I am very interested in a meta-language as an answer for my one of questions in my previous posting about the genre-based approach, so this posting centers mainly on it.
Systemic functional grammar is a way of describing and interpreting meaning, lexical and grammatical choices from the wording systems. A special language describing how language is being used to realize the meaning is called a meta-language (Butt, Fahey, Feez & Yallop, 2000).
According to Butt, Fahey, Feez and Yallop (2000), texts occur in two contexts. One is the context of culture and the other is the context of situation. Then, the main areas of the meta-language for describing the context of situation are the following (Butt, Fahey, Feez & Yallop, 2000):
・Field...meanings about experience in the situation; the purpose of the text
・Tenor...relationship between the participants
・Mode....type and nature of text that is being made
The actual meta-language for these areas is the following (Butt, Fahey, Feez & Yallop, 2000):
Field
・Experiential domain (the processed, participants and circumstances of the text)
・Short term goal/long term goal (the purpose of the production of the text)
Tenor
・Social roles of the participants (e.g. teacher-student)
・Power and status of the participants
・Social distance (how well the participants know each other)
Mode
・Role of language (for the whole activity or for helping some others' activity)
・Type of interaction (monologic or dialogic)
・Medium (spoken, written or signed)
・Channel (phonic, graphic or visual)
・Rhetorical thrust (the overall feeling of the text)
The meta-language seems to really be the suitable resource for providing the appropriate points of key features and patterns of language for the genre approach which stresses the role of contexts and the linguistic features.
A problem for me is the statement of Butt, Fahey, Feez and Yallop (2000) that the acquisition and the use of the meta-language are difficult…
List of references
Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks, S., & Yallop, C. (2000). Using functional grammar: An explorer’s guide (2nd ed.). Sydney: NCELTR.
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yes, Kimiko, it is difficult. But IM sure that even Darryl had problems with it the first time he read about it. I'm sure that we are all having issues with it. More than likely, the only people who are not having issues with it are Mike and Nicki and Maggie. The more you read something the easier it will become for you to understand that.
ReplyDeleteI personally, try and (listen) Read some of the texts that we have received. IM hoping that I will understand at least before I die ;-)
I correct some my grammatical errors, etc., in my posting.
ReplyDelete20/04/2010 Kimiko