Discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics

This chapter introduces systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a theory of language from which derive concrete methods for analysing discourse. First, I discuss the notion of language as a set of rule-governed sign systems – sounds, words, and grammar – from which speakers and writers make motivated choices to create particular meanings. This part of the chapter also introduces the concept of ideational or experiential, interpersonal, and textual meaning, and maps these onto the notions of field, tenor, and mode. Focusing on lexico-grammar, the second part of the chapter provides an overview of transitivity as a grammar system that can be analysed to identify ideational meaning. I also discuss basic categories of social actor representation to show how participants in a clause can be analysed in more detail. The third part offers a comparative analysis of the leaflets distributed by a range of British parties during the 2019 EU elections. In that illustration, I show how different ideologies can be expressed through particular lexico-grammatical choices to represent participants, processes, and circumstances. The chapter closes with an evaluation of SFL’s affordances as well as its inherent limitations.