scholarly journals From functional to cognitive grammar in stylistic analysis of Golding’s The Inheritors

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Browse
Keyword(s):  
Positive Case ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Construction Of Meaning ◽  
Do So

Abstract Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is one of the most influential grammars used in stylistics, but more recently the discipline has witnessed a growing body of work using cognitive grammars to explain stylistic effects. This research has tended to make the positive case for cognitive grammar (CG) by demonstrating its similarity to functionalist approaches. However, it is also necessary to say how CG adds to an SFG account of literary effects. To do so, I return to Halliday’s seminal analysis of Golding’s novel, The Inheritors. I use CG to investigate the conceptual processes involved in the reader’s interpretation of the character’s deviant mindstyle and outline some of the ludic and dramatic effects of these reconstrual operations. Thus, whereas SFG focuses on describing the ideational structure of the representations proffered by texts, I argue that a unique affordance of CG is its focus on the readerly construction of meaning.

Branding City Destinations

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Wang ◽  
Dan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
City Branding ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Construction Of Meaning ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
Global Arena ◽  
The City

Abstract City branding brings immense benefits for megacities to gain international prestige in an increasingly competitive global arena. City publicity films, as an effective method for selling the city through online dissemination, could reach and influence a wider audience. However, the deployment of different semiotic resources in the branding discourse in city publicity films remains under-explored, and in particular, the role of cultural attributes in the construction of meaning in the discourse of city branding through linguistic and nonverbal modalities remains unknown. This paper, drawing on theories of systemic functional grammar and visual grammar, examines the multimodal discourse of publicity films of Beijing and London in terms of representational and interactive meanings achieved through various semiotic resources. It is found that, in verbal and visual discourse, both films share similarities regarding enhancing persuasiveness via emotional branding but exhibit differences regarding how to achieve persuasiveness through different semiotic resources that co-construct meaning. The Beijing publicity film blends functional and emotional values while the London publicity film is prone to being more functional. In addition, possible reasons for the differences observed are discussed.

scholarly journals Modal Operators and Personal Pronouns in Roosevelt’s Inaugural Addresses

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 984
Author(s):  
Xiaoli Dou
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Statistic Method ◽  
Modal Operators ◽  
Inaugural Addresses ◽  
Close Relationship

This paper tries to apply the interpersonal function of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar to analyze the interpersonal meanings of modal operators and personal pronouns in Roosevelt’s four inaugural addresses, that is, the dynamic and close relationship between the speaker and the hearers. By means of statistic method and stylistic analysis, this paper takes Roosevelt’s four inaugural speeches as objects of study, and mainly explores the interpersonal meanings of modal operators or linguistic forms so as to bring home Roosevelt’s linguistic techniques and stylistic effects. Roosevelt shows great interest in modal operators and personal pronouns to appeal to his audience’s emotional responses, to strengthen his in-group intimacy, and to convince his audience of his political purposes.

Dutch manner of motion verbs: Disentangling auxiliary choice, telicity and syntactic function

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maaike Beliën,
Keyword(s):  
Local Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
Motion Event ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Syntactic Function ◽  
Syntactic Status

AbstractDutch manner of motion verbs play a prominent role in the literature on unaccusativity. As these verbs can take both hebben ‘have’ and zijn ‘be’ as their perfective auxiliaries, they are considered to show both unergative and unaccusative behavior. The general consensus is that these verbs normally take hebben, yet occur with zijn if they are ‘telicized’ by an endpoint, and that the auxiliaries are diagnostics for the syntactic status of prepositional phrases (PPs). The paper presents attested data that reveal that this generalization is untenable: there are examples that take the opposite auxiliary from what the generalization predicts. To account for the full set of data, the paper takes a cognitive-grammar perspective, arguing that auxiliary choice, telicity and syntactic status of PPs are independent issues requiring their own explanations. Auxiliary choice is analyzed in terms of alternate construals of a motion event: with hebben as a type of act and with zijn as a change of location. In this manner, the paper adds to a growing body of literature that questions the usefulness of the coarse unergative–unaccusative distinction, advocating a ‘local analysis’ instead.

scholarly journals Rouhani’s and Obama’s Persian New Year messages: A systemic functional grammar perspective

ExELL ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Amin Karimnia ◽  
Shidak Rahbarian
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar

Abstract This study investigated Nowruz (Persian New Year) messages by Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Barack Obama in March 2016. The study critically analyzed the discourse of these two presidential messages and uncovered the hidden aspects of their ideologies, policies, and background worldviews. In doing so, an integrated version of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used. The analysis of data included various linguistic dimensions (e.g. processes, modality, transitivity) of the messages and their statistics. Although results suggested that Obama intended to build a more intimate situation, both presidents tried to inspire a spirit of action, development and effort in their respective governments. The messages did not reveal considerable thematic differences, except some discoursal religious features expressed in Rouhani’s message.

scholarly journals The Study on the Interpersonal Meanings of Modality in Micro-blogging English News Discourse by the case of “Donald Trump’s Muslim Entry Ban”

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhai Rui ◽  
Liu Jingxia
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Quantitative Research Methods ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Systemic Analysis ◽  
Language Analysis

News is a kind of writing style, which is so valuable that many linguists choose it to study. This thesis aims to conduct a systemic analysis of modality type, value and orientation under the framework of Halliday’s Systemic-functional Grammar in order to explore the interpersonal meanings of modality in English news discourse. The research data is drawn from micro-blogging official platforms, among which 20 pieces of news discourse in all are selected to establish a small type of corpus. All the 20 pieces of news discourse are taken from the micro-blogging in 1.20 to 2.20 of 2017. All the news is about “Donald Trump’s Muslim Entry Ban” (A ban made by Donald Trump, which claimed that Muslim can’t enter America). Meanwhile, both qualitative and quantitative research methods are adopted to discover the distribution of modality in micro-blogging news discourse and its interpersonal meanings, and hence to deepen people’s cognition and understanding on micro-blogging news discourse. Through a detailed analysis, the study has a lot of findings. We found that modality language is widely used in micro-blogging news. From the perspective of modality type, reporters prefer to use finite modal adjunct such as will in the type of modulation to show their emotional attitude of the target thing. From the perspective of modality value, we can see that median value is the most popular among three values for reporters, and “will” and “would” are the most popular expressions that express the speaker’s expectations, willingness and determination or the reporter’s views, attitudes on the possibility of a certain event. Meanwhile, from the perspective of modality orientation, the speaker or writer tends to use implicit objective orientation in order to show objectiveness of the news discourse and get rid of writers’ responsibilities. This paper attempts to analyze modality in micro-blogging English news discourse from the perspective of interpersonal functions which aims to provide a new method for discourse analysis and acts as a beneficial complementary to modality language analysis.

scholarly journals Appraising Katherine Mansfield’s Father Figures in “The Little Girl”: A Transitivity Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Md. Saiful Alam ◽  
Adelina Binti Asmawi ◽  
Mohib Ullah ◽  
Shafinur Nahar ◽  
Sayeeda Fatema
Keyword(s):  
Power Imbalance ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Father Figures ◽  
New Type ◽  
Males And Females

This article explores the patterns of father figures, the father -child relationships and power imbalance depicted in Katherine Mansfield's “The Little Girl”, using one tool of analysis from Systemic Functional Grammar, which is Transitivity. Examined are the ways Mansfield, as a Modernist and feminist writer, thematizes and engages herself to the theme of the fathering model and the father - child relationships typical of her time in her story. The study concentrates on The Little Girl, by Mansfield, which contains father figures and children as one of the central issues. The study concludes that there is a remote father syndrome in Mansfield's “The Little Girl”, and that the fathering style and practice of the Old Father type makes the impossibility of healthy father-child relationships, and that the Old Father's conventional fatherhood creates a power imbalance between males and females, and finally there is an aspiration for the New type of father in the child’s life.

scholarly journals Connoting 'Reconciliation' in History: A Multimodal Analysis of Indo-Pakistani Visual Narrative

2021 ◽  
Vol VI (I) ◽  
pp. 50-60
Author(s):  
Malik Haqnawaz Danish
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
War And Conflict

Entangled in history awash with events of war and conflict, both India and Pakistan have ensured the representation of national narratives in their respective media. Being apprehensive neighbours since the day of partition, the sensation of patriotism has led these nations towards three major wars and numerous skirmishes on the borders, claiming lives of the peoples on both sides of the border. The mutual derision for the 'other' has secured the text, both written and visual. Besides endeavours to justify stances of conflicts, these narratives of history have also created space for standoffs. An attempt to such reconciliation and shatter the image of 'other' is investigated in Indian movies, Border and Bajrangi Bhai Jan, through grammatology of image. The signification in the image is explored by applying Multimodal introduced by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. The multimodal by the theorists have been appropriated by utilizing Halliday's theoretical Systemic Functional Grammar. Both of the movies have been selected to compare the occasions depicted the historical backdrop of war and fear-based oppression and occasionally delineated attempts of reconciliation.

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