Course title

Introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar

Instructor

Min DONG

Instructor’s profile

Female, Associate Professor, Master Postgraduate Supervisor, PhD in Foreign Language Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Research interests in Systemic Functional Grammar, Corpus Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, Theory and Practice in EST translation

Course goals

Enabling students to command systematically a language theory that has both theoretical influence and essential application significance in literary text analysis, translation theory and practice with regard to analysis of source text and appreciation of target text, and language learning and teaching.

Topics

1. Historical perspectives on SFL

2. The purposes of linguistic analysis

3. Identifying clauses and clause constituents

4. An overview of Functional Grammar

5. Interaction in the clause: the interpersonal metafunction

6. Representing the world: the experiential metafunction

7. Organizing the message: the textual metafunction: Theme

8. Organizing the message: the textual metafunction: cohesion

9. Grammatical metaphor

10. Clauses in combination

11. Below the clause: word, group and phrase

12. SFG and Corpus linguistics: convergence and divergence

13. SFG and Contrastive study of Chinese and English

14. Implications and applications of Functional Grammar

Assessment

Attendance & Performance in class: 15%;

Presentation: 15%;

Two Term papers: 70%.

Reference books

Halliday, M.A.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Thompson, Geoff. 1996. Introducing Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.

Thompson, G. & S. Hunston. 2006. System and Corpus: Exploring Connections. London: Equinox Publishing Limited.

Bloor, Thomas & Bloor, Meriel. 1995. The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M. A.K. 2007. The Language of Science. Beijing: Peking University Press.(Volume 5 in Collected Works of M.A.K.Halliday, with the others being:

On Grammar;

Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse;

On Language and Linguistics;

The Language of Early Childhood;

Computational and Quantitative Studies;

Studies in Chinese Language;

汉语语言研究（汉译版）；

Language and Education;

Language and Society)

Working language

English

Notes