17 February 2016
Beatriz Quiroz Olivares (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile)
Towards an experiential grammar for discourse analysis: descriptive and methodological issues in an SFL account of Spanish
The approach to grammar offered by Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter, SFL) has a long-standing impact on discourse studies in the Spanish speaking-world, particularly in Latin America. Such studies include applications to education as well as critically-oriented inter and transdisciplinary research. However, categories used in text analysis have not emerged from a unified descriptive proposal centred on Spanish-specific resources. In fact, it seems to be the case that each study applies varying, usually ad hoc criteria that are not always made explicit. Consequently, it is difficult to replicate and/or fine-tune the analyses available in comparable studies.
The aim of this talk is to address the methodological problem posed by the commonly known ‘transitivity’ or ‘process types’ analysis, as framed within the experiential component of the ideational metafunction in SFL (e.g. Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). Starting from the discussion put forward by O’Donnell, Zappavigna & Whitelaw (2008), and followed up by Gwilliams & Fontaine (2015) in relation to English, the paper first explores the general question of the kind of criteria used in this kind of analysis across languages. Next, the paper briefly reviews available accounts of Spanish experiential grammar, including adaptations of SFL English descriptions (e.g. Ghio & Fernández, 2008) and work oriented to contrastive research (e.g. Lavid, Arús & Zamorano-Mansilla, 2010). An alternative descriptive proposal emphasizing the system-structure interdependence embodied by the axial principle will be then presented (Quiroz, 2013; cf. Martin, 2013; Matthiessen, 2015). This approach to the establishment of language-specific categories will be illustrated by means of experiential grammar patterns found in texts in Chilean Spanish (in a research supported by grant INICIO 1/2014 from the Vice-Rectorship for Research of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile).
In sum, the paper foregrounds the importance of making explicit SFL principles for the identification of linguistic categories in Spanish, without overlooking the specific ways in which this language makes meaning, and providing accessible criteria that can be expanded across research contexts.
References
Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014) Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. 4th ed. London: Routledge.
Ghio, E., & Fernández, M. D. (2008). Lingüística sistémico funcional: aplicaciones a la lengua española. Santa Fe: Universidad Nacional del Litoral.
Gwilliams, L., & Fontaine, L. (2015). Indeterminacy in process type classification. Functional Linguistics, 2(8), 2-8.
Lavid, J., Arús, J. & Zamorano-Mansilla, J. R. (2010) Systemic functional description of Spanish: a contrastive study with English. London: Continuum.
Martin, J. R. (2013) Systemic functional grammar: a next step into the theory – axial relations. Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2013.
Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2015). Halliday on language. In J. Webster (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to M. A. K. Halliday (pp. 137-202). London: Bloomsbury.
O’Donnell, M., Zappavigna, M. & Whitelaw, C. (2008). A survey of process type classification over difficult cases. In C. Jones & E. Ventola (Eds.), From language to multimodality: new developments in the study of ideational meaning (pp. 47-64). London: Equinox.
Quiroz, B. (2013). The interpersonal and experiential grammar of Chilean Spanish: towards a principled systemic-functional description based on axial argumentation. PhD Dissertation, University of Sydney, Australia.
Beatriz is Assistant Professor at the Department of Language Sciences in the Faculty of Letters of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Chile), where she teaches and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate students in Linguistics. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2013. Her current research, informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), focuses on a metafunctionally integrated description of clause systems in Chilean Spanish, with special emphasis on the system-structure principle embodied by the theoretical dimension of axis. Other research interests include the interaction between lexicogrammar and discourse-semantics, and systemic functional language typology. Relevant publications include “Towards a systemic profile of the Spanish MOOD” (recently reprinted in the multi-volume book Systemic Functional Linguistics, edited by Martin & Doran, 2015, Routledge) and “The verbal group” (to appear in The Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics, edited by Bartlett & O’Grady, Routledge). Further details about her work and academic interests can be found at http://beatrizquiroz.weebly.com/