Systemic functional linguistics

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Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics, among functional linguistics,^[1] that considers language as a social semiotic system.

It was devised by Michael Halliday, who took the notion of system from J. R. Firth, his teacher (Halliday, 1961). Firth proposed that systems refer to possibilities subordinated to structure; Halliday "liberated" choice from structure and made it the central organising dimension of SFL. In more technical terms, while many approaches to linguistic description place structure and the syntagmatic axis foremost, SFL adopts the paradigmatic axis as its point of departure. Systemic foregrounds Saussure's "paradigmatic axis" in understanding how language works.^[2] For Halliday, a central theoretical principle is then that any act of communication involves choices. Language is above all a system; SFL maps the choices available in any language variety using its representation tool of a "system network".

Functional signifies the proposition that language evolved under pressure of the functions that the language system must serve. Functions are taken to have left their mark on the structure and organisation of language at all levels, which is achieved via metafunctions. Metafunction is uniquely defined in SFL as the "organisation of the functional framework around systems", i.e., choices. This is a significant difference from other "functional" approaches, such as Dik's functional grammar (FG, or as now often termed, functional discourse grammar) and role and reference grammar. To avoid confusion, the full designation—systemic functional linguistics—is typically used, rather than functional grammar or functional linguistics.

For Halliday, all languages involve three simultaneously generated metafunctions: one construes experience of our outer and inner reality as well as logical relations between phenomena (ideational); another enacts social relations (interpersonal relations); and a third weaves together these two functions to create text (textual—the wording).