UNDERSTANDING & PRODUCING

LANGUAGE
With Functional Grammar

Functional Grammar helps people enhance their previous knowledge on
traditional grammar and leads them to a new paradigm of viewing
language as a resource for making meanings. With Functional Grammar
they may develop their knowledge of how to represent experience, how
to interact with language and how to organize their experience and
interaction into a coherent spoken or written discourse.


2014
Liliek Soepriatmadji
ii

INTRODUCTION

Over the last eight years or so, teachers of English as a Foreign Language in
Indonesia have been made confused by the new paradigm of EFL teaching, marked
by the emergence of competency-based curriculum (CBC), further enhanced in
Content-Based Curriculum or School-Based Curriculum (KTSP) by means of which
each educational unit is given freedom with respect to the contents and
implementation of the school curriculum.
For EFL teaching in Indonesia, both CBC and KTSP have presented quite a
number of problems; one of which is that teaching EFL should be discourse-based in
order to develop socio-cultural, actional, and linguistic competences manifested in
strategic competence for the central goal of discourse competence. With just
these complex issues in mind, teachers have been puzzled by an obligation to
change their views on Grammar of English, from Traditional Grammar (TG) to
Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) which views the use of language as meaning
making that is, when we use a language, we simultaneously involve three domains
of meanings: ideational, interpersonal and textual.
A number of in-service trainings on SFG have been held at national, regional or
even school levels in order to equip the English teachers with the knowledge of SFG
in response to the need of discourse-based EFL teaching. Universities which produce
prospective teachers of English were also involved in projects of revising their
curricula adding up SFG as a compulsory subject.
With respect to the learning of SFG, especially at Undergraduate Level of
Study, most students have found it difficult to understand, even the basic concepts
of SFG upon reading, for example, the first few pages of Introduction to Functional
Grammar (Halliday 1994) or Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics (Eggins
1994). No one is to blame; the students are faced with completely new things and
concepts. Furthermore, they have acquired partial knowledge of TG which, in one
way or another, contributes negatively to the acquisition of SFG.
This Understanding and Producing Language with Functional Grammar has
been carefully designed to help the undergraduate students of the English
Department (both education and non-education majors) learn the basic concepts of
SFG. The English language which is used has been engineered to fit the intermediate
level of English proficiency. This means that this book is of moderate readability
among the sixth semester students of the English Department, and thus can be
suitably used for both classroom and independent modes of study.
iii

Most importantly, not only does this book offer basic concepts of SFG, along
with analytical frameworks but also is completed with sample analyses for each
domain of meanings. The students, therefore, can adopt the analytical frameworks
presented here in their own text analyses.
The jungle is out there. This book is only one of those many which may be
useful for the new beginners of SFG. Therefore, constructive criticisms for the
betterment of this book will be highly appreciated.

Semarang, August 2014
Liliek Soepriatmadji


iv

Understanding and Producing Language with Functional Grammar
Copyright 2014 by Liliek Soepriatmadji
liek59@gmail.com

Printed by SAPRESS, PT Bhakti Agung Pratama
sapress@ymail.com
www.cetak.cco.id

Published by BPEE
Stikubank University (UNISBANK)
Jl. Tri Lomba Juang No. 1
Jl. Kendeng V, Bendan Ngisor
Semarang
Indonesia

No one is allowed to reprint, keep in retrieval softcopy of, photocopy or scan the
original book of Understanding and Producing Language with Functional Grammar
without any permission from the author and publisher.



v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Cover.
Introduction.
Page of Copyright.
Table of Content
i
ii
iv
v

1.

INTRODUCING FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR
Do you Functional Grammar? ..
Text and Context....
Functions of Language.
Spoken and Written Language..
Strata (levels) of Language
Assignment 1.

1
3
5
6
7
8
2. UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR
Constituency in writing and in speech
Traditional versus Functional Grammar.
Assignment 2.

9
12
17
3. REPRESENTING THE WORLD
Clause Patterns in the Interpersonal Function
Metalanguage for Describing Language Experience..
Processes..
Process Types and Participant Roles.
Circumstances
Modification in Nominal Groups..
Writing up Field of the Discourse.
A SAMPLE TEXT ANALYSIS.
Assignment 3..

20
21
21
22
26
27
29
31
37
4. INTERECTING WITH LANGUAGE
Interactive with Language.
Metalanguage for Describing Interaction with Language
Unmarked Declarative.
Marked Declarative and Exclamation
Interrogatives.
Imperatives..
Writing up Tenor of the Discourse..
A SAMPLE TEXT ANALYSIS.

39
40
42
43
44
45
46
48
vi

Appraisal Motifs..
Assignment 4..
57
62
5. ORGANIZING MESSAGES
THEME-RHEME Structure
Theme in Declarative.
Theme in Exclamatives.
Theme in Interrogatives..
Theme in Imperatives
Writing up Mode of the Discourse..
A SAMPLE TEXT ANALYSIS.
Assignment 5..

66
69
70
70
70
70
72
80
6. HOW YOU DEVELOP THEME
Thematic Progression..
The Simple Linier TP Pattern..
The Constant (Continuous) TP Pattern....
The Theme-Derived TP Pattern.
The Split Rheme TP Pattern.
A Sample TP Analysis...
Assignment 6 .

81
82
82
83
84
84
87

BIBLIOGRAPHY
88