3.2 A Functional Model of Language

The curriculum redesign proposed in this chapter is based on the functional model of language described in Chapter 2. The model explicates the relationship between text and context, showing how the choices we make from the grammatical systems of language both construct and are constrained by the social context in which these choices are used. We use both oral and written texts to make different kinds of meaning for different purposes and in different contexts by choosing from the various lexical and grammatical options that language offers. As an interlocking network of lexicogrammatical choices, language enables us to represent our experience in the world (i.e., the experiential meaning) and connect messages about the experience in a logical way (i.e., the logical meaning), to enact and maintain social relationship with others (i.e., the interpersonal meaning), and to create coherent texts that make sense to language users (i.e., the textual meaning). The texts we use and the meanings we make with language are influenced by the broad cultural practices associated with different social and ethnic groups, the institutionalized practices within each group, and the local context such as the specific activity we engage in, the nature of the interaction, and the channel of communication.

From this perspective, the language used in the tertiary education context is different not only from the language of elementary and secondary schooling but also across different academic disciplines. In the elementary school, students are exposed primarily to commonsense knowledge, and the texts they read and write typically deal with topics that are dear and near to them. The language that constructs this knowledge is understandably close to the language that students use in their everyday social interaction with friends, family members, and others with shared experiences and communal understanding. In middle and high schools, students are increasingly expected to acquire and reproduce knowledge that is less particularized and further removed from their everyday experiences. The language used to construct this knowledge also becomes more generalized and abstract. By the time students enter college, the knowledge they are expected to engage with becomes much more specialized and complex. They need not only to learn this knowledge but also to critique and renovate it. The language used for learning and challenging the specialized knowledge of academic disciplines thus becomes much more technical, dense, abstract, and metaphoric.

Not only does the language of schooling become progressively more technical, dense, and abstract as the educational knowledge students are expected to engage with becomes more specialized and advanced, it also varies from one academic discipline to another. While we all recognize that different disciplines have their own vocabulary, it is not always apparent to many of us that the grammar is also different across disciplines (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008). For example, scientists construe theoretical explanations about the natural world through dense noun phrases with technical and abstract vocabulary. Poets create multilayered language play with graphology, phonology, words, syntax, and semantics in their texts. Historians use abstract language to enable the shift from chronological retelling of past events to a colored interpretation of these events. These linguistic differences are a reflection of the fundamental differences in the ways disciplinary experts conduct their work.(https://www.daowen.com)

From an SFL perspective, then, the ability to read and write is not a generalizable skill that can be applied across contexts; it involves the use of contextualized language (Hasan, 1996). This means that literacy development in school is essentially a linguistic process of making meaning in context, where students learn to expand their genre and register repertoires in the process of building knowledge about academic disciplines. During this process, they gain increasingly sophisticated control over lexicogrammar, moving from the commonsense language for construing everyday experience to the specialized language for constructing, reproducing, critiquing, and renovating disciplinary knowledge. Any learning, in this sense, is primarily a linguistic process of making meaning (Halliday, 1993).