Week

Lecture topics

Readings

1

What is language? What is grammar? 

We begin this unit by exploring some ideas about the nature of language including how it is that we come to be users of language. Language is more than grammar, so we also need to understand the place of grammar within language. While often thought of as ‘rules’, grammar is a resource for meaning. I’ll illustrate this point by looking at what verbs do. Verbs are at the centre of the most important grammatical unit, the clause. The verb is a structure that allows us to represent and construe process, flux and change. So, it’s time to move beyond the ‘verb is a doing word’ definition, to explore the power and beauty of the grammar of verbs.

Also, see my column here for a bit of background on the way grammar is explored in this unit.

Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (IFG):Chapter 1

Using Functional Grammar (UFG):Chapter 1&2

2

Constituency 1: units in grammar

In week 1, we looked at the forms and functions of a key piece of structure in grammar, the ‘verbal group’. This week we extend our picture by looking at the other important units in grammar. As we know, language can be viewed from different points of view. The units that we study depend on how we are looking at language. If we are looking at sound or writing patterns, then we identify units relevant to those aspects of language. These units are different from units in grammar, or semantics. We will look at the grammatical units of clause, group and phrase, word, and morpheme. To understand what we can 'see' in language structure we have to understand what motivates it, and relate it to the motif of 'choice'.

IFG: Chapter 2

UFG: Chapter 1&2

3

Constituency 2: units in grammar

In this second week on constituency, we continue our examination of the grammatical units of clause, group and phrase, word, and morpheme. We will talk about grammatical words and content words, and examine the relation between formal and functional ways of understanding grammatical organization in language. We will apply this analysis to a series of everyday short texts.

IFG: Chapter 2

UFG: Chapter 1&2

4

What is a clause? 

To use language in the many and varied ways we interact, we need to put words into structures. The most important grammatical unit is the clause, because it is through the clause we create ‘experiential’, ‘interpersonal’ and ‘textual meanings’. In this lecture, we will build on the two previous weeks by looking at whole clauses, and different types of clauses. We will even see clauses inside (i.e. ‘embedded in’) other clauses.

IFG: Chapter 2 (section 2.7)

UFG: Chapter 3

5

Clause as representation: language construing experience 1

Humans use language for meaning making of three kinds. This week we begin exploring how grammar allows us to make sense of experience, to turn experience into meaning that we can share with our nearest and dearest, or complete strangers. We will come back to the verbal group, and look at different kinds of verbs/processes, and how we use grammar to construe action, saying and thinking, and relations of identity and similarity.  

IFG: Chapter 5

UFG: Chapter 4

6

Clause as representation: language construing experience 2

PART 2

IFG: Chapter 5

UFG: Chapter 4

7

Reading week (Easter Friday – so no lecture or tutorials)

8

Clause as exchange: language enacting social relationships 1

Humans don't produce linguistic structure as an end in itself. We don't just talk, we talk to someone, even when that someone is someone we don't know or can never know. There is always an audience for our talk. There are many dimensions to our social relations. For instance, how do you talk to people who have some kind of power over you? How does your talk reflect a relation of familiarity or intimacy? When you talk to very young kids, or to elderly people, how does your language vary? These kinds of distinctions are reflected and made through linguistic choices. This week we begin looking at the grammar that enables us to enact our social relations.

IFG: Chapter 4

UFG: Chapter 5&6

9

Clause as exchange: language enacting social relationships 2

PART 2

IFG: Chapter 4

UFG: Chapter 5&6

10

Clause as message: language for creating coherent text 1

Language allows us to make meanings of two kinds simultaneously: meanings about the world, and meanings about the social relations that pertain to a given situation. How do we make all this hang together? The textual function is the grammar for creating coherent texts. This week we look into the options in grammar for the order of elements in a clause, and how this order has consequences for text structure and coherence.

IFG: Chapter 3

UFG: Chapter 7

11

Clause as message: language for creating coherent text 2

PART 2

IFG: Chapter 3

UFG: Chapter 7

12

Analysing text: patterns of meaning

This week we work through all the analysis we have done so far, to bring out the patterns of meaning in a sample text. 

UFG: Chapter 12

13

Language in society, society in language

We analyse real data in linguistics to help us understand the nature of language. But we also apply our insights to understanding all kinds of language-related issues, from language as an aesthetic resource in the study of literature, to language used to divide communities for political purposes. In this lecture I examine some of the many applications of the tools you have studied in this unit. 

See iLearn for suggested readings.