4.6.3 Stage 3:An SFL Framework of Classroom Discou...
In the description of the SFL framework of language in Chapter 3, two dimensions are contextual variables of field and tenor, including their stratal relation to register and text unfolding in time.Furthermore, in the description of its analytical tools, the focus is the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions and their corresponding lexicogrammatical resources and systems.In the analysis of Chinese students’ classroom discourse, the discussion on the construing of field and tenor in lexicogrammatical components is limited to a generalised account of the meaning potential in discipline-related language, with an attempt to provide an overview of the constructive nature of Chinese students’ disciplinary identities in the use of academic discourse in the classroom.
At the preliminary analysis stage, field in each of the four classroom discourse texts was interpreted in terms of the ideational instantiation of clause types, grammatical intricacy of clause complexes, and taxonomic technicalities and abstractions.To begin with, lexicogrammatical patterns (refer to Chapter 3) were identified and classified.Specifically, each of the four classroom discourse texts was divided into constituent clauses.All clause choices were analysed from two metafunctional perspectives of the lexicogrammar, that is, experiential (Participant, Process, Circumstance) and interpersonal (Subject-Finite).Then, the structural patterns in each of the four classroom discourse texts were quantified and compared.In the meantime, semantic variables provided grammatical environments for the realisation of meaning potential, and their systems were realised in more than one lexicogrammatical unit.Therefore, semantic manifestation of meaning resources in classroom discourse was not only in the structure of the simple clause, but also in the complexity of clause complexing.Finally, as the current study focuses on the use of disciplinary language rather than English as a whole, the Chinese students’ reconstruction of experience of disciplinary knowledge in the use of taxonomic technicalities and abstractions was also examined.
At the following analysis stage, tenor in classroom interpersonal-interaction was examined by looking at the roles in speech moves.At this point the system of SPEECH FUNCTION was focused on to interpret the semantic-discourse meanings.First, each classroom discourse text was chunked up to classify the interactants’ speech roles in all interactive turns and moves, in accordance with the most fundamental natures of commodity exchange in SPEECH FUNCTION—giving or demanding, and goods-&-services or information.Second, the speech roles in the meaning negotiation occurring in the sequential moves were further identified and compared.Meanwhile, the representative construction of disciplinary identities in lexicogrammar and semantics was discussed with reference to the results.