It may seem an odd time to be reflecting back on 2022, considering that 2023 is already here. But when we consider that the decision to create a new year on a particular date it's largely arbitrary, then it is not such a bad thing to be thinking about yesterday, in order to plan for tomorrow. The highlight of 2022 for me was traveling to a language and teaching conference in Italy. What a fascinating journey, what a joy to discover other people, other cultures, other languages, other worlds. Language is the carrier of culture, and one of the salient concepts in my mind is how the various languages spoken in the different regions of Italy - all very different and unique - serve as markers of belonging and community, but also tend to divide the regions and peoples of that beautiful country so that they do not necessarily see themselves as a unit. Nonetheless, we wish to take this moment to offer compliments of the season to all our readers and thank you all for your input during 2022. Thank you for visiting our site, thank you for enjoying what we have to offer, and we hope to bring you even more in 2023. We could not do this without you, and we appreciate you all. So, happy new year!
To take a slight detour, we wish to start our first post of 2023 we have talk about theory. Yes, boring old theory, lol. It is not really boring. Theory is only boring if it has no practical application, and when it comes to writing, and especially in this case, there is a very practical, greatly beneficial application. I have been working particularly with what is known as systemic functional grammar (Halliday, 1985). That seems like a big word, and it is an example of nominalization, which occurs in academic type texts, where you pack a large volume of information into a small word or phrase. But if we breakdown the big words, and the academic language into “every day” language, then what we are really saying is that grammar is for function. Grammar makes meaning. What we see on the surface of language is exactly that: on the surface. When it comes to making meaning, we need to look beneath at the intention of the speaker, their shared understanding of the speaker and receiver, and the context in which the speech occurs (Martin, 2017).
It was a well-known academic researcher by the name of Michael Halliday who first developed systemic functional grammar, or 'SFG'. He was building on the work of previous researchers who stretch right back to the 1920s, such as Malinowski, who first discussed the idea that language can only truly be understood when one has an idea of the context in which it occurs (Robins, 1971; Halliday, 1978; Senft, 2007). For example, if we return to my example of being in Italy last year above and consider how language can provide an impetus for fear of the “other” and segregation, one must consider that only recently has the country been united, and perhaps not by choice. With an understanding of its history, and the original independence of the individual regions, will we have one more of an understanding of the situation. Indeed, the fear of “outsiders” is not unique to Europe or any other country. In South Africa itself one only needs to consider the turbulent situation when it comes to the acceptance of migrants, and again, one must look at the context of need, want and poverty, as well as the history of the country. Context is king!
Halliday broke his ideas of SFG down into more workable units, namely field, tenor, and mode, which respond to ideational, situational and textual. Ideational is how we make sense of the world, how we construe reality, the genre, the “what”. Situational, on the other hand is who we are speaking to, and our relationship with the receiver - in other words the “who”. The textual is the language we are going to use to meet the needs of that genre, that field, and the relationship we have with the receiver - in other words, it is the “how” (Steinke, 2019). All this forms what Paulo Freire called “praxis” - the relationship between thought and action (Freire & Macedo, 2013).
So why does this theory matter and why bother with it here? Because it forms the basis of communication, whether spoken face to face communication, on the phone, or on YouTube. This also applies in written communication via a textbook, or WhatsApp text, or even more rarely these days, a personal note. It starts with these three concepts of field, tenor, and mode (Yang & Hu, 2022).
Some have rightly criticized SFG for being just that: theory. However it has several practical outworkings, and two of these I have worked with for many years, namely the genre approach, which assists learners and students with writing various text text-types, and the reading to learn approach which goes a step further in teaching students how to first read academic language in order to be able to write it appropriately, effectively and in context. We will address these two approaches in our upcoming posts, and hopefully highlight how wonderfully practical they are.
Until then, we hope you will start to the new year has been wonderful. Please help us continue to grow this site in 2023: comment, give us your tips, tell us what you enjoy about the sight, and what you would like to see posted on it. Where will your journey take you?
Until next time, all the best
From the Wordwise team
REFERENCES
Freire, P. & Macedo, D. 2013. Literacy: Reading the word and the world.
Halliday, M. 1978. Language as social semiotics. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Hewitt, M., Masikane, C. & Toendepi, J. 2020. Dynamics informing xenophobia and leadership response in South Africa. Acta Commercii, 20(1):1-11.
Martin, J. 2017. Meaning beyond the clause: Co-textual relations. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 11(2-3):203-235.
Robins, R. 1971. Malinowski, Firth, and ‘The Context of Situation’. Tavistock London.
Senft, G. 2007. Bronislaw Malinowski and linguistic pragmatics. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 3(1):79-96.
Steinke, K. 2019. The pedagogical content knowledge of teachers and its effect on enliterating grade three and four learners. Thesis. Education, North West University. [Online]. Available from: https://repository-nwu-ac-za.nwulib.nwu.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10394/35997/Steinke_KJ.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y [Accessed.
Yang, Y. & Hu, R. 2022. The functions of context in discourse analysis. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture, 8(5):218-228.
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