Topical
Theme Rheme

Discussion
Although the two texts present the same case, that the three levels of
govenment in Australia are necessary, and use much the same arguments,
the texts are very different in how they develop their arguments. The
explanationof these differences can be found mainly in how the infornmation
is structured, or in how the recources of Theme and Rheme are desployed.
In particular the use of Textual Themes is important in structuring the texts.
In the first text most Textual Themes are structural (Conjunctions). These
operate at sentence or clause complex level. There are no Textual Themes
used to join larger units of text. This leaves implicit relations between
different parts of the text. In the second text Textual Themes are mainly
Conjunctive Adjuncts. These are used to develop the rhetorical structure of
the text.
Giong back to the clause ‘This is so far a number of reasons,’ we find the
Topical Theme ‘this’ summarising the thesis presented in the preceeding text
and linking it to the new information in the clause ‘a number of reasons’.
This is so for a number of reasons.
Theme New
The Conjunctive Textual Themes at the beginning of each sub-section of text
the link up to this piece of New Information. They introduce new reasons.
They operate at a text-organising level rather than at a sentence-organising
level. Even within sub-sections of the text we find a similar pattern of
organisation. The Conjunctive ‘for example’ provides a link between one
sentence and another.
We also find differences in the kind of information found Topical Themes. In
the first text we find a number of Existential clauses with ‘there’ as Theme.
These clauses have no content or topical information in the Topical Theme.
Most of the content information is found in the Rheme as new information.
Thus the argument tends to develop as a sequence of news without much link
between Theme and New.

In contrast the second text puts more content information in the Topical
Themes and there is more continuity in choice of Topical Themes. For
example:
First the federal government is necessary for the big things.
Conj. Topical
Theme Rheme (New)
They keep the economy in order
Topical Rheme (New)
and look after things like defence.
Str.
Theme Rheme (New)
Here we find a Conjunctive in the first sentence linking the following text to
‘reasons’. The federal government is Topical Theme in the second clause with
‘the big things’ as New Information. In the second clause the Topical Theme
‘they’ refers to the federal government in the previous clause and, in the New
Information ‘the economy’ is an example of a ‘big thing’ while ‘in order’ can
be related to ‘is necessary’. In the final clause the Structural Theme links the
clause to the one above, assumes the same Topical Theme by leaving it out
and adds ‘defence’ as an example of another ‘big thing’. In addition the
second text employs Marked Topical Themes. For example:
In Australia there are three levels of government,
Marked Topical Rheme
in the first sentence of the text and
Thus for the reasons above we can conclude
Str. Marked Topical Rheme
at the beginning of the final subsection. In the first example ‘in Australia’
locates the content of the text for the reader. It has an orienting function. In

the second example, the Marked Topical Theme links the final subsection to
the rest of the text (‘above’), especially to ‘reasons’.
The contrast between the two links is not in what the writers were trying to
say butib how they said it. The writerof the first text utilises Theme patterns
typical of face-to-face interaction, of speaking. The writer of the second text
used patterns more typical of writing, giving the text a more explicit
rhetorical structure.
Exercise 5.1
Consider the patterns of Theme in the following texts. See what patterns you
can find and examine how they contribute to the texts’ development.
Consider also the relationship between Theme and New information.
TEXT 1
The philosophes questioned the institutions that existed in French Society.
They were radical thinkers
who spoke openly about their options and beliefs
in order to gain the support of others.
They sowed the seeds of doubt in the people’s minds.
These people had been simple, mainly illiterate and unaware of ((how to
obtain a better life or what a better life ((than they had)) was.))
The Philosophes provided the information
and gave the people the ideas and initiative which led to open revolution.
TEXT 2
The Philosophes had a very significant role in the outbreak of revolution.

The fuel for the fire was there so to speak in the form of the unfair social
system, the despotic monarchy.
However, until the people knew of better conditions they had no grounds ((to
base their complaints on)).
It took people like the philosophes to provide the spark by revealing theories,
evidence of other revolutions, e.g. American.
As a result of the philosophes’ participation the people of France saw that
what had occuredelsewhere could occur in France also.
Thus, the philosophes motivated the people to revolution.

REVIEW
EXERCISE

Now that you have considered MOOD, TRANSITIVITY, clause complexes
and THEME – RHEME, try analysing the following text for all four of
these. The first clause is done for you to demonstrate the suggested order and
layout of analysis.
A (i) When a polar bear cub is born
MOOD
TRANSITIVITY
THEME – RHEME
A (ii) it is smaller than a pet cat.
MOOD
TRANSITIVITY
THEME – RHEME
B It cannot see or hear.
MOOD
TRANSITIVITY
THEME – RHEME
C (i) Very short, white hairs cover its body
Subject Fin. Pred.
Mood Residue
Behaver Behavioural
Str. Topical
Theme Rheme

C (ii) but it has no body fat.
Since it is important to recognise clauses, and their constituent parts, the rest
of this text has been written in normal sentences. First, distinguish and write
down the individual clauses, then proceed with the analysis of MOOD,
TRANSITIVITY, Logical relations and THEME – RHEME as above.
When the cub is 26 days old, its ears open and it can hear.
When the cub is 33 days old, its eyes open. After two months
polar bear cubs begin to move within the den. At three months
they leave the winter den.
(Baker 1990)

CHAPTER 6
NOMINAL GROUPS

NOMINAL GROUP STRUCTURE
We have now looked at English grammar at clause rank and at clause
complexes. We will turn now to look at the next rank down, group rank and
will focus on the structure of the nominal group.
A group, as the name implies is a group of words and, like everything else in
grammar, relationships between and among words in the group are
structured. in English there are a number of types of groups, nominal groups,
verbal groups, adverbial groups, conjunction groups and preposition groups.
A group is basically an extension of a word. It consists of a headword plus
any modification to that word. For example:
Nominal Groups
the snake, that big snake, those two enormous venomous snakes
Verbal Groups
took, had taken, would have been going to have taken
Adverbial Groups
quickly, more quickly, not so much more quickly
Conjunction Groups
even if, as soon as, almost as soon as
Preposition Groups
right behind, immediately in front of
In this chapter only the nominal group is discussed, mainly because it is the
structure of the nominal group which is most interesting in education,
particularly in written discourse.
We will be looking at the nominal group here mainly in terms ot its
experiential and less so in its logical structure. A nominal group is a group of
words which has a noun (a word which names a person, place or thing) as its
head word and includes all additional information related to that noun. As a
means of representing experience, the nominal group has a number of
functional components.

The first of these is the noun itself, which in terms of its functional role in the
structure is called the Thing. The Thing is then subject to further
modification and specification. For example, we can specify ‘which thing?’,
‘how many things?’, ‘what qualities does this thing have?’, ‘what type of
thing is it?’. We will illustrate this by building up a nominal group a step at a
time and adding information at each new step.
A nominal group can consist of a Thing only. For example:
snake
Thing
The next element we will add is called the Deictic, which has the function of
stating ‘which thing’. It specifies how the Thing in question can be identified
in relation to its context. For example, if someone says, ‘the snake’, he or she
can be referring either to a particular snake which is in the near context or to
all snakes in the generic sense (the snake is a reptile). If someone says, ‘this
snake’, he oe she can be referring only to one close at hand. If it is present,
the Deictic occurs first in the Nominal Group.
There are a number of deictic functions but all involve degrees of
specification. The Deictic can be either specific (the) or non-specific (a or an).
Specific:
Demonstrative: the, this, that, these, those, which(ever), what(ever)
Possessive: my, your, our, his, her, its, their, one’s, Martin’s, my
sister’s, (etc), whose(ver), which person’s (etc)
For example: the snake, these snakes, Eric’s snake
We also find non-specific Deictics, which tell us whether all, none or some
unspecified sub-set of the Things is being identified.
Non-Specific Deictics:
each, every, both, all, neither (not either), no (not any), one, either,
some, any, a, an, some
For example: every snake, some snakes, a snake, no snakes

There may be a second Deictic element in the nominal group called the Post-
Deictic. The Post-Deictic identifies a sub-set of the class of Thing by referring
to its fame or familiarity, its status in the text, or its similarity or
dissimilarity to some other designated sub-set. Among the words most
frequently occuring as Post-Deictic are:
Other, same, different, identical, complete, entire, whole, above,
aforementioned, certain, customary, expected, famous, given,
habitual, necessary, normal, notorious, obvious, odd, ordinary,
original, particular, possible, probable, regular, respective, special,
typical, usual, various, well-known.
Those are the identical two boys Those are the two identical boys
‘the same boys as before’ ‘boys who are the same as each other’
My brothers are identical twins (as opposed to fraternal twins)
Following the Deictic there is a Numerative function. Where the Deictic tells
us ‘which one’, the Numerative telss us ‘how many’. The Numerative
indicates some numerical feature of the sub-set: either quantity or order,
either exact or inexact.
For example:
Quantity: the two snakes, lots of snakes
Order: the second snake, a subsequent snake
Following the Numerative in the structure comes the Epithet. This indicates
some quality of the subset, which may be either ‘objective’, such as
‘old’,’big’, ‘small’, or it may be an expression of the speaker’s attitude, such
as ‘loathsome’, ‘nasty’. Attitudinal Epithets (e.g. loathsome, nasty),while
also being experiental have an Interpersonal dimension. Attitudinal Epithets
(subjective Epithets) tend to come before experiental (objective) ones;
however, this is a tendency and not a rule. If we look at abuse, then we tend
to find that the Attitudinal Epithets come first and build in intensity before
we get to the experiental ones. So, for example:
Thing D PD N T Thing
g
D N Epi T
D Thing Class. T

You useless, hopeless, worthless, no good, little ...
However, if we go back to the snakes we could find:
Those two loathsome, big snakes.
or
Those two big, loathsome snakes.
Attitudinal Epithets also tend to be marked by stress and intonation, and are
often intensified by swear words. There is also, theoretically anyway, no
restriction on the number of Epithets possible in a nominal group.
Next, and closest to the Thing is Classifier. The function of the Classifier is to
tell us ‘what type’ or ‘what kind’. For example, we distinguish between types
of snakes by their Classifier: venomous or non-venomous snakes. It is often
difficult to draw a line between what is a Classifier and what is an Epithet.
Some criteria are:
 A Classifier comes from a finite set of options. There are any number of
qualities which can be assigned to something but a more limited range
of types or sub-sets.
 A Classifier cannot be intensified. We can have ‘a very big snake’ but
we don’t find ‘a very non-venomous snake’.
We have now covered the range of possible modification before the Thing
(premodification). This is shown in the following nominal group:
those other two big, loathsome venomous snakes
Deictic PD Num Epi(exp) Epi(att) Classifier Thing
This leaves us with one functional slot to be filled in the nominal group,
modification after the Thing (post-modification). This is called the Qualifier.
Qualifiers provide additional defining or circumstantial information about
the Thing. A Qualifier is almost always a prepositional phrase or a relative
clause, and is an example of embedding. For example:
a snake (which rattles) or
D Thing Qualifier

a snake ((which has rattles))
D Thing Qualifier
N.B.Embedded phrases are marked ( ) and embedded clauses are marked (( ))
We can tell that these phrases and clauses are constituents of the nominal
group because they cannot be moved, and if we replace the group with a
pronoun, we replace the Qualifier as well. For example:
The snakes with rattles it
The Qualifier allows large-scale expansion of the amount of information that
can be fitted into a nominal group. Because it is structurally of a rank higher
than a word, i.e. a phrase or a clause, it itselt contains nominal groups, which
are then available for expansion. For example:
A snake (with fangs ((which lie at the back of the jaws)) )
This type of structure is known as recursive structure, i.e. a structure which
can repeat itself.
This potential to package a large amount of information in one grammatical
unit becomes very important when we come to look at written language.
A nominal group with all functions filled would be like:
those two large loathsome venomous snakes with refracting fangs
D N Epi Epi(att) Classifier Thing Qualifier
Just as post-modifiers (Qualifiers) involve embedding, so too can pre-
modifiers. The following examples are offered as solutions for how to analyse
instances of nominal groups embedded within pre-modifiers (Deictic,
Numeratives, etc.), which, of course, are themselves elements within nominal
groups.
the rattlesnakes’ fangs
Deictic Thing

the front of the rattlesnake’s mouth
Pre-Deictic Deictic Thing
thousands of these snakes
Pre-Num Deictic Thing
the deadliest of these venomous species
Pre-Epithet Deictic Class. Thing
this kind of snake
Pre-Class Thing
Exercise 6.1
Identify and analyse the structure of the nominal groups in the following.
1. A Russian journalist has uncovered
evidence of another Soviet nuclear catastrophe.
2. The player with the highest total for each round
wins one point.
3. Exotic tall slim busty blonde very raunchy with green eyes
4. The early reptiles that lived on Earth
gave rise to thousands of different species.
5. Among these were the monstrous dinosaurs
and great creatures that swam or flew.

NOMINALISATION AND
GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR
Halliday uses the term grammatical metaphor to refer the meaning
transference in the grammar. This implies that meaning is transferred from
somewhere to somewhere else. Halliday uses the term metaphorical to
contrast withthe term congruent. Halliday says, ‘In other words, forany given
semantic configuration there is (at least) one congruent realisation ion the
lexicogrammar’ (1985:321). This concept is essential for undestanding the
difference between spoken and written language.
If wego back to TRANSITIVITY for a moment, we find a correlation
between grammatical roles and the word classes that fill them. These are
shown below:
Meaning Congruent Metaphorical
realisation realisation
Participant noun abstract noun
(workers) (labour)
Process verb noun
(invest) (investment)
Qualities adjective noun
(virile) (virility)
Logical relation conjunction noun, verb, preposition
(so) (the reason being that)
The grammatical metaphor is obvious in the written version of the following
notice:
Spoken:
If our meter reader can’t get at your meter to read it to find out how much
you owe, we’ll have to estimate your account.

Written:
Where a reading of a meter cannot be made for the purposes of rendering an
account because of the absence of access to the meter, the account may bear
an estimated reading instead of the actual reading.
Participants Processes Conjuntions
Spoken Version:
our meter reader can’t get at if
your meter, it read (in order) to
how much ((you owe)) find out (in order) to
we have to estimate (then)
your account
Written Version:
a reading of a meter cannot be made because of the
the purpose of may bear
rendering an account
the absence of access
the account
an estimated reading
the actual reading
The grammatically metaphorical nature of the written version is largely the
result nominalisation, turning Processes and Conjunctions into nouns
(things):
can’t get at the absence of access
to read a reading, actual reading
to find out for the purpose of rendering
owe the account
will have to estimate an estimated reading
it where a reading of a meter ...
This in turn has the effect of completely effacing human agents (people) and
obscuring agency (cause – effect). So in the written, bureucratic version
above, the agents are left unspecified (who is reading whose meter?) or the
subject is shifted onto inanimate objects (the account may bear an estimated
reading).

It is not only bureucratic texts that do it. Scientific and, surprisingly,
historical text as well as social science texts also tend to nominalise very
heavily. With increased nominalisation, more and more information tends to
become packed into nominal groups within clauses rather than distributed
over a number of clauses. Information becomes more condensed, more tightly
packed. Grammatical metaphor (nominalisation) also tends to lead to more
abstract texts. This is because concrete participant such as people tend to
dissapear from the text. They are replaced by abstract participants, derived
through nominalisation, as in the written version of the meter reading text
above.
As a consequence of information being packaged more tightly and abstractly,
the text becomes both more difficult to read and to say. The information can
be packaged more tightly because the structure of the nominal group allows
such packing. Once we nominalise a verb, say, all of the resources for
modification in the nominal group become available. In English there are
more places for adding experiental informationto nouns than to verbs. The
text become more difficult to decode because much of the explicit
grammatical information is lost, the meaning becomes more buried.
It could be argued that education as it is new in the West involves a
progressive movement into grammatical metaphor. Reading material
becomes more and more metaphorical the further we progress through the
ecucation system. The orientation is more and more away from ‘spoken’,
congruent meanings and more and more towards ‘written’ or metaphorical
meanings.
Halliday argues thet the shift from congruent to metaphorical modes of
expression within the individual is developmental, that young, and even not
so young children, cannot understand grammatical metaphors. This makes
many written texts used in the classrooms very difficult for the young
readers for whom they are written. The following mathematics materials
from Barry, Booker, Perry and Siemon (1986, 1984) which were written for
11 and 9 year students respectively exemplify this point.

TEXT 1
Find the height of a prism whose volume is 45cm³ and whose base is a 5cm by
3cm rectangle.
The clause structure is very simple: Predicator realised by the verb ‘find’ and
Complement realised by a single nominal group. But the nominal group is
very complex:
‘of a prism whose volume is 45cm³ and whose base is a 5cm by 3cm rectangle’
all qualifies the Head ‘height’. Within this Qualifier are two embedded
clauses which comprise a clause complex:
 whose volume is 45cm³
 whose base is a 5cm by 3cm rectangle
These two embedded clauses sub-qualify ‘prism’.
To understand the nature of the mathematical problem before them, readers
have to unpack several layers of qualification. Being able to solve the
problem requires both mathematical and linguistic sophistication.
This is also case in the material for 9 year old students in Text 2.
TEXT 2
(A) Here are 3 square centimetres.
(B) Here is a square with each side 3 centimetres.
(C) How many square centimetres cover the 3 centimetre square?
In the wording in Text 2 could be quite confusing for a young learner,
especially a non-English-speaking-background learner. Firstly, consider the
status of ‘3’, ‘square’ and ‘centimetre’ in each the three clauses. ‘3’ is
Numerative in (A), part of Qualifier in (B) and part of Classifier in (C).
Secondly, when measuring the area or volume of shapes, the dimensions – the
height, length and so on – are important. The most grammatically congruent
N Thing
D Thing Qualifier
Thing D Classifier Thing

way to express these attributes of shapes is by means of Attributive clauses
like
Each side of this square is 3 centimetres long.
Num. Thing Qual.
However, the Attributives in the textbook example are encoded firstly
within a Qualifier in clause B and within a Classifier in clause C.
In connection with Text 2, note that ‘centimetres’ is used to refer to ‘objects’
in clause A and as a unit of measure in clause B. Perhaps the relationship
between the two uses of ‘centimetres’ would be clarified if the presentation
were altered to include explicit Conjunction:
Here are 3 square centimetres
Each side of this square is 3 centimetres long.
So it is (called) a 3 centimetre square.
How many square centimetres cover the 3 centimetre square?

Exercise 6.2
Analyse the underlined nominal goups in the following News Item (Northern
Territory News, 11 September 1991). Comment briefly (a paragraph or so) on
the packaging of information in this text.
(Courtesy of the Northern Territory News)
Town ‘Contaminated’
Moscow. – A Russian jounalist has uncovered evidence of
another Soviet nuclear catasthrope, which killed 10 sailors and
contaminated an entire town.
Yelena Vazrshavskya is the first journalist to speak to people
who witnessed the explosion of a nuclear submarine at the
naval base of Shkotovo-22 near Vladivostock.
The accident, which occured 13 months before the Chernobyl
disaster, spread radioactive fallout over the base and nearby
town, but was covered by officials of the then Soviet Union.
Residents were told the explosion in the reactor of a Victor-
class submarine during a refit had been a ‘thermal’ and not a
nuclear explosion.
And those involved in the clean-up operation to remove more
than 600 tonnes of contaminated material were sworn to
secrecy.
A board of investigation was later to describe it as the worst
accident in the history of the Soviet Navy.

a Russian journalist evidence (of another Soviet nuclear catastrophe)
which 10 sailors an entire town Yelena Vazrshavskya
the first person (to speak to ... Vlad) the accident which
radioactive fallout officials of the then Soviet Union Residents
the explosion (in the reactor of the Victor-class submarine during a refit)
a thermal and not a nuclear explosion secrecy it
those (involved in the clean-up ... material)
a board of investigation
**********

CHAPTER 7
SPOKEN AND WRITTEN
LANGUAGE

SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE
AND MODE
This chapter focuses on the differences between spoken and written language.
First a couple of comments need to be made. Spoken and written language
differ in a number of ways. Written language is not simply speech written
down. Speaking and writing are manifestations of the some linguistic system
but in general they encode meaning in different ways because they have
envolved to serve different purposes. When we think of writing, particularly
if we are English teachers, we tend to think of artistic function of writing but
in the history of writing these function are relative latecomers. Like spoken
language inthe individual, early witting tendedto be orientend towards goods
and services. It tended to be about laws, codes of behaviour, lists of
transactions (who was who and who owned or owed what). The artistic
functions of language, such as poetry, song and storytelling, originated from
the spoken language and were only later written down.
In term of both the evolution of the species and the development of the
individual, speech precedes writing. For the species as a whole speech
preceded writing by maybe a million years or so. Even if it was invented
writing began in only a few places and under certain conditions. For the
individual in literate societies the difference is a few years, after which the
spoken and written forms of the language develop concurently.
The term ‘written language’ does not only refer to language which is written
down. Likewise the term ‘spoken language’ does not only refer to language
which is said aloud. For example, if someone reads an academic paper aloud
the features of the language are more like those of written language than
spoken language. Similarly we transcribe language, the written down version
has more in common with spoken language than it does in written. What is
at issue here is not just the medium through which language is transmitted
but, more importantly, the way meanings are encoded. The key register
variable here is mode and the key difference between spoken and written

language is the relationship between language an the context of speaking (or
writing)
Spoken language is typically more dependent on its context than written
language is. In contrast written language tends to be more independent of its
immediate context. Neither of the above prepositions is absolute, however,
and it is better tolook at spoken and written language as a continuum with
the extremes showing marked differences but with points close together
being similar. In illustrating the differences the ends will be concentrated on.
This continuum is illustrated below, using the Visigoths sacking Rome to
illustrate the point. The numbered points on the scale below are illustrated
with examples. The spoken examples fall to the left of the midpoint of the
scale and the written examples fall to the right.
most spoken most written
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 Action only. Visigoths engaged in sacking Rome.
2 What two Visigoths said to each other in the heat of battle.
‘Hey Waldemar, here’s a neat statue. Let’s bust in.’
o Language embedded in the action. You would have had to be there
to know what there were talking about. Exophoric retrieval,
specific reference, present tense, individual participants,
vocatives, imperative and declarative mood
3 A Roman watching the battle and telling his blind grandmother
what was happening ...
‘Well Gran there’s a whole bunch of Visigoths doen there, big blond
guys, horns on their hats and they’re busting all the statues and
stuff.’
o Language constructing the action. Exophoric retrieval, specific
reference, present in present tense, individual participants,
vocatives, declarative mood

4 A group of Visigoths reminiscing around the campfire the night
after the battle.
‘Man, you should have seen Waldemar when he busted the statue.
He totally trashed it. When its head flew off in nearly wasted Eric.’
o Language reconstructing the action. Specific reference, individual
participants, past tense, vocatives
5 A report of the sacking in the next day’s newspaper.
‘Almost the entire city was devastated in tha raid by marauding
Visigoths on Thursday.’
o Language reconstructing the action but from a greater semiotec
distance than in 4. Generic reference, past in past tense, location
in time by circumstances, collective participants
6 An explanation (time unspecified) of why Rome fell.
‘The fall of Rome can be attributed to a number of factors.’
o Language interpreting the action. Non-human (nominalised),
participants, nominalised reasoning, present tense (passive)
7 A work on Imperialism using Rome as an example.
‘While imperialism in an enduring ideology, the tendency is for
empire not to endure. For example Rome ...’
o Language interpreting the action but from a greater semiotis
distance. Abstract (nominalised) participant, nominalised
modality, generic reference, simple present tense, text is more
relational; in a longer text we would be likely to find a high
proportion of relational Identifying Processes.
What we find is that the difference between consecutive points on the scale is
not great but the differences between, say, 2 and 7 are. As we move along the
scale we find a number of shifts. At each point the language becomes slightly
less reliant on its immediate context. The significant shift here is when we
switch from speaking to writing. As we shift along this scale, language is used
more for interpreting the story rather than telling the story. Again the
biggest shift here is around the midpoint of the scale. These shifts are not
necessarily anything to do with temporal distance from the events. For
instance if Waldemar lived to a ripe old age and told his granchildren about
his statue busting exploits his retelling of the story would be quite like the

complete story. Semiotically the story would be closer to the context than
the next day’s newspaper report.
The shifts discussed above can be summarised on the following acale.
most spoken most written
context dependent context independent
language in action language as reflection
language as process language as product
(dynamic) (synoptic)
SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE
DIFFERENCES
By concentrating on points towards either end of teh scale above it is
possible to identify a number of systematic differences between spoken and
written language. Spoken and written language are both complex but in
different ways. Spoken language tends to be complex grammatically and
written language tends to be complex lexically. Spoken language tense to be
lexically dense.
Grammatical Intricacy and Lexical Density
Grammatical Intricacy
In spoken language the content tends to be spread out over a number of
clauses complex logico-semantic relations among them. The work of the
meaning is spread out. The number of content words per clause tends to be
low but the number of clauses per clause complex quite high. There also
tends to be a high proportion of grammatical words per clause.

Content words are words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These
words carry much of the experiential content of the clause. They are also
words which come fromopen sets of options. For instance there is
theoretically no limit to the number of nouns but to the number of, say,
prepositions is finite. New nouns crop up every day but it is a while since
anyone has come up with a new preposition. Grammatical words, on the
other hand, come from closed sets of options. These are words such as
prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, pronouns and
articles. The meanings they encode tend to support the experiential content
of the clause.
In spoken language then we tend to find the content of a message spread out
over a number of clauses with a lot of grammatical support.
For example (content words in bold, grammatical words in italics):
I can’t mind the kids today
because I must go to footbal training
and I can’t leave early
because we’ve got an important game on Saturday
and if we win it
we go into the finals
but Wednesday’s fine
because I don’t have training
so I can mind them then
If that’s OK with you.
In the example above we find a pattern typical of spoken language. The
example is one clause complex of ten clauses with quite complex logical
relations among them. The content information is spread out over those ten
clauses. Notice also that the further into the clause complex we go to the
more grammar does. The number of content words per clause tends to
decrease a little as more information canbe assumed.

Lexical Density
If the above example were presented in a very written form it might look
something like:
Due to the importance (of win (in Saturday’s football game (as a prerequisite
(for a final appearance)))) the necessity of my training attendance diminishes
my child minding capacity tonight.
However the lack of an attendance requirement on Wednesday allows my
availability consequent upon your approval.
This example contains more or less the same information but it is in two
clauses rather than ten. What has changed is the way the information is
distributed, the number of content words per clause has risen dramatically,
or, the lexical dense has risen. Lexical density then is a measure of the
amount of the content information in a clause (or in a text).lexical density is
calculated by deviding the number of content words in a clause complex by
the number of clauses in the complex.
In the two examples discussed above, the lexical density of the spoken
example is 2 (20 content words divided by 10). In the second example the
lexical density is 16 in the first sentence (16 content words, one clause) and 8
in the second sentence. This give an average lexical density of 12 (24 content
words divided by 2 clauses). Lexical density in itself is a reasonable measure
of the readability of a text but it is only a guide. What is probably more
important in written text is the grammatical changes which push the lexical
density up.
The key difference in the grammar of the two examples in the amount of
grammatical metaphor. Let’s explore some of the main differences between
the two examples.
Participants: In the first example the major participants are the
speaker, the kids and the football game. The main people involved in
the interaction are realised as Paticipants through nominal groups
(and pronouns). In the second example the human participants have
been replaced by nominalisations and the human only appears as
Possessive Deictics (my), e.g. the necessity of my training appeareance,
my child minding capacity. These nominalisations condense much

information that was spread out in the spoken example. Let’s look now
at where some of the information from the first example is realised in
the second, concentrating on nominal groups and TRANSITIVITY.
For example:
1 the necessity of my training appearance
D Thing Qualifier
D Epithet Thing
One nominal group functioning as Actor in the clause
because I must go to football training
Clause
I (Actor) my (Possessive Deictic)
must (modal verb) necessity (Thing)
go (Material Process) appearance (Thing)
training (Thing) training (Epithet)
2 my child minding capacity
D Classifier Thing
One nominal group functioning as Range
I can’t mind the kids today
Act. Proc. Mat. Range C.time
I (Actor) my (Possessive Deictic)
can’t (modal verb) capacity (Thing)
mind (Material Process) minding (Classifier)
the kids (Range) child (Classifier)
the lack of an attendance requirement
D Thing Qualifier
D Epithet Thing
because I don’t have training
Carr. Proc.Rel. Attribute

I (Carrier) absent
don’t (modal verb) lack (Thing)
have (Relational Process) attendance (Epithet)
training(Attribute) absent but assumed by attendance requirement
3 your approval
D Thing
if that ‘s OK with you
Carr. P.Rel. Att. Circumstance
that (Carrier) anaphoric to previous text absent
‘s (Relational Process) absent
OK (Attribute) approval (Thing)
You (Circumstantial) Possessive Deictic
As we can see, information which was realised at clause rank in the first
example is now realised at group rank in the second example. Through
grammatical metaphor we find information which may cover a number of
clause in a spoken text condensed into one nominal group in a very written
text.
This condensing of information leads to a loss of explicit grammatical
support. For example, what has happened to the conjunctions in the fist
example? Where are the logical connections between pieces of information
now realised?

Exercise 7.1
Below is an original written text followed by a ‘spoken’ reworking of the
text. Calculate the lexical density of each text and try to observe what has
happened to the text shifting from written to spoken language. The texts are
repeated from Chapter 1. Content words are shown in bold.
Written (original)
All phone bills must be paid by the date shown or service will be discontinued.
Spoken
This is yer phone bill
and you hafta go to the post office
to pay it – uh by next Monday
that’s what this box tells ya –
or they’ll cut yer phone off.
Exercise 7.2
(Adapted from Halliday 1989),
Only the written version is shown. See how many plausible spoken versions
you can make. Consider how many possible unpackings (or readings) of the
text are possible.
The growth of attachment between a mother and infant signals the first step
in thje development of the child’s capacity for discrimination amongst
people.

Exercise 7.3
Below is the spoken ‘Are governments necessary’ text from Chapter 5.
Rewrite the text in a more written form. Do not go overboard with
nominalisation for its own sake, but use what you know about written
language to try to get the text to work better.
I think
governments are necessary
because if there weren’t any
there wouldn’t be any law
and people would be killing each other.
They help keep the system in order for certain things.
If there wasn’t any federal government
there wouldn’t be anyone to fix up problems in the country.
It’s the same with the state governments.
If the state governments didn’t exist
there wouldn’t be anyone to look after the schools,
vandalism and fighting would occur every day.
The local government is important
to look after rubbish
because otherwise everyone would have diseases.

CHAPTER 8
COHESION

COHESION
We have now completed a whirlwind tour of English grammar. In this
chapter and the next, we will be extending our grammatical insights into the
realm of discourse semantics. So our focus shifts to include meaning making
at both clause and text levels. In this chapter, therefore, we will be discussing
cohesion and in the final chapters, genre will be the topic of discussion.
Cohesion refers to the resources within language that provide continuity in a
text, over and above that provided by clause structure and clause complexes.
Hence, cohesive relations are non-structural relations which work to help a
text hang together. We shall be looking at three of these kinds of relationship
in this chapter: reference, lexical cohesion and conjunction.
Reference
Reference refers to system which introduce and track the identity of
Participants through text. It is related to textual meaning and thus to mode.
We find very different patterns between spoken and written texts and these
differences are accentuated the more ‘written’ the text is.
Reference, Retrieval and Mode
If we come across, say, the word ‘it’ in a text, we cannot identify what ‘it’ is
from that pronoun alone. We have to look elsewhere in the text or in the
context to find the identity of ‘it’. Systems of Reference allows us to track
Participants through text and to see where they have come from. We can
find what are called chains in texts and these show how Participants can be
tracked through the text. We will look briefly at two aspects of Reference:
systems of Reference and Retrieval.
Systems of Reference
There are three main distinctions to make here: Whether the
 Participant is being mentioned for the first time in the text (presenting
reference) or whether it is a subsequent mention (presuming reference)

 Reference is to a generic class or to a specific individual
 Reference is comparative or not.
These distinctions can be summarised as follows:
generic
specific
presenting
presuming
+comparison
- comparison
These system is illustrated in the following short examples:
1 Most snakes move in a serpentine crawl.
They throw their bodies into curves.
Snakes: generic, presenting, -comparison
They: generic, presuming, -comparison
2 We saw lots of snakes at Reptile World.
Some of them came out of the logs and ate the dead mice
but the other snakes stayed under the logs.
lots of snakes: specific, presenting, - comparison
some of them: specific, presuming, - comparison
the other snakes: specific, presuming, +comparison
There is one other Participant in this text, ‘the mice’, and two locations
realised as nominal groups in prepositional phrases ‘Reptile World’ and ‘the
logs’. All of these are presented as if already known, that is, the first time
they occur in the text they occur as a presuming reference. If they are
presumed, this means that we have to go outside the text to retreive their
identity. This leads us to the other side of Participant identification, retrieval
of the identities of Participants.

Retrieval
In tracking who is who and what is what in a text we use systems of
retrieval. If we take example (1) above, we retrieve the identity of ‘they’ by
looking back in the text to the referent for the pronoun and we find ‘snakes’.
This is known as anaphora. This is one of a number of types of phora.
We can look at these by going back to the ideas of the Context of Culture and
Situation. We can retrieve the identity of a Participant in several possible
ways, either by reference to the context of culture or situation, or fom within
the text or outside it. Retrieval through the contextof culture is known as
homophora. This cultural context is not defined by size; it can refer to a whole
culture, such as all the speakers of a language, or to a culture consisting of a
couple of people. For example:
When I woke up this morning, the sun was shining.
In this text we retrieve the identity of ‘the sun’ through cultural knowledge;
no one would ask ‘which sun?’.
Or taking a smaller culture, if one of the couple asks ‘Have you fed the cat
yet?’, the identity of the catis retrieved through cultural knowledge and is
not in question.
Or if I say, ‘I heard the prime minister on the radio this morning’, the
identity of ‘the prime minister’ is retrieved through hompohora.
Following, examples of homophora:
community homophoric nominal group
English speakers the sun, the ozone layer, the star
nations the prime minister, the president
Catholics his Holiness
business the manager, the secretary
family the dog, the cat, the baby
If the text continued: ‘I heard the prime minister on the radio this morning
and he said ...’, the first reference is retrieved through homophora and the
second (‘he’) through anaphora.

Turning to the more local context of situation, we can retrieve identity either
from within the text or from its context. Retrieval from outside the text is
called exophora. For example:
That koala over there is really sleepy.
To identify ‘that koala over there’ we would have to be in the context. This
type of reference is very common in spoken text, where the context can be
used to refer to and there is opportunity to check or confirm identity. It does
not work so well in written text where such contextual information is not
available. The reference patterns of spoken language are often a feature of
writing in youngish children. Young children find it very difficult to recount
an event to someone who wasn’t there.
Reference within a text is broadly termed endophora. Within the text we can
text, cataphora. For example:
Some snakes, though not venomous, are still deadly.
They squeeze their victim to death. (anaphora)
Here we move back in the text to retrieve the identity of ‘they’.
It was a venomous one that small green snake. (cataphora)
Here we retrieve the identity of it by going forward in the text to that small
green snake.
The system of Retrieval can be summarrised as follows:
context of culture (homophora)
preceding (anaphora)
Referent verbal
following (cataphora)
context of situation
non-verbal (exophora)

There is another type of retrieval which is called bridging. This is where the
reference is indirect, where we assume the identity of the part from the
whole. For example:
We walked towards the kiosk but the windows were bolted shut.
Here, we retrieve the identity of ‘windows’ by virtue of them being part of
the kiosk.
Analysing Reference
In analysing for reference we are trying to track how Participants are
distributed throughout a text. This is done by means of identity chains.
There are five main identity chains in the following text:
TEXT 1
(1)A copperhead snake made for me (2)one day when I was hoein’ my corn.
(3)Happened I saw him in time, (4)and I lit into him with the hoe. (5)He
thrased around, (6)bit the hoe-handle a couple of times, (7)but I fin’lly killed
him. (8)Hung him on the fence. (9)Went on back to work, (10)and directly
my hoe-handle felt thicker’n common. (11)I looked it over good (12)and it
was swellin’. (13)The poison from that snakebite was workin’ all through it.
(14)After I tried it a few more licks (15)it popped the shank (16)and the hoe-
head fell off. (17)So I threw that handle over by the fence; (18)went and fixed
me another’n. (19)Got my corn hoed out about dark.
(20)Week or two after that I was lookin’ over cornfield, (21)and I noticed a
log in the fencerow. (22)Examined it right close (23)and blame if it wasn’t
that hoe-handle! (24)Hit was swelled up big enough for lumber. (25)So I took
it (26)and had it sawed. (27)Had enough boards to build me a new chicken
house. (28)Then I painted it (29)and, don’t you know! – the turpentine in the
paint took out all that swellin’, (30)and the next mornin’ my chicken house
had shrunk to the size of a shoe box. (31)Good thing I hadn’t put my
chickens in it!
(From many sources in the southern Appalachians)

1 me a copperhead snake
2 I
My (corn)
3 I him
4 I the hoe him
5 He
6 the hoe-handle (he)
7 I him
8 (I) him
9 (I)
10 my hoe-handle
11 I it
12 it
13 it the poison
That snakebite
14 I it
15 it
the shank
16 the hoe-head
17 I that handle
18 (I) another
19 (I)
my (corn)
20 I
my (cornfield)
21 I a log
22 (I) it
23 that hoe-handle it
24 Hit
25 I it
26 (I) it
27 (I) a new chicken house
28 I it
29
30 my chicken house
31 I
my (chickens) it

Reference is generally not seen as problematic until it goes wrong. People
who have trouble with Reference and Retrieval include speakers of other
languages learning English and young children learning to write; the
difficulty for the latter is in transferring from the more context independent
written mode. Like grammar, discourse semantics varies across languages.
System of Reference and Retrieval are not the same across languages. For
instance, speakers of a language such as Tagalog, which does not select for
gender in third person ponouns, often produce texts where it is difficult for a
native speaker of English to track the rapid genderchanges of Participants.
It can become difficult to tell who is doing what to whom.
Another particular difficulty is in very abstract written text, where there are
often no human or concrete Participants and reference is to pieces of text
rather than to Participants. A typical pattern is the one of saying ‘This
demonstrates ...’ where ‘this’ is a section of preceding text. These patterns
appear self-evident to accomplished readers and writers but are problematic
for initiates.
Lexical Cohesion and Field
Lexical cohesion refers to the relationships between and among words and in
the relationships among them; these can be either more or less permanent,
i.e. coming from institutions within the culture, or they can be established
only for that text. Lexical cohesion is primarily related to Field. We discover
the Field of a text through its content words. Fields tend to have specialised
vocabularies and tend to engage in specialised activities. Thus we are
interested not only in the words but also in the kinds of activities they
engage in. In text types in which writer opinion or jugdment is offered,
lexical cohesion is also revealing for interpersonal meanings, through use of
attitudinal lexis and qualitative attributes.
Hasan (1984) presents eight categories of lexical cohesion:
General
 Repetition (including inflection and derivation) e.g. leave, leave,
leaving, left
 Synonymy (similarity of meaning) e.g. leave, depart

 Antonymy (opposite or contrastive meaning) e.g. leave, arrive
 Hyponymy (classes/superordination and subclasses/is a type of) e.g.
flower, rose rose – daffodil = co-hyponyms
 Meronymy (whole-part relations) e.g. flower, petal petal – stem =
co-meronyms
Instantial
 Equivalence (two or more items are one and the same in the context of
some particular text) e.g. the sailor was their daddy
 Naming (a participant’s name is provided) e.g. they called their
puppy Fluffy
 Semblance (two or more items in the text are said to resemble each
other) e.g. The waves roared in and he could see there white caps
looking like seahorses.
Lexical items entering into this relationships form strings though a text,just
as referential chains do.
TEXT 2
(1)The fearful roaring of the dragon guided the Knight to the monter’s
teritory. (2)As the intruder crossed the dreaded marshes (3)the dragon
charged furiously (4)whipping its enormous tail around the legs of the
knight’s steed. (5)Horse and rider collapsed. (6)The Knight now realised
(7)that he must attack (8)when the creature was off-guard. (9)He crouched
down as though wounded. (10)The monster << (11)accustomed to speedy
victory >> prepared to seize its prey. (12)Then the Knight struck powerfully
beneathn the beast’s wing. (13)A despairing groan told the villagers (14)that
they would be troubled no more.
(Neale 1966)

Main chains
dragon Knight (attack)
1 dragon Knight
monster (inst. Equiv.)
2 intruder (inst. Equiv.)
3 dragon (repet.) charged
4 tail (meronymy) Knight (repet.)
5 rider (inst. Equiv.)
6 Knight (repet.)
7 attack (syn.)
8 creature (hyponymy)
9
10 monster (repet.) prey (inst. Equiv.) seize (syn.)
11
12 beast (syn.) Knight (repet.) struck (syn.)
wing (meronymy)
13
14
Minor chains
1 fearful roar territory
2 dreaded (syn.) marshes(inst. Equiv.)
3 furiously (near-syn.)
4 legs/steed (hypon.)
5 horse (syn.)
12 powerfully (near-syn.)
13 despairing (ant.) groan (ant.)
Notice how reference works in tandem with lexical cohesion in the creation of
texture of this text. Notice also the tight Theme/Rheme structure of the text.

CONJUNCTION
Conjunction is the semantic system whereby speakers relate clauses in terms
of temporal sequence, consequence, comparison and addition. Temporal
relations connect clauses depending on whether the actions they encode take
place at the same time or one after the other. Consequentional relations
connect clauses as cause and effect. Comparative relations pick out contrasts
and similaritiesbetween clauses. Additive relations add or substitute extra
alternative clauses to a text.
As well as being temporal, consequentional, comparative or additive,
Conjunction may connect clauses externally as Ideational or phenomeno-
logical meanings, or internally as Textual meanings, that is, as a means of
staging or organising the text as a text. To get a glimpse of what this
distinction means, consider the following pair of examples:
(a) John had a flat tire. Next he broke three spokes.
(b) John didn’t have a spare inner tube. Next he had forgotten his
wrench.
In (a), John’s breaking his spokes is presented as an event following his
having flat tire. In (b) on the other hand, the clauses are not related as one
event following the other in time. In fact, as far as the world (b) describes is
concerned, John left his wrench behind at the same time as he left his spare
tube, not later. The temporal sequence in (b) has rather to do with the
speaker’s organisation of the things she wants to say. Her meaning could be
paraphrased along the line of: ‘First I’m telling you that John didn’t have a
spare tube. Next I’m telling you that he forgot his wrench too.’ Most
conjunctions can be used in these two ways, expressing either a relation
between events in the real world or a relation between rhetorical acts within
a text.
A further factor which is relevant to the types of conjunctive relation found
in English is whether the conjunction is paratactic (coordinating) or
hypotactic (subordinating). Recall from our discussion of clause complexes
(Chapter 4) that subordinate or hypotactic clauses cannot stand alone.
Martin (1992:179) presents a useful summary of conjunctions.

Distinctive External/Internal
Internal Cohesive Paratactic Hypotactic
Additive
Moreover And and besides
In addition
Alternatively Or or if not ... then
Comparative
Equally Likewise so^Finite like, as
That is as if, like when
On the other In contrast but whereas
hand
Instead except that
Temporal
At the same
time Meanwhile and while, when,
Troughout meanwhile as long as
Finally, Previously, then after, since,
At first Thereupon now that
Consequential
To this end To this end so so that, lest,
so as, in case
Then Then, so if, even if, unless
Otherwise
In conclusion, Therefore, so because, as,
since
After all For
Nevertheless However, but although,
in spite of
Admittedly Yet
In this way Thus and thus by, thereby
To see what these distinctions look like in practice, the following paradigm is
pesented:
Cohesive conjunction: (temporal;external)
We walk the ring with our dogs. Afterwards we just wait.

Paratactic conjunction: (temporal;external)
We walk the ring with our dogs and then we just wait.
Hypotactic conjunction: (temporal;external)
(finite) After we walk the ring with our dogs, we just wait.
(non-finite) Subsequent to walking the ring with our dogs, we just wait.
Martin’s table, above, does not of course list every Conjunction in English.
However, the table is useful for showing the relationship between those
Conjunctions which serve acohesive function (Distinctive Internal serve a
Textual function, and External/Internal cohesive serve either an Ideational
or Textual function) and those which serve to link clauses into clause
complexes.
Our experience suggests that both non-English speaking students and native
English speakers have difficulty with conjunction in writing. The former
sometimes choose the wrong Conjunction (additive vs consequential, for
example) and the meaning goes awry as a result. Native speakers don’t make
this mistake very often, but some have a tendency to punctuate hypotactic
clauses as though they were independent clauses. So, for example:
Postman thinks education will not benefit from more technology.
Whereas Perelman argues that technology will actually replace education.
‘Whereas’ is a hupotactic conjunction, and so the above mustbe punctuated
as follows:
Postman thinks education will not benefit from more technology, whereas
Perelman argues that technology will actually replace education.
When analysing Conjunction as an aspectof cohesion, the convention is to
draw up a reticulum. Each clause is numbered and these numbers are listed
down the page. Internal Conjunctive relations are noted to the left of these
numbers and external ones to the right, except external additive relations
which are indicated down the centre. In the following text all of the
Conjunctions are in bold italic. The reticulum follows on the next page.

TEXT 3
1 Once upon a time there lived a little girl named Snow White.
2 She lived with her Aunt and Uncle
3 because her parents were dead.
4 One day she heard her Uncle and Aunt talking about leaving Snow
White in the castle
5 because they both wanted to go to America
6 and they didn’t have enough money to take Snow White.
7 Snow White did not want her Uncle and Aunt to do this
8 so she decided it would be best if she ran away.
9 The next morning she ran away from home
10 when her Aunt and Uncle were having breakfast.
11 She ran away into the woods.
12 She was very tired and hungry.
13 Then she saw this little cottage.
14 She knocked
15 but no one answered
16 so she went inside
17 and fell asleep.
18 Meanwhile, the seven dwarfs were coming home from work.
19 They went inside.
20 There they found Snow White sleeping.
21 Then Snow White woke up.
22 She saw the dwarfs.
23 The dwarfs said what is your name.
24 Snow White said: “My name is Snow White.”
25 Doc said if you wish you may live here with us.
26 Snow White said Oh could I Thank you.
27 Then Snow White told the dwarfs the whole story
28 and Snow White and the 7 dwarfs lived happily ever after.
(From Martin 1992:418 – 9)

1
2
3 Conseq.
4
5 Conseq. additive
6
7
8 Conseq.
9
10 Temp.
11
12
13 Temp.
14
15 Comp.
16 Conseq. additive
17
18 Temp.
19
20
21 Temp.
22
23
24
25
26
27 Temp. additive
28

Exercise 8.1
Presented below are two pairs of student answers to short-answer questions.
The first pair war written for Year II History in exam conditions. The second
pair was written as homework inYear 9 Science. In each pair, one text is moe
cohesive, and therefore more successful than the other. Identify those points
where reference, lexical cohesion, and conjunction break down in less
successful text in each pair.
History Task
Comment on the significance of the ‘Tennis Court Oath’.
Text A
The Tennis Court Oath was an oath taken by all members of the newly
formed National Constituent Assembly. They swore not to disband until
France had a proper constitution. The Tennis Court Oath was the first step
of defiance against the monarchy of France.
Text B
The Tennis Court Oath was a promise to the people of France that they
would not rest until everyone was equal. It occured when the members of the
Third Estate had been locked out of their meeting house. They then found a
tennis court to meet. It is significant because it showed that ordinary man
wanted to be better and was prepared to do something about it.
Science Task
Choose one invertebrate that interests you. Describe its habitat, food and
adaptations to life in its environment and its effects on other animals, plus
any general information on it.
Text C
Funnel webs live in the sandstone country. They live in damp, cool shady
places. It is adapted to live in ledges under sandstone and make a deep
funnel-like web.

It eats insects that pass by and one drop of its venom can kill 20 horses. It
has killed 10 humans. All were male because they are 4 to 7 times deadlier. It
can’t kill animals because of their fur and feathers but it can still bite
animals but can’t effect them.
Text D
The funnel-web livesin sandstone country in and around Sydney. It is known
to kill. It is adapted to live in its environment in that it find ledges under
sandstone and digs a hole o depression in which to live.
The funnel-web eats insects that pass by its lair, using its venomous fangs to
stab and poison them. It cannot kill most large animals, e.g. cats and dogs,
because the fangs cannot penetrate the hair.

CHAPTER 9
THE GENRE – GRAMMAR
CONNECTION

GENRE
In the first eight chapters of this book, we have discussed aspects of
systemic-funcional grammar in some detail. In this chapter we would like to
return the genre – grammar connection.
The notions ‘genre’ and ‘grammar’ are closely linked. In the materials being
produced about genre and their teaching, at least those written by systemic
linguists, characteristic lexicogrammatical features of genres are provided.
These are neither incidental nor accidental, nor optional extras.
Lexicogrammatical features of various genres are integral to these genres, for
it is through the lexicogrammatical choices that meaning is built up in a text.
Different genres deploy the recources for meaning-making through the
grammar in different ways. For example, Recount, which retell an event,
tend to use past tense, Material Processes and particular Participants (e.g.
Skippy hopped, Geoffrey broke his arm in a fall, Mr. Smith sped). On the
other hand, the purpose of Reports is to describe the way things are in the
world, and so they tend to use Relational Processes and generic Participants
(e.g. Kangaroos are marsupial mammals; they have pouches and their young
are born highly immature).
Students are taught these features and a language for talking about language
(a metalanguage) in the context of learning how these features contribute to
the overall meaning of texts they are reading or writing.
Before proceeding to discuss the genres exemplified in the exercises you’ve
done in earlier chapters, we would like first to dispel some misconceptions
that have arisen with reference to genres and the genre-based approach to
literacy teaching.
Firstly, it should be noted that genres, their stages and characteristic
lexicogrammatical features were not invented by systemic-linguists. The
genres described were already out there in use in school and non-school
environments. These genres arose in social interaction to fulfil humans’ social
purposes. For this reason, all genres are equally valuable. But they are not all
equally valued, especially in schools. When genre theorits suggest that all
students be taught the genres used in schools, they are not suggesting that

these are the only genres around, nor that these are more valuable than other
genres used in the community. They do recognise, however, that some genres
are more valued than others in the context of schooling. To give all students
access to the valued genres is therefore a matter of equity.
Secondly, the descriptions provided are just that, desciptions, not
prescriptions or recipes. The staging and characteristic lexicogrammatical
features of genres are probable, repesenting tendencies. They are not rigid or
fixed. Genres represent potentials, within which individual creativity is not
only possible but enhanced.
However, to suggest that individuals can invent new genres at will is to
misunderstand the nature of genres. Playing within a genre, for example jux-
taposing unusual fields or skewing expected tenor relationship, is certainly
possible. But to play within a genre, to bend it, requires having control of it
in the first place.
Several years ago Percival (1982) published a very successful spoof Research
Report. Because he had full control of the genre of Research Report, Percival
was able to send up this genre, but the send-up is related to the nature of the
field, not the genre itself. The ‘research’ explored a variety of breakfast
cereals in terms of their ‘crunch factor’ and how crunch factor interfered with
oveseas students’ understanding of spoken English at their boarding house
breakfast tables. Because it is an exemplary model of its type, Percival’s text
is excellent for teaching the purpose, generic structure and lexicogrammatical
features of Research Reports. The send-up works because it was the field, not
the genre that was tampered with.

GENRE USED IN THIS WORKBOOK
Recall that genres are staged, goal-directed and purposeful. Thus, for any
given text we can ask:
 What is the social purpose or function and goal?
 Through what stages does it achieve that goal?
 What lexicogrammatical and discourse choices are involved in the
above?
A number of genres are exemplified in the exercises you’ve done in Chapters
2 – 8. For each of these, the above three questions are now addressed.

Spoof
Social Function:
To retell an event with a humorous twist.
Generic (Schematic) Structure:
 Orientation : sets the scene
 Event(s): tell what happened
 Twist: provides the ‘punchline’
Significant Lexicogrammatical Features:
 Focus on individual Participants (in bold below)
 Use of Material Processes (in italics below)
 Circumstances of time and place (underlined below)
 Use of past tense
Penguin in the Park
Orientation
Once a man was walking in a park when he came across a penguin.
Event 1
He took him to a policeman and said, ‘I have just found this penguin. What
should I do?’ The policeman replied, ‘Take him to the zoo’.
Event 2
The next day the policeman saw the same man in the same park and the man
was still carrying the penguin with him. The policeman was rather surprised
and walked up to the man and asked, ‘Why are you still carrying that penguin
about? Didn’t you take it to the zoo?’ ‘I certainly did,’ replied the man,
Twist
‘and it was a great idea because he really enjoyed it, so today I’m taking him
to the movies!’

Note that the ‘twist’ in this particular text is related to the Circumstances of
place the penguin is taken to and to the man’s misinterpretation of the
policeman’s (unspoken) reason for taking the penguin to the zoo.

Recounts
Social Function:
To retell events for the purppose of informing or entertaining
 Orientation: provides the setting and introduces participants
 Events: tell what happened, in what sequence
 Re – orientation: optional – closure of events
 Focus on specific Participants (in bold)
 Use of Material Processes (in italics)
 Circumstances of time and place (underlined)
 Focus on temporal sequences
Earthquake
Orientation
I was driving along the coast road when the car suddenly lurched to one side.
Event 1
At first I thought a tyre had gone but then I saw telegraph poles collapsing like
matchsticks.
Event 2
The rocks came tumbling across the road and I had to abandon the car.
Event 3
When I got back to town, well, as I said, there wasn’t much left.
Note that young writers often indicate temporal sequence with ‘and then,
and then, and then’. Alternatives can be modelled and used when the teacher
and students jointly construct Recounts.

Reports
Social Function:
To describe the way things are, with reference to a range of natural, man-
made and social phenomena in our environment
 General Classification: tells what the phenomenon under discussion is
 Description: tells what the phenomenon under discussion is like in
terms of: parts (and their functions), qualities, habits or behaviours, if
living; uses, if non-natural
 Focus on Generic Participants (in bold)
 Use of Relational Processes (in italics) to state what is and that which it
is
 Use of simple presen tense (unless extinct)
 No temporal sequence
Whales
General Classification
Whales are sea-living mammals.
Description: (behaviours, qualities, parts)
They therefore breathe air but cannot survive on land. Some species are very
large indeed and the blue whale, which can exceed 30m in length, is the
largest animal to have lived on earth. Superficially, the whale looks rather
like a fish, but there are important differences in its external structure: its tail
consists of a pair of broad, flat, horizontal paddles (the tail of a fish is
vertical) and it has a single nostril on top of its large, broad head. The skin is
smooth and shiny and beneath it lies a layer of fat (blubber). This is up to
30cm in thickness and serves to conserve heat and body fluids.

Analytical Exposition
Social Function:
To persuade the reader or listener that something is the case.
 Thesis
Position: introduces topic and indicates writer’s position
Preview: outlines the main arguments to be presented
 Arguments
Point: restates main argument outlined in Preview
Elaboration: develops and supports each Point/Argument
 Reiteration: restates writer’s position
 Focus on generic human and non-human Participants (bold)
 Use of simple present tense
 Use of Relational Processes (italics)
 Use of internal Conjunction to stage argument (undelined)
 Reasoning through Causal Conjunction or nominalisation (underlined)
Thesis: Position
In Australia there are three levels of government, the federal government,
state governments and local governments. All of these levels of government
are necessary. This is so for a number of reasons.
Argument 1
Point
First, the federal government is necessary for the big things.
Elaboration
They keep the economy in order and look after things like defence.

Argument 2
Point
Similarly, the state governments look the middle size things.
Elaboration
For example, they look after law and order, preventing things like vandalism
in schools.
Argument 3
Point
Finally, local governments look after the small things.
Elaboration
They look after things like collecting rubbish, otherwise everyone would have
diseases.
Conclusion
Thus, for the reasons above we can conclude that the three levels of
government are necessary.

News Item
Social Function:
To inform readers, listeners or viewers about events of the day which are
considered newsworthy or important
Generic Stucture:
 Newsworty Event(s): recounts the event in summary form
 Background Events: elaborate what happened, to whom, in what
circumstances
 Sources: comments by participants in, witnesses to and authorities
expert on the event
 Short, telegraphic information about the story captured in headline
 Use of Material Processes to retell the event (in the text below, many of
the Mateial Processes are nominalised)
 Use of projecting Verbal Processes in Sources stage
 Focus on Circumstances (in the text below, mostly in Qualifiers)
Town ‘Contaminated’
Newsworthy Event
Moscow. – A Russian jounalist has uncovered evidence of another Soviet
nuclear catasthrope, which killed 10 sailors and contaminated an entire town.
Background Events
Yelena Vazrshavskya is the first journalist to speak to people who witnessed
the explosion of a nuclear submarine at the naval base of Shkotovo-22 near
Vladivostock.
The accident, which occured 13 months before the Chernobyl disaster, spread
radioactive fall-out over the base and nearby town, but was covered by
officials of the then Soviet Union. Residents were told the explosion in the
reactor of a Victor-class submarine during a refit had been a ‘thermal’ and
not a nuclear explosion. And those involved in the clean-up operation to

remove more than 600 tonnes of contaminated material were sworn to
secrecy.
Sources
A board of investigation was later to describe it as the worst accident in the
history of the Soviet Navy.

Anecdote
Social Function:
To share with others an account of an unusual or amusing incident.
Generic Structure:
 Abstract: signalls the retelling of an unusual incident
 Orientation: sets the scene
 Crisis: provides details of the unusual incident
 Reaction: reaction to the crisis
 Coda: optional – reflection on or evolution of the incident
 Use of exclamation, rhetorical questions and intensifiers (really, very,
quite, etc) to point up the significance of the events
 Use of Material Processes to tell what happened
 Use of temporal conjunctions
Snake in the Bath
Abstract
How do you like to find a snake in you bath?
A nasty one too!
Orientation
We had just moved into a new house, which had been empty for so long that
everything was ina terrible mess. Anna and I decided we would clean the bath
first, so we set to, and turned on the tap.
Crisis
Suddenly to my horror, a snake’s head appeared in the plug-hole. Then out
slithered the rest of his long thin body. He twisted and turned on the slippery
bottom of the bath, spitting and hissing at us.

Reaction
For an instant I stood there quite paralysed. Then I yelled for my husband,
who luckily came running and killed the snake with the handle of a broom.
Anna, who was only three at the time, was quite interested in the whole
business. Indeed I had to pull her out of the way or she’d probably have leant
over the bath to get a better look!
Coda
We found out later that it was a black mamba, a poisonous kind of snake. It
had obviously been fast asleep, curled up to the bottom of the nice warm
water-pipe. It must have had an awful shock when the cold water came
trickling down! But nothing to the shock I got! Ever since then I’ve always
put the plug firmly before running the bath water.

Narrative
Social Function:
To amuse, entertain and to deal with actual or vicarious experience in
differet ways; Narrative deal with problematic events which lead to a crisis
or turning point of some kind, which in turn finds a resolution.
Generic Structure:
 Orientation: sets the scene and introduces the participants
 Evaluation: a stepping back to evaluate the plight
 Complication: a cisis arise
 Resolution: the crisis is resolved, for better or for worse
 Re – orientation: optional
 Focus on specific and usually individualised Participants
 Use of Material Processes (and in this text, Behavioural and Verbal
Processes)
 Use of Relational Processes and Mental Processes
 Use of temporal conjunctions, and temporal Circumstances
Snow White
Orientation
Once upon a time there lived a little girl named Snow White. She lived with
her Aunt and Uncle because her parents were dead.
Major Complication
One day she heard her Uncle and Aunt talking about leaving Snow White in
the castle because they both wanted to go to America and they didn’t have
enough money to take Snow White.

Resolution
Snow White did not want her Uncle and Aunt to do this so she decided it would
be best if she ran away. The next morning she ran away from home when her
Aunt and Uncle were having breakfast. She ran away into the woods.
Complication
She was very tired and hungry.
Resolution
Then she saw this little cottage. She knocked but no one answered so she went
inside and fell asleep.
Complication
Meanwhile, the seven dwarfs were coming home from work. They went inside.
There they found Snow White sleeping. Then Snow White woke up. She saw
the dwarfs. The dwarfs said, ‘ What is your name?’ Snow White said ‘My
name is Snow White.’
Major Resolution
Doc said, ’If you wish, you may live here with us’. Snow White said, ‘Oh could
(I) Thank you’. Then Snow White told the dwarfs the whole story and Snow
White and the 7 dwarfs lived happily ever after.

SEVERAL OTHER COMMON GENRES
Procedure
Social Function:
To describe how something is accomplished through a sequence of actions or
steps.
Generic Structure:
 Goal
 Materials (not required for all Procedural texts)
 Steps 1 – n (i.e. Goal followed by a series of steps oriented to acheiving
the Goal)
 Focus on generelised human agents
 Use of simple present tense, often Imperative
 Use mainly of temporal conjunctions (or numbering to indicate
sequence)
 Use mainly of Material Processes
The Hole Game
Materials needed
two players
one marble per person
a hole in ground
a line (distance) to start from
Methods (Steps 1 – n)
1. First you must dub (click marbles together).
2. Then you must check that the marbles are in good condition and are
nearly worth the same value.
3. Next you must dig a hole in the ground and draw a line distance away
from the hole.
4. The first player carefully throws his or her marble towards the hole.

5. Then the second player tries to throw his or her marble closer to the hole
than his or her opponent.
6. The player whose marble is closest to the hole tries to flick his or her
marrble into the hole. If successful, this player tries to flick his or her
opponent’s marble into the hole.
The person flicking the last marble into the hole wins and gets to keep both
marbles.
(text used with permission: J. Boustead 1993)
Description
Social Function:
To describe a paticular person, place or thing.
Generic Structure:
 Identification: identifies phenomenon to be described
 Description: describes parts, qualities, characteristics
 Focus on specific Participants
 Use of Attributive and Identifying Processes
 Frequent use of Epithet and Classifiers in nominal groups
Natural Bridge National Park
Identification
Natural Bridge National Park is a luscious tropical rainforest.
Description
It is located 110 kilemetres south of Brisbane and is reached by following the
Pacific Highway to Nerang and then by travelling through the Numinbah
Valley. This scenic roadway lies in the shadow of the Lamington National
Park.

The phenomenon of the rock formed into natural ‘arch’ and the cave through
which a waterfall cascades is a short 1 kilometre walk below a dense
rainforest canopy from the main picnic area. Swimming is permitted in the
rock pools. Night-time visitors to the cave will discover the unique feature of
the glow worms.
Picnic areas offer toilets, barbeques, shelter sheds, water and fireplaces;
however, overnight camping is not permitted.
(text source: Paul Attwood 1990:42)
Hortatory Exposition
Social Function:
To persuade the reader or listener that something should or should not be the
case.
Generic Structure:
 Thesis: announcement of issue of concern
 Arguments: reasons for concern, leading to recommendation
 Recommendation: statement of what ought to or ought not to happen
 Focus on generic human and non-human Participants, except for
speaker or writer referring to self
 Use of
o Mental Processes: to state what writer thinks or feels about issue
e.g. realise, feel, appreciate
o Material Processes: to state what happens e.g. is polluting, drive,
travel, spend, should be treated
o Relational Processes: to state what is or should be e.g. doesn’t
seem to have been, is
Note that Hortatory Exposition goes by several different names, including
argument and persuasion,in various sources. We prefer Martin’s (1985)
original term. Hortatory Exposition differs from Analytical Exposition in

that the latter argues that X is the case. Hortatory Exposition argues that
X ought to or ought not to be or should or should not be the case. The latter
type of Exposition exhort someone to take or to desist in some action. It
should be further noted that letters to the editor are common, though not
sole source of Hortatory Expositions. The letter format is a matter of Mode,
not of genre. Hortatory Expositions, Recounts, Anecdotes, even
Advertisements can be written in the form of a letter, but this does not
change the genre concerned. Genre is driven by functional purpose, not form.
Country Concern
Thesis
In all the discussion over the removal of lead from petrol (and the
atmosphere) there doesn’t seem to have been any mention of difference between
driving in the city and the country.
Argument
While I realise my leaded petrol car is polluting the air wherever I drive, I feel
that when you travel through the country, where you only see another car
every five to ten minutes, the problem is not as severe as when traffic is
concentrated on city roads.
Argument
Those who want to penalise older, leaded petrol vehicles and their owners
don’t seem to appreciate that, in the country, there is no public tramsport to
fall back upon and one’s own vehicle is the only way to get about.
Recommendation
I feel that country people, who often have to travel huge distances to the
nearest town and who already spend a great deal of money on petrol, should
be treated differently to the people who live in the city.
(Name provided; text source: The Road Ahead 1993:24)

Explanation
Social Function:
To explain the processes involved in the formation or workings of natural or
sociocultural phenomena
Generic Structure:
 A general statement to position to the reader
 A sequenced explanation of why or how something occurs
 Focus on generic, non-human Participants
 Use mainly of Material and Relational Processes
 Use mainly of temporal and causal Circumstances and Conjunctions
 Some use of Passive voice to get Theme right
The text below assumes a somewhat chatty style, the product of its tenor.
Therefore it includes generic human Participants (we). Given the field,
speech production, there are also several Behavioural Processes, namely
exhale and breathe.
A Brief Summary of Speech Production
General Statement to Position the Reader
Speech production is made possible by the specialised movements of our vocal
organs that generate speech sounds waves.
Explanation
Like all sound production, speech production requires a source of energy. The
source of energy for speech production is the steady stream of air that comes
from the lungs as we exhale. When we breath nomally, the air stream is
inaudible. To become audible, the air stream must vibrate rapidly. The vocal
cords cause the air stream to vibrate.

Explanation
As we talk, the vocal cords open and close rapidly, chopping up the steady air
stream into a series of puffs. These puffs are heard as a buzz. But this buzz is
still not speech.
Explanation
To produce speech sounds, the vocal tract must change shape. During speech
we continually alter the shape of the vocal tract by moving the tongue and
lips, etc. These movements change the acoustic propeties of the vocal tract,
which in turn produce the different sounds of speech.
(Text adapted from: Denes and Pinson 1963)
Discussion
Social Function:
To present (at least) two points of view about an issue
Generic Structure:
 Issue
o Statement
o Preview
 Arguments for and against or Statements of differing points of view
o Point
o Elaboration
 Conclusion or Recommendations
 Focus on generic human and generic non-human Participants
 Use of
o Material Processes e.g. has poduced, have developed, to feed
o Relational Processes e.g. is, could have, cause, are
o Mental Processes e.g. feel
 Use of Comparative:contrastive and Consequentional Conjunctions
 Reasoning expressed as verbs and nouns (abstraction)

Gen Splicing
Issue
Genetic research has produced both exciting and frightening possibilities.
Scientists are now able to create new forms of life in the laboratory due to the
development of gene splicing.
Arguments for
Point
On the other hand, the ability to create life in the laboratory could greatly
benefit mankind.
Elaboration
For example, because it is very expensive to obtain insulin from natural
sources, scientists have developed a method to manufacture it inexpensively in
the laboratory.
Point
Another beneficial application of gene splicing is in agriculture.
Elaboration
Scientists foresee the day when new plants will be developed using nitrogen
from the air instead of from fertilizer. Therefore food production could be
increased. In addition, entirely new plants could be developed to feed the world’s
hungry people.
Arguments against
Point
Not everyone is excited about gene splicing, however. Some people feel that it
could have terrible consequences.
Elaboration
A laboratory accident, for example, might cause an epidemic of an unknown
disease that could wipe out humanity.
Conclusion
As a result of this controversy, the government has made rules to control
genetic experiments. While some members of scientific community feel that

these rules are too strict, many other people feel that they are still not strict
enough.
(Text adapted from: Oshima and Hogue 1983:31)
Reviews
Social function:
To critique an art work or event for a public audience
Such work of art include moveis, TV shows, books, plays, operas, recordings,
exhebitions, concerts and ballets.
Generic Structure:
 Orientation: places the work in its general and particular context,
often by comparing it with others of its kind or through analogue with
a non-art object or event
 Interpretative Recount: summarises the plot and/or provides an
account of how the reviewed rendition of the work came into being; is
optional, but if present, often recursive
 Evaluation: provides an evaluation of the work and/or its performance
or production; is usually recursive
 Evaluative Summation: provides a kind of punchline which sums up
the reviewer’s opinion of the art event as a whole; is optional
The Oriantation is typically provided by the reviewer while the
Interpretative Recounts and Evaluations can be provided by the reviewer,
and optionally a source (that is, someone who participated in the creation
and/or performance of the work). The Evaluative Summation is provided by
the reviewer.
 Focus on Particular Paticipants
 Direct expressionof opinions through the use of attitudinal lexis
(value-laden vocabulary) including: Attitudinal Epithets in nominal
groups; qualitative Attributes and Affective Mental Processes

 Use of elaborating and extending clause and group complexes to
package the information (evident especially in paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 5
and 6 below)
 Use of metaphorical language (e.g. The wit was there, dexterously ping
ponged to and fro ...)
It is important to note that the genre for reviewing books, concerts, and
theatre is the same genre even though three different media are involved.
Changing the medium (a Mode, and therefore a Register, variable) does not
change the genre.
Private Lives Sparkle
Orientation
Since the first poduction of ‘Private Lives’ in 1930, with the theatre’s two
leading sophisticates Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in the leads, the
play has tended to be seen as a vehicle for stars.
Evaluation
QUT Academy of the Arts’ production boasted no ‘stars’, but certainly
fielded potential stars in a spakling perfomance that brought out just how
fine a piece of craftsmanship Coward’s play is.
Evaluation
More than 60 years later, what new could be deduced from so familiar a
theme?
Director Rod Wissler’s highly perceptive approach went beyond the glittery
surface of witty banter to the darker implications beneath.
Interpretative Recount
With the shifting of attitudes to social values, it become clear that Victor and
Sibyl were potentially the more admirable of the couples, with standards
better adjusted than the volatile and self-indulgent Elyot and Amanda.
Evaluation
The wit was there, dexteriously ping-ponged to and fro by the vibrant Amanda
(Catherine Jones) and a suave Elyot (Daniel Kealy).
Evaluation

Julie Eckersley’s Sibyl was a delightful creation, and Pillip Cameron-Smith’s
more serious playing was just right for Victor.
Jodie Levesconte was a superb French maid. James Maclean’s set captured the
Thirties athmosphere with many subtle touches.
Evaluative Summation
All involved deserve the highest praise.
(Text source: B. Hebden 1993:137)
Exercise 9.1
The text below is a send-up, using one of the genre outlined in this chapter.
1 Identify the genre.
2 Identify the social purpose.
3 On the text, indicate the generic stages.
4 By circling, underlining or colour coding, identify the significant
lexicogrammatical features within the text that help realise this
genre.
Evolution
From Cushion to Future Bear
Where did bears came from? Bear as we know him has not existed on this
earth for a very long period of time, but his predecessors may go back many
hundreds of years. Most authorities now believe that the handsome, two-
legged bear today evolved from a single-celled organism – a speck of dust
perhaps. Then gradually, through natural selection and survival of the fittest
speck, cotton wool balls developed. We do not know exactly when the first
soft furnishings appeared on earth, but they must have been very simple
beings.
In the beginning was the Cushion. Not very impressive object – simply a
lump of padding material held together with some sort of covering – but

from this inauspicious start developed two reptilian forms that were direct
ancestors of modern bear.
One of the first evolutionary steps occured when a mutant, mis-shappen
Cushion was created. He must have appeared very strange to his fellow
cushions, but he was the first Bean Bag Frogs. Filled with beans, rice or
other non-toxic substance, he had two eyes and four legs. Bean Bag Frogs,
however, were pretty useless on land, being incredible floppy, and in water
they tended to sink.
At about the same time as the Bean Bag Frog was emerging, the Cushion
was developing along different lines into the Draught Excluder. At first
merely a long thin Cushion, it gradually evolved eyes, a forked tongue and a
patterned body. Its tendency to lie along the bottom of draughty doors
perhaps points to the lack of an efficient body cooling mechanism.
From these rather basic creatures the fist Toy Dog developed. Long and thin
like a Draught Excluder, and with four legs like a Bean Bag Frog, he still had
difficulty in moving about owing to his very short appendages.
Movement became easier with the invention of the wheel. Dog-on-Wheels
was very successful species for many years but is now threatened with
extinction. A few remain in capacity but they appear to have difficulty
reproducing themselves under these circumstances.
When the first soft toy stood up and walked on two legs instead of four,
modern (Teddy) bear was born.
(Adapted from: B. Herridge 1983:10 – 11)

CHAPTER 10
GENRE ACROSS
THE CURRICULUM

GENRE ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
In the previous chapter we explored the genre – grammar connection in
relation to individual genres. In this chapter the emphasis shifts from
individual genres to looking at what kinds of patterns of genres are found in
different major curriculum areas in secondary education. The focus is on
junior secondary school because this is the site where students usually begin
their apprenticeship in the different doscourses discussed below.
What concerns us here is looking for characteristic configurations of genres in
different curriculum areas. In this chapter it is our intention to paint a
broader picture of genre and its function in education.
In secondary education genres do not occur in isolation; different curriculum
areas employ particular selections and patterns of genres. They do this
because they are trying to acheive different things. In this chapter we look at
characteristic sets of genres from two curriculum areas which provide a
contrast in linguistic choices: technology and aplied science and history.
These curriculum areas represent two contrasting types of discourse,
technical discourse and the humanities.
We look at which genres are typically most significant in these curriculum
areas and at how those genres relate to each other. In doing this we have
used an adaptation of Martin’s (1984) Mode scale, looking at changes in
language as we shift from language which is embedded in or located close to
action to language whichis more reflective.
In keeping with the spirit of many history textbooks, we invite you to revisit
ancient Rome as the Visigoths arrived. Please forgive the add anachronism
and the use of English be the Visigoths and Romans. (See Chapter 7, also, for
discussion of this example.)
Use the scale below as a reference point.
action reflection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The following sequence takes us along this scale. Each example corresponds
to a number on the scale. We begin with language embedded in the action
and each subsequent step takes us a little further from the action.
1 Visigoths busily engaged in sacking Rome (action only)
2 What two Visigots said to each other in the heat of battle
‘Hey Waldemar, here’s a neat statue, let’s bust it’
Here we find language embedded in the action. A person would have to be
there to know who Waldemar was and which statue he was referring to.
The example features vocatives (Waldemar),exophoric retrieval (a neat
statue), present tense (‘s), impeative mood (let’s bust), individual
participants (Waldemar and the Visigoth talking to him).
3 A Roman watching the battle telling his blind grandmother what was
happening
‘Well gran there’s a whole bunch of Visigoths outside, big, blond guys, horns
on their hats and they’re busting all the statues and stuff’
Here we find language constructing the action. Someone is describing the
action to who can’t see it, rather like a radio commentary on the cricket.
Salient language features here are, vocatives (Gran), specific reference (all
the statues), some exophoric retrieval (it assumed that Gran knows which
statues), present in present tense (are busting), collective participants (a
whole bunch of Visigoths).
4 A group of Visigoths reminiscing around the campfire that night
‘Man, you should have seen Waldemar when he busted that statue. He totally
trashed it. Its head really flew off and nearly wasted Eric.’
In this example we find language reconstructing the action. Salient
language features are specific reference (that statue), individual
participants (Waldemar), past tense (busted).
5 A newspaper report on the sacking based oneye-witness accounts
Almost the entire city was devastated in a series of raids by marauding
Visigoths

In this example language is reconstructing the action but from a greater
semiotic distance than in example 4. The salient linguistic features are
generic reference (Visigoths), collective or generic participants (Visigoths),
past in past tense (was devastated).
6 An explanation of why Rome fell, say, in an encyclopedia
The fall of Rome can be attributed to a number of factors.
We move now into language interpretingin action. The language features
non-human (nominalised) participants (fall), nominalised reasoning
(factors), a shift back to present tense (passive voice) (can be attributed to).
7 A work on Imperialism using Rome as an example
While Imperialism is an enduring ideology the tendency is for empires not
to endure. For example, Rome ...
Here we find language also interpreting action but from further away.
Language features include non-human (abstract) participants
(imperialism), nominalised modality (tendency), generic reference
(empires), simple present tense (is).
Notice that the differences in language between adjacent points on the scale
are often quite small, for example a small shift in tense, but that the
differences between the ends are great, for example in what or who
participants are and how they are realised. The shifts from language in action
to language as reflection outlined here proceed in small, but systematic, steps
but the language at the reflective end of the scale is very different from the
language at the action end.
Activity 1
Choose some aspect of human activity that interestsyou and construct
examples for each point on the scale. As you do this think about the changes
you are making in your choice of language.
Returning to the present we will now show how all this in with genre and
secondary school subject areas.

The example texts used in the rest of this chapter come from textbooks in
current and common use in the Australian secondaryeducation system.
Textbooks were chosen as the source ot texts for two reasons:
 They are in common use in schools and are one of the main methods of
apprenticeship in a displine
 They are designed by practicioners in a field to introduce initiates to
that field
Thus it is argued that they represent typical, or ‘unproblematic’ discourse
patterns of their respective fields. By ‘unproblematic’ we mean that they
tend to represent the ortodoxy of their field.
Using the patterns of discourse found in the textbooks suggest that the
courses of secondary education can be classified into four types:
 Technical (e.g. metalwork, textiles)
 Science (e.g.biology, geology, geography – particularly physical
geography)
 Social science (e.g. commerce, the social parts of geography)
 Humanities (e.g. history)
Subjects like mathematics and physics represent another category,perhaps
midway technical and science,and are not discussed in this chapter.
The classification is based onlinguistic evidence of the following kinds:
 Selection and pattern of genres in the discourse
 Register orientation, particularly field and mode
 Lexicogrammatical patterns.
What follows concemtrates mainly on genre. There will be some reference to
register and a little reference to lexicogrammar. The following questions
underlie the discussion of these three types of evidence:
 What is the distinctive pattern of genres in this discourse?
 How do these genres relate to each other?
 What are the implications of this for teaching and learning?

How do Different Subjects Work?
The assumption behind this question is that different subject areas are like
they are because they are doing particular jobs and that the language
resousces they use are therefore functional (in some way and for someone).
Thus the patterns of genres and associated patterns of language will be
determined by what the discourse is fundamentally trying to ‘do’ and trying
to get students to do. There is, of course, some overlap but different subject
areas tend to make different selections of genre, different choices in register,
particularly in relation to mode and field, and they make different
lexicogrammatical choices.
This chapter concentrates on selection and pattern of genres in two different
curriculum areas, technical and humanities, because they show patterns
which are almost mirror images of each other: they move in opposite
directions.
If we look at technical subjects, represented here by metalwork and textiles,
and at humanities subjects, repesented by history, we can see very different
choices in operation, which are determined by whether the discourse is what
we are calling ‘action oriented’ or ‘information oriented’. ‘Action oriented’ is
defined as meaning that the primary purpose of the discourse is to move
people into action, to get them to do something. In ‘information oriented’
discourses, the primary purpose is seen to be reflection on and
interpretationof action.
This contrast is perhaps best explained through reference to the mode scale
discussed earlier. Using this scale tointerpret shifts in genre (and in language)
we find that in technical subjects there is a general shift from text to action
and the genaral pattern of generic and language choice shifts students from
text into action. In history opposite applies; students are shifted from action,
or more accurately, from texts which, in terms of mode, are situated close to
the action to texts which interpret action. There is thus a shift from action to
text (reflection).

Technical Subjects
The following is a typical sequence of genres found in technical texts. The
metalwork texts chosen are taken from Abelson and Patemon (1988).
Examples of the relevant genres are presented and discussed immediately
after scale.
action reflection
doing procedure protocol report argument
Text A Argument: Metalwork
Safety in the Workshop
Safety in the wokshop should be the responsibility of all people who enter it,
whether they are visitors or workers. Safety first is not a set of rules, it is a
state of mind. Rules help the workers develop a safe attitude to work by
drawing to their attention potentially dangerous situations; but in the long
run, it is the workers’ actions which cause accidents.
It is important that people obey the safety regulations set down, but just as
important is the workers’ knowledge of what he or she is doing, what dangers
this operation entails, and what should be done to work safely.
To aid the reader to work in a safe manner, a safety guide has been appointed
and whenever he appears in the book he will bring you advice on how to
carry out an operation safely. His name is Mr. Safety.
Function:
The purpose of this text is to convince students that some kind of behaviour
is necessary. In this case why it is necessary to behave safely in a workshop.

Language Features:
 Endophoric retrieval: the text is self-contained; it is not necessary to
look outside the text
 Generic reference: the text efes to any and all workshops, not any
particular workshop
 Nominalisation: safety, responsibility
 Generic participants: the worker
 Internal logical oganisation: the text is organised around reasons for
being safe
 Declarative mood: giving information
Activity 2
Find examples in the text of the language features mentioned. Comment any
other features you conside to be salient.
Repeat this process for each text.
Text B Report (Part-Whole): Metalwork
Parts of a Lathe
The lathe is divided into four main parts: bed, headstock, tailstock and
carriage.
Bed
The bed is the foundation of the lathe. It is made from cast iron and rigidly
secured to the lathe stand. The top surface of the bed is accurately machined
to form the bed ways or vee ways. All the other parts of the lathe sit on and
slide along these bed ways. The accuracy of the lathe is determined by the
accuracy of the ways and care should always be taken to keep them in
perfect condition.

Headstock
The headstock is secured to the lefthand end of the bed and sits on the bed
ways, its main purpose being to supply the motive power for the lathe. The
headstock contains the belts, pulleys or gears, which bring the power from
the motor to the workpiece so that it can be machined.
Tailstock
The tailstock has the job of supporting the loose end of the metal while it is
machined. The tailstock canbe used to support a drill chuck for drilling as
well as other devices.
Carriage
The carriage is used to support the lathe tool and move it so as to cut the
metal. It slides along the bed ways.
Function:
The text sets up part-whole taxonomies within the field. It takes a large
phenomenon (of lathe) and divides it systematically into its component
parts.
Language Features:
 The logical organisation is field driven: (the text’s structure is governed
by those parts of the lathe’s structure that are important to the field)
 Technicality: parts are named (headstock, tailstock) and the parts are
ordered taxonomically
 Generic reference: the text refers to any and all lathes
 Simple present tense: the text is not bound by any specific time frame

Text C Report (Class or Sub-Class): Textiles
Fibres
Fibres canbe divided into three categoies.
Animal(protein) Plant(cellulose) Chemical(synthetic)
wool cotton polyester
silk flax acrylic
cashmere rayon
The most common fibres used are wool, cotton and polyester.
Wool
Wool is the fleece or the sheep that is spun or woven after the animal has
been shorn. Differet qualities of wool come from different varieties of sheep.
Fleeces of merino sheep are most commonly used in Australia.
Wool is a protein fibre called keratine. Like human hair, wool fibres have
scales which overlap each other. It is because of this scales, which trap the
air, that wool keeps you feeling warm or cool.
Cotton
Cotton comes from the seed pod of the cotton plant. It is a cellulose fibre,
consisting of plant cells, and has different properties from protein fibres. The
cotton plant is a dark green bushy plant that grows in warm, moist climates.
In Australia, cotton is grown in northern New South Wales and Queensland.
Cotton is a fibre with a gentle twist.
Cotton may also go through a process called mercerisation. This is when
cotton is treated in a bath of caustic soda; this strengthens the fibre and gives
in a shine.
Polyester
Polyester is a syntetic fibre that is made from by-products of petroleum and
chemicals. It is a very straight and smooth fibre.
(From Hynes and Kovesdy 1991)

Function:
The text similar to text B except that it sets up class-sub-class relationships
within the field rather than part-whole relationships.
Language Features:
Features are much the same as for text B; the logical organisation is field
driven, technicality.
Text D Protocol: Metalwork
Spanners
1 Never strike a spanner with a hammer or use a pipe over the handle
to increase the leverage.
2 Always pull a spanner; don’t push it.
3 Always select a snug-fitting spanner.
4 Don’t use adjustable spanners unless a fixed jaw spanner is not
available.
5 Repair damage spanner jaws and discard spanners with spread
jaws.
6 When using adjustable spanners, place the fixed jaw behind the
nut.
7 Make sure there is sufficient room for the spanner to turn in.
Function:
This text sets out the preconditions for doing something. It is similar to a
procedure except that the numbers do not represent a sequence of events;
they represent a set of conditions, all of which need to be fulfilled. The text
takes something from the field (spanners) and tells the readers in generic
terms how they should be used.
Language Features:
 Imperative mood: the text is directed towards future action by a
second person

 Generic reference: the text refers to any all spanners
 No sequenced in time
Text E Procedure: Metalwork
The procedure for cutting external threads is as follows:
1. To cut the external thread (commonly called screwing), first prepare
the cylinder to the size of the thread’s major diameter.
2. If the metal has a scaled surface, remove the scale.
3. File the end of the bar flat and square to the axis of the bar.
4. Taper the end of the bar slightly for about 5mm to aid the diecutting.
5. Adjust the die oversize and place it on the rod.
6. Press the die down to start, turn clockwise and reverse the die each
quarter turn to break the chip.
7. Cut the thread to the required length and remove the die.
8. Try the thread against the internal thread it is work against.
9. If the thread is a tight fit, adjust the die to a slightly smaller size and
recut the thread.
10.Continue testing and adjusting untilthe threads mate with one
another.
Function:
The text tells the reader how to do a particular job. It tells the reader what
tools and materials are necessary and takes the reader or user step by step
through the sequence of actions necessary to complete the job successfully.
Language Features:
 Imperative mood: the text is directed towards the reader doing
something with the text. It is a guide to specific action.
 Sequenced in time: the logical organisation of the text is driven by the
nature of job.
 Exophoric retrieval: tools and materials are assumed to be in the
context and the reader or user knows what and where they are.

 Specific reference: to specific items in the immediate context (the
workshop)
Summary
The shifts from reflection to action in technical subjects occur in a number of
places. Among these are shifts:
 Logical organisation: from predominantly internal conjunctive
relations, to relationships driven by the field (primarily through lexical
cohesion), to external, temporally sequenced relations.
 Reference and retrieval patterns: from generic to specific and from
endophoric to exophoric.
 Mood choice: from declarative to imperative.
 Congruence: from relatively abstract to congruent.
The effect of these shifts in choice of language is that they bring the student
progessively closer to the action and in doing so they progressively enable the
student to ‘do’. In a sense they also repesent a shift from collective
experience to individual experience.
This is summarised in the following diagram
action reflection
activity text
individual experience collective experience
Humanities
In the humanities, taking history as an example, the movement is the
opposite direction. We find a general movement from texts which are
situated close to action and could perhaps more accurately be regarded a
substitutes for action to texts which are more distant from and interpret
action. In history, for instance, the most common genres are for the mort

part different from those found in technical subjects. Similarly the direction
students are taken in is further away from the action and towards
intepretation of text.
A typical set of genres from a standard history textbook is as follows:
recount, narrative, biography, historical recount or narrative, report,
factorial explanation, argument or discussion. Following, an example of each
genre discussed.
Texts A, B and E are taken from Bowering et al. 1987, C and F are from
Simmelhaig and Spenceley 1984, and D from Shuter and Child 1987.
Text A Narrative
What did the Aborigines think of the newcomers?
This story is the work of an Aboriginal child, Stanley Jangala Gallacher.
Awamrigurr – The Strangers
For many years there were only Aboriginal people living here. They hunted
for food and meat for their families. Sometimes they went to the river to
spear fish or other ceatures.
One day, the men went to the river to spear the fish. As the came to the
river, they saw a boat with some strange men in it. The Aboriginal men were
frightened so they hid themselves in the bush, waiting for the boat to come.
They were standing on the sand talking and they went into the bush.
One of the Aboriginal men went to the top of a hill and stayed there watcing
the white men come closer and closer. He told his men that the strange men
were coming, and one by one they took their spears to the very top of the
hill. Then two of the Aboriginals rolled some big rocks down the hill towards
the white men. But they saw the rock coming and hid themselves in a corner.
The rocks rolled past them. The Abiriginal men thought that the strange
men were killed, but they were hiding behind a big rock. Then the white men
saw a black man and fired a gun. The Aboriginals ran away and hid
themselves again.

When the white men were finishing, they started back for their ship but as
they went post, the Aboriginal men began to throw their spears. The strange
men ran and dodged so that the spears would not hit them. They jumped on
board their boat and saileda away from the land, and they never came back
again.
When they were sailing away, the Aboriginal men were standing on the sand
wacthing them. After they disappeared, the men did a wild dance until it was
dark.
Function:
The text functions as a reconstruction of events. It provides a vicarious
experience of them.
Language Features:
 The text has a narrative (orientation, complication, resolution)
structure
 It is sequencedin time (the order of the text is driven by the order of
the event in the world)
 It uses past tense
 The focus is on participants, what they did and what happened to
them
 The text uses specific reference
Activity 3
Find examples in the text of the language features mentioned. Comment on
any other features you conside to be salient.
Repeat this process for each text.

Text B Biography
Captain James Cook
James Cook, perhaps the greatest of English explorers, was born into a poor
farming family in Yolkshire in 1728. When James was still young his father
was made a farm manager and the family became a bit more prosperous.
James had a little education before he started work, first with a grocer and
then a shipowner. His second employer helped him to study further, but on
the age of 26, James Cook made the biggest decision of his life – to join the
British Navy.
Not many people are willing to go backwards in life but James Cook did. The
shipowner had just offered him a chance to be in charge of a ship. Instead he
became an ordinary sailor on low pay. Why? He loved the sea and he felt
that because England was in war with France, he could become an officer
quickly.
His gamble paid off. On his first ship he met a captain who appreciated his
abbilities and helped him. Within a month he was promoted. In the next 10
years he made many trips to North America. He became famous for his maps
of the coast and rivers and was soon well known as an excellent leader and
navigator.
When Cook was 40 years old, the British Navy chose him for anunusual job.
He was given command of an ugly, flat-bottomed ship called Endeavour.
Both captain and ship were chosen for their experience and reliability. The
Endeavour made one trip but James Cook completed three more trips before
he was killed in Hawaii.
Function:
This text has a similar function to the narrative above except that it deals
with edited highlights of events from a person’s life rather than one set of
events. It is asecondary or tertiary source of information.
Language Features:
 The text features past tense

 It is set rather than sequenced in time (through circumstances)
 The text focuses on an individual, speific reference
Text C Historical Recount
The European battlefront was a very different affair from the situation in
the Middle East. Early in April 1917, the 1st Anzact Corps was transported
to that part or northern France known as Flanders. Here they took over a
section of the front, south east of Armentiers, facing the powerful, well-
trained German army. Both sides were locked together in an endless array of
trenches padded with sandbags and protected by thick belts of barbed wire.
The Australians were issued with British steel helmets and gas masks, for the
Germans were using poisonous gas in their attacks. The first months were
favourably with the terrible conditions at Gallipoli. The troops enjoyed
better rations, patrolled ‘No Man’s Land’ (the area between the opposing
trenches) freely and watched aerial dogfights for amusement.
Gradually, the raids on both sides increased and the troops came to
appreciate their helmets and gas masks. The enemy raided first on 5 May and
a month later an Australian raiding party, all volunteers, retaliated and
succeeded in taking prisoners. More raids followed but they were nothing
compared with the battle that was to come in July. On the first of that
month, the British launched their tragically famous offensive on the Somme.
The battle of the Somme was to become a series of battles against the
Germans in northern France, lasting several months.
Function:
This text has the function of constructing history, it represents a shift from
an individual focus into making experience collective.
Language Features:
 The text is set in time and sequenced through circumstances
 It is in the past tense and focuses on collective participants
 There is specific reference and a balance between event and participant
focus

Text D Report/Descriptive
Everyday Life in Rome
The life of a Roman person depended on whether they were rich, poor, or a
slave, and on their sex and age. Life in Ancient Rome was not the same in
200BC as it was in AD200, and living conditions were different in Roman
Gaul, Roman Africa and Rome itself. So there were many variations to the
details described below.
Clothes
Roman men and women wore a short-sleeved tunic, tied at the waist. These
were usually knee-length for men and ankle-length for women. Poor people,
workmen and slaves would wear these tunics in the street, but the wealthy
always wore a toga over their tunic. This was a large piece of cloth wrapped
around the body and drapped over one shoulder. It was the symbol of the
Roman citizen, a sign of status. Cloaks would be worn in cold weather, when
leather shoes replaced open sandals. Slaves usually went barefoot.
Eating
Breakfast was usually bread, cheese and a little wine or water. Lunch was
bigger meal and cold meat, vegetables and fruit, again with bread and wine
or water. The main meal was dinner in the early evening, perhaps at five
o’clock. There would be several courses. Beef, mutton and pork were the
most common meats eaten, but rich people treated their guests to more
exotic meats, including flamingos, storks, doves and dormice. Spoons and
knives were used, but forks were not, because most eating was done with the
fingers. Men usually lay on their side on a couch and helped themselves to
food from a low central table; women and children often sat on upright
chairs. For many Roman families, the meal would be served by slaves.
Family Life
The Roman wife share her husband’s social position outside the home and his
authority inside it. Men were very much in control of their children, who
were expected to be obediently loyal to their father even when they were
grown up. This sense of duty helped the Roman army control its soldiers.

Fathers found husbands and wives for their children during their teens. Girls
could marry at 12, boys at 14.
Function:
 This text represents a further step in making experience collective; its
function is to construct history
 The focus shifts away from individual people to generic classes of
people, doing generic things with generic artefacts
Language Features:
 The text has an event or activity focus
 There is a shift to predominantly simple past tense
 The logical organisation is driven by the field
 There are generic participants and reference
 This text marks a significant shift in abstraction
Text E Factorial Explanation
The End of Bushranging
Bushranging died out of a number of reasons. The invention of the telegraph
and the beginnings of modern police methods made the bush telegraph less
successful. Newspaper urged the police to rid the country of the evil
bushangers. The sympathy and help of the people lessened especially as
bushranging became more violent. With more police after the bushrangers it
was only natural that there would be shoot-outs, and not only bushrangers
but also police would be wounded or killed.
Function:
This text marks a shift into interpretation. It shifts away from what
happened to why it happened.
Language Features:

 The logical structure is text driven: the text features internal
conjunction
 There is extensive nominalisation
 Human participant are generic
Text F Argument
The Economy
Wars are costly exercises. They cause death and destruction and put
resources to non-productive uses but they also promote industial and
technological change. This benefit does not mean that war is a good thing,
but that it sometimes brings useful developments.
The Second World War further encouraged the restructuring of the
Australian economy on a manufacturing basis. Between 1937 and 1945 the
value of industrial production almost doubled. This increase was faster than
otherwise would have occured. The momentum was maintained in the
postwar years and by 1954-55 the value of manufacturing output was three
times that of 1944-45. The enlargement of Australia’s steel-making capacity,
and of chemicals, rubber, metal goods and motor vehicles all owed something
to the demands of the war. The war had acted as something of a hot-house
for technological progress and economic change.
The war also revealed inadequacies in Australia’s scientific and research
capabilities. After the war strenuous efforts were made to improve these. The
Australian National University was established with an emphasis on
research. The Government gave its support to the advancement of science in
many areas, including agricultural production. Though it is difficult to
disentangle the effectsof war from other influemces, it is clear that future
generations not only enjoyed the security and peace won by their fore-fathers
but also the benefits of war-time economic expansion.

Function:
This text represents the interpretive end of the mode scale. Its function is to
present reasons, supported by evidence, as to why things happened as they
did.
Language Features:
 The logical structure is text driven: the argument rather than the
events drives the text
 The text uses interesting tense shifts, simple present when it is
generalising and past tense when referring to past event for
exemplification
 The text contains extensive nominalisation and abstraction and has
both generic and specific reference
Summary
As we move along the scale from action to reflection we move from
experience to interpratation of experience. This movement can be
represented as three aspects in the ‘doing’ of history with different genres
performing different functions ineach phase. This is illustrated in the
following diagram:
A shift from individual experience to inerpretation of experience:
individual experience collective experience interpretative of experience
A shift from the sources of history (the story) to the interpretation of history:
sources of history construction of history interpretation of history
Different selection of genre as the shifts in the first two aspects occur:
recount historical factorial explanation
narrative recount argument, discussion
biography report

Implication for Learning and Teaching
There are potential benefits for learning and teaching in viewing genre and,
more broadly, language as contributing to the construction of knowledge in
different discpline areas.
Student Learning
To make sense of a discpline area students need not only to be able to handle
individual genres but also to be able to read (and in the more advanced years
of education, to write) across genres. To do this effectively they need to be
able to understand the purpose of each genre and its place in a set of genres.
Therefore they need to be able to cope with shifts in language of various
kinds.
Why does this matter?
Take history as an example: you often find a concentration on the two ends
of the scale without the intermediate steps which enable the student to
bridge the two ends. For example, typically in class the narrative end of the
scale is often focus; classroom writing tasks are often geared towards the
students recreating historical events and imagining themselves as
participants.
For example (Bowering et al 1987:30)
Pretend you are Dirk Hartog or Abel Tasman and write a short report on New
Holland to send back home.
While these texts are often highly imaginative they are also often highly
inaccurate. For example, in writing about oneself growing up in ancient
Rome what often happens is that students simply recreate their own family
and lifestyle ina new setting. What these tasks really do is trap many
students into being able only to retell or invent the story. Even if they are
accurate they in effect take the students backwards. You have to know the
history first order to recreate it accurately.

However, when it comes to assessment, the interpretive end of the scale is
often tested, and student who produce texts from this end of the scale tend to
get the best marks. Texts from the middle of the scale are often set tothe
students to read in their own time. Consequently alot of students’ writing
stays at the ‘action’ end of the scale where they have more experience and
they are disadvantaged when it comes on testing. The net effect makes
learning a rather hit and miss affair. Unfortunately, it is often the same
students who tend to hit and the same who tend to miss.
While being able to recreate historical events might be a reasonable starting
point it is not a reasonable finishing point since studying history not only
involve reconstructing the past; it also involve interpreting it. The kinds of
writing that concentrate on the action end of the scale do not utilise the
resources necessary for abstract interpretation.
When students know what they are reading and why, and even better, when
they are shown the relationships among the different genres, they are better
equipped to shift along the scale, and they are more effectively apprenticed
in different disciplines.
With technical subjects the effect is perhaps more tangible and personal. If
the action end of the scale is the focus and the rest is ‘picked up’ then
someone is likely to lose a finger or an eye in the process. Students need to be
able to decide what to do or not to do independent of simply following
instructions. So the ability to move written instructions to action is essential.
Teaching
Explicit knowledge about the role of language in a subject area helps
teachers in the design of materials and in the structure of units and courses.
For example knowledge about the role of different genres and the function of
abstraction in history enables teachers to develop cycles in which students
move progessively through the phases outlined above:
sources of history construction of history interpretation of history.

Activity 4
If you teach in a subject area other than the two discussed above, using
textbooks or other materials try to develop a picture of the key genres and
how they fit together in your subject area.
Activity 5
Think about and note down how you might use the information covered in
this chapter in designing a unit of work in your subject area.

Making sense of functional grammar

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Making sense of functional grammar (20)

More from Berti Subagijo (17)

Recently uploaded (20)

Making sense of functional grammar