Grammar matters

This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course E304
http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/e304.
This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised
for your device.
You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free
learning from The Open University –
www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0
There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to
demonstrate your learning.
Copyright © 2016 The Open University
Intellectual property
Unless otherwise stated, this resource is released under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence
v4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_GB. Within that The Open University
interprets this licence in the following way:
www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/frequently-asked-questions-on-openlearn. Copyright and
rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons Licence are retained or controlled by The Open
University. Please read the full text before using any of the content.
We believe the primary barrier to accessing high-quality educational experiences is cost, which is why
we aim to publish as much free content as possible under an open licence. If it proves difficult to release
content under our preferred Creative Commons licence (e.g. because we can’t afford or gain the
clearances or find suitable alternatives), we will still release the materials for free under a personal end-
user licence.
This is because the learning experience will always be the same high quality offering and that should
always be seen as positive – even if at times the licensing is different to Creative Commons.
When using the content you must attribute us (The Open University) (the OU) and any identified author in
accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Licence.
The Acknowledgements section is used to list, amongst other things, third party (Proprietary), licensed
content which is not subject to Creative Commons licensing. Proprietary content must be used (retained)
intact and in context to the content at all times.
The Acknowledgements section is also used to bring to your attention any other Special Restrictions
which may apply to the content. For example there may be times when the Creative Commons Non-
Commercial Sharealike licence does not apply to any of the content even if owned by us (The Open
University). In these instances, unless stated otherwise, the content may be used for personal and non-
commercial use.
We have also identified as Proprietary other material included in the content which is not subject to
Creative Commons Licence. These are OU logos, trading names and may extend to certain
photographic and video images and sound recordings and any other material as may be brought to your
attention.
Unauthorised use of any of the content may constitute a breach of the terms and conditions and/or
intellectual property laws.
We reserve the right to alter, amend or bring to an end any terms and conditions provided here without
notice.
All rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons licence are retained or controlled by The
Open University.
Head of Intellectual Property, The Open University

2 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Contents
Introduction 4
Learning Outcomes 5
1 Why does grammar matter? 6
1.1 Different reasons why grammar matters 7
1.2 Meaning and consequences 8
1.3 Functional grammar and its uses 10
2 What do we mean by ‘meaning’? 12
3 Ideational meaning – talking about what’s going on 14
3.1 Representing events 14
4 Interpersonal meaning – interacting with and relating to others 18
5 Textual meaning – organising messages to make sense in context 20
5.1 It’s all in the packaging 21
6 Summary of the types of meaning 23
7 Grammar in the real world 24
7.1 Subject learning in schools 26
Conclusion 29
Keep on learning 30
Glossary 30
References 32
Further reading 33
Acknowledgements 33

3 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Introduction

Introduction
Many people believe that grammar matters hugely. For some, grammar matters
principally because it is important to adhere to standards of accurate, clear and correct
usage. Some people believe that the presence or absence of grammatical errors says a
lot about the writer (for example, errors can signal ‘laziness’) and can provoke strong
reactions. Another reason for considering grammar to be an important area of study is
that, combined with vocabulary choice, it is our main way of making meaning. Linguists
have studied the relationship between word and grammar choices on one hand and
meaning or function on the other. This free course, Grammar matters, introduces you to
one particular way of understanding how meanings relate systematically to different
aspects of grammar – the functional approach of Michael Halliday and others, known as
Systemic Functional Linguistics or SFL – and shows how this deeper understanding can
be applied to make everyday communication more effective.
Halliday’s functional approach to the study of grammar is useful because it can enable us
to better understand how written texts and spoken language work and how they relate to
the context in which they are generated. In turn, this can enable us to develop our use of
grammar to say what we mean more successfully, and so to make our speech, writing and
other communication more effective. So, in this course you will see how studying
grammar as a tool for meaning-making has numerous useful applications in the real world
of professional practice and everyday communication.
This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course
E304 Exploring English Grammar.
Brief definitions of words in bold can be found in the Glossary at the end of this course.

4 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Learning Outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
● understand that grammar can be seen as a flexible and useful tool for meaning making
● understand how grammar and vocabulary choices together create a range of different meanings
● see how an awareness of grammar as a tool for meaning-making can be applied to a range of real world
situations in everyday life and professional practice.
1 Why does grammar matter?

1 Why does grammar matter?

In this introductory activity you will hear a short extract from an interview with Lise
Fontaine, a Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at
the University of Cardiff. She is widely known for her work in Systemic Functional
Linguistics, and is author of the book Analysing English Grammar: A Systemic Functional
Introduction (Fontaine, 2013).

Activity 1: Why is grammar awareness important?

15 minutes

Listen to the interview with Lise Fontaine and then answer the following questions:

1. What two reasons does Lise give for the importance of raising one’s knowledge
about grammar?
2. Do you agree with Lise? Can you think of any other reasons why it may be worth
while studying grammar?

Figure 1 Lise Fontaine

Audio content is not available in this format.

Interview with Lise Fontaine

Discussion
1. The first reason Lise gives for grammar being important is that success in almost
anything means you need good communication skills, whether this is in your role
as a parent, in your social relationships, when you negotiate a contract, or handle
calls in a call centre. All these roles and tasks require flexibility and dexterity with
language, and perhaps especially oral language. There is an implicit assumption
in what Lise says that a dedicated study of grammar will provide someone with
the understanding they need to develop such skills. The second reason given by
Lise is that the age we live in – labelled by Lise as moving from the information
into the digital age – puts communication in the hands of us all. Everyone has the
possibility to use mobile technologies, Facebook, Twitter and to write blogs. This
generates demand for a new kind of literacy – a digital literacy. And again, the
assumption here is that a heightened awareness of what language can do is very
useful in developing digital literacy skills.
2. Lise argues persuasively for the value of grammar awareness particularly in the
context of a world in which many more of us are text producers as well as readers.
However, some would argue that, rather than focus on grammar per se, it is more
helpful to think of language awareness, as the word ‘grammar’ can seem off-

6 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

1 Why does grammar matter?

putting to some people. You may have come up with a number of other reasons
why it may be worthwhile focusing on grammar – for example:
○ the importance of giving a good impression of yourself as a writer
○ enhanced ability to pass exams and succeed in job applications
○ getting your message across clearly
○ upholding proper standards of language use.

1.1 Different reasons why grammar matters

Why is grammar important? The next activity asks you to reflect further on different
reasons for the importance of grammar.

Activity 2: A matter of life and death?

15 minutes

Consider the following piece of light-hearted punctuation advice, which popped up in

numerous places on the internet when the author of this course searched for
‘grammar’ (19 January 2016). What message does it seek to convey about the
importance of grammar?

Figure 2 A matter of life and death?

Discussion
On one hand this grammatical joke is intended to suggest that grammar can be
important because it is crucial to meaning, and that the meanings we convey in words
have real consequences. The comma signals that Grandpa is the addressee of the
imperative Let’s eat and so includes him as one of the ‘eaters’. Without it, Grandpa
becomes the object of the verb eat: he is to be eaten. On the other hand, there is a
strong element of tongue-in-cheek here which acknowledges that grammar is in fact
rarely – if ever – a matter of life and death. In practice, unless these words were used
following a fatal plane crash in a remote location, it is highly unlikely that the words
Let’s eat grandpa – however punctuated – would be misinterpreted as an exhortation
to cannibalise an older member of the family. In any case, these words are far more
likely to be spoken, when intonation would take the place of punctuation in helping to
make sure that listeners do not misinterpret.

We can use this example to illustrate that not all grammatical changes affect meaning. For
example, if we left out the apostrophe in Let’s, which indicates that the u in us has been
left out, there would be no loss or distortion of meaning. In this case, incorrect grammar
would only be a superficial problem: it might make us question the attention to detail of the
text producer, or even cause the reader to make negative social judgements about the

7 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

1 Why does grammar matter?

writer, for instance, but it would have no significant impact on the substance of the
message.
Another example of a superficial problem of incorrect grammar is the well-known
extraneous ‘grocer’s apostrophe’. Although references to potatoe’s or pineapple’s may
irritate some customers, it does not usually lead to misunderstanding.

Figure 3 The greengrocer’s apostrophe

Many of the debates about the significance of grammar and the importance of studying it
involve some confusion between these two issues – a concern with ‘meaning’ on one
hand and a concern with rules and standards on the other (though sometimes, of course,
both concerns may be relevant at once). In this course we will be chiefly interested in the
significance of grammar in making meaning, rather than with the formal rules of English
for their own sake, or with the social connotations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ grammar.

1.2 Meaning and consequences

The next activity asks you to look at a much more serious example of how grammar as a
carrier of meaning can have serious consequences in the real world.

8 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

1 Why does grammar matter?

Activity 3: Grammar in the court room

15 minutes

Figure 4 A traditional formal courtroom

Imagine you are observing a trial involving a child witness. A barrister is cross-
examining the child. Consider these two alternative forms of questioning and use the
blank text box to note answers the questions below.
Did you hit him first?
You hit him first, didn’t you?

1. What differences in grammatical form do you notice between the two examples?
(Don’t worry if you are not familiar with grammatical terminology, just note any
differences in your own words.)
2. What sort of response does each question call for?
3. What potential problems can you foresee in the second example?
4. Which do you think you are most likely to hear in a courtroom?

Provide your answer...

Discussion
1. The first is a question or interrogative sentence. In the second sentence, the
main clause of the sentence is an assertion, or declarative clause, followed by
the question tag didn’t you?
2. These utterances call for slightly different sorts of response. The first calls simply
for an answer to the question, without proposing what that answer should be. The
second makes a proposition and invites the other person to challenge the
proposition.
3. The second version potentially ‘leads’ the witness, who has to actively reject the
barrister’s assertion if they wish to deny being the first to hit out. In the context of
the courtroom the experienced adult barrister is in a very powerful position in
relation to a young child in the witness box for the first time. By choosing this
assertive wording in cross-examination, a barrister enacts their authority over the
child and consequently there is a risk that the child will falsely agree to a
proposition because they feel unable to challenge the ‘voice of authority’. This
increases the risk of miscarriages of justice in such cases.
4. It is difficult to be sure which question is most likely in a courtroom, and this will
differ from one legal jurisdiction and culture to another. However, eminent
members of the legal profession have argued that there is too much of the second
type of wording in courtroom language where vulnerable witnesses are being
cross-examined.

9 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

1 Why does grammar matter?

This example illustrates how different grammatical choices can have serious con-
sequences. In 2013, Lord Judge, retired Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, called
for a major overhaul of the way in which children were cross-examined in court. In a BBC
interview, he expressed profound concern for the 40,000 children a year who are called to
give evidence in England and Wales in criminal proceedings, criticising the current system
in strong terms (Today, 2013). One of the main reasons for Lord Judge’s objections
hinged on the language that barristers acting for the defence were using to cross-examine
child witnesses. In the example above, which was given by Lord Judge himself, the
meaning of the declarative + negative question tag may be only subtly different to that of
an interrogative clause. However, the difference is highly significant in terms of the
social relationships in the exchange.

Activity 4: Grammar: form or function?

10 minutes

Think back to how you learned grammar at school, either in English or other languages
you learned. What terms do you remember learning?
Discussion
Everyone will have their own recollections of grammar at school – not all of them
positive! You may have made a note of learning such terms as noun, verb, pronoun,
adverb and adjective. In some cases, you may have learned about past, present and
future tense verbs. In some languages you may have learned about how to ensure
agreement between verbs and nouns or pronouns, for example if they need to be
plural or singular forms. In other languages you may have learned about word gender,
i.e. whether a word is masculine, feminine or neuter, for example. Many of us would
also have recollections of grammar as being about writing in complete sentences,
using punctuation correctly, and so on. All of these terms are linked to an
understanding of grammar as a question of form and structure rather than of function.

1.3 Functional grammar and its uses

Another way of understanding the importance of grammatical choice is to see it in terms of
how language is functioning in any given text or interaction. For example, depending on
the choices made in the courtroom case in Activity 3, language can function to intimidate
and exercise power over a witness (or to reassure and empower them) as well as seeking
information. This emphasis on function rather than form gives rise to the terms functional
grammar and Systemic Functional Linguistics (known as SFL for short). A functional
perspective holds that language looks the way it does because of the functions it fulfils, in
other words, how we use it to make meaning. This perspective focuses on how forms
perform a range of meaning functions, rather than on form in itself. The next activity
explains further what this approach can offer.

Activity 5: The value of a functional perspective on grammar

15 minutes

In this activity you will listen to two brief extracts from an interview with the late Geoff
Thompson, another well-known educator and researcher in the field of SFL. He is

10 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

1 Why does grammar matter?

widely known and recognised for his work on functional grammar, and is author of the
book Introducing Functional Grammar (Thompson, 2014).

Figure 5 Geoff Thompson

As you listen, consider the associated questions.
1. What is formal grammar? What is functional grammar? How do they differ?

Audio content is not available in this format.

Geoff Thompson interview (1)

2. In which other professional areas, apart from education, does Geoff suggest an
increased knowledge of grammar might be put to use?

Audio content is not available in this format.

Geoff Thompson interview (2)

Discussion
1. To Geoff, formal grammar is the type of grammar that some people know about
from school, which is often to do with being able to identity nouns and verbs, and
breaking up a sentence into its parts. Functional grammar, by contrast, Geoff
sees as having to do with understanding not just the constituent parts of the
sentence but also what the sentence as a whole is doing.
2. Geoff mentions the importance for advertisers, doctors and translators, among
others, of increasing their understanding, not only of sentence-level grammar but
also of meaning making through language as a whole. Advertisers, for instance,
are able to manipulate language and persuade customers that they need a given
product; doctors need not only to have medical knowledge but also to interact
effectively and empathetically with the patients they are diagnosing; translators
need to have an understanding of how different languages function in order to be
able to translate between them. Geoff also relates how forensic linguists have
used their linguistic knowledge to show how some historic alleged confessions
from crime suspects were almost certainly tampered with by the police.

11 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

2 What do we mean by ‘meaning’?

2 What do we mean by ‘meaning’?

The example from the law in the previous section shows that ‘meaning’ can be a more
complex affair than we might normally assume. It’s not only about the dictionary meaning
of the words used, for example, or about the logical function of an utterance. In the case of
the cross-examining example, the second, more assertive style of questioning conveyed
the speaker’s superior authority and so had an interpersonal element to it as well. This
expanded view of meaning – as incorporating a range of functions, and involving more
than just giving and receiving information – is a fundamental insight of functional
linguistics, a field in which Michael Halliday was a major figure. Halliday proposed that
language serves three overarching functions, which are always operating together.

Box 1 The three metafunctions

Ideational metafunction
We use language to talk about our experience of the world, including the worlds in our own
minds, to describe events and states and the entities involved in them.

Interpersonal metafunction
We also use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with
them, to influence their behaviour, to express our own viewpoint on things in the world, and
to elicit or change theirs.

Textual metafunction
Finally, in using language, we organise our messages in ways that indicate how they fit in
with the other messages around them and with the wider context in which we are talking or
writing.
(Adapted from Thompson, 2014, p. 28)

Language users will not normally be aware that the texts they produce and the
interactions they engage in will perform all these three functions at one and the same
time.

Activity 6: Three types of meaning

15 minutes

Figure 6 The three metafunctions

12 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

2 What do we mean by ‘meaning’?

1. In the brief utterance seen in the cartoon above, try to describe what is going on in
terms of the three metafunctions. Write brief notes in the blank text box.
2. How might these three different strands of meaning be altered with a change in
the wording chosen by the speaker?

Provide your answer...

Discussion
1. The speaker is reporting a specific experience of an event, which is that a vase
has been broken (though as yet the speaker does not appear to know by whom, if
we go by verbal clues alone) – this is the ideational metafunction. At the same
time, the speaker is interacting with the child, by asking her a question to try to
establish whether she was the person who broke the vase: this is the
interpersonal metafunction. And finally, he is using language to organise his
message so that it makes sense and fits into the wider context – for example, both
speakers clearly know who the vase belongs to and so the word ‘her’ is used,
reflecting the interlocutors’ shared knowledge. This is the textual metafunction.
2. The ideational meaning of the utterance could and would be changed if it were to
reflect a different experience – for example, ‘her vase’ might become ‘my phone’ if
the event were different. Or the speaker could focus on a completely different
aspect of the same situation e.g. What a mess you’ve made. The interpersonal
meaning could be subtly changed e.g. it could be more accusatory: You broke her
vase, didn’t you? (Some might say that the visual image here fits better with that
wording.) The textual meaning would change if, in the context, the father had
instead written the daughter a note: ‘Amelia, I have just noticed the bits of vase
lying on the floor. I want to know if that has anything to do with you. We shall talk
when I get home. Dad’. This would be a more planned communication, and
aspects of the situation (e.g. ‘on the floor’) would need to be put into words
instead of being communicated non-verbally.
These three aspects of meaning are deeply intertwined and are not usually
manipulated separately in this way: that is, we don’t normally change one
metafunction without also changing the others. For example, in such a situation,
the speaker could have chosen to focus on solving the problem (rather than
finding out who did it) – which is predominantly an ideational dimension of the
meaning and at the same time to emphasise solidarity, which is an aspect of
interpersonal meaning, e.g. by saying We’d better clear this up before she
notices.

Now that you have briefly been introduced to the three metafunctions, the next three
sections of the course give you an opportunity to consider them in greater detail. In
particular, you will get to see how they are related to the language choices people make in
different contexts.

13 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

3 Ideational meaning – talking about what’s going on

3 Ideational meaning – talking about

what’s going on
In this section we focus on the language used to convey the speaker or writer’s
perspective on and experience of ‘what is happening’: what is known in SFL as ‘ideational
meaning’. Whenever we talk about events, we represent them in a certain way. There are
almost always other choices we could make in our language which would result in a
different representation of events.

Figure 7 Taking a photograph, or posing for one?

Take, for example, the event represented in this image. This could be expressed verbally
in different ways, for example:

1. A young woman is photographing her brother.

2. A young man is posing for a photograph.

Here we can see a difference in lexical choices (brother as against young man for
example) and also a difference in the way the grammatical pattern represents the
experience. In Example 1 we have a process in which two participants are involved: one
that does the action (the agent – the young woman) and one that is affected by the action
(her brother). In the clause in Example 2 we have a different process involving only one
participant: the agent (A young man). The man is represented in Example 1 as the
participant who is ‘acted on’ and in Example 2 as the agent.
Another contrast between the two representations concerns the action itself. In
Example 1, is photographing has the central place grammatically as the verb. In
Example 2, is posing is the verb that has the central place and the action of photographing
is merely implied in the extra detail (for a photograph). The point is not that one version is
better or truer than another, but that the two versions create slightly different meanings:
they make subtly different interpretations of the same ‘reality’. Every time we say or write
something that makes sense we are transforming experience into a particular pattern, and
every time we do this we are making meaning – but not the only possible meaning. Just as
our choice of words contributes to meaning, so does our choice of how we pattern those
words. This is fundamental to understanding why our use of both vocabulary and
grammar together (known as the lexicogrammatical system) is so important and also
why a functional approach helps to focus on meaning.

3.1 Representing events

In the following activity you will explore a further illustration of the ideational metafunction:
how different lexicogrammatical choices represent events in different ways.

14 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

3 Ideational meaning – talking about what’s going on

Activity 7: ‘The Killing Time’

30 minutes

Figure 8 A Warlpiri resettlement scheme

Read the following short text, which was part of an exhibition at the Australia Museum
in Sydney. The text is about the arrival of white colonial settlers in Australia and its
devastating consequences for the indigenous population. Make notes in the first text
box about how the passage represents the Warlpiri people and the events which
occurred.

When Europeans arrived, the way of life of the Warlpiri people was
changed.
The best land was taken over by Europeans for cattle and sheep and the
Aborigines had only the desert land to live in.
In 1928, a severe drought forced Warlpiri people from the desert. Some tried
to get food and water on the better land and fights broke out. A large group
of Warlpiri people were killed by Europeans. The Warlpiri refer to this as the
Killing Time.
Those people who remained became dependent upon European society
and were resettled at government controlled townships like Warrabri and
Yuendumu. There, many people were alienated from their own country, their
dreaming and their spiritual guardians.
(Australian Museum text, cited in Ferguson et al., 1995, p. 7)

15 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

3 Ideational meaning – talking about what’s going on

Provide your answer...

Now look at the passage for a second time, paying particular attention to the verbs
used to represent past events or processes. These have been highlighted using italics.
Make a note of whether each verb form is active or passive, who is the agent and who
is ‘acted on’ by the action represented by the verb in each case. In the second text box,
make a note of whether this closer look has altered your interpretation of the passage.

When Europeans arrived, the way of life of the Warlpiri people was
changed.
The best land was taken over by Europeans for cattle and sheep and the
Aborigines had only the desert land to live in.
In 1928, a severe drought forced Warlpiri people from the desert. Some tried
to get food and water on the better land and fights broke out. A large group
of Warlpiri people were killed by Europeans. The Warlpiri refer to this as the
Killing Time.
Those people who remained became dependent upon European society
and were resettled at government controlled townships like Warrabri and
Yuendumu. There, many people were alienated from their own country, their
dreaming and their spiritual guardians.
(Australian Museum text, cited in Ferguson et al., 1995, p. 7)

Provide your answer...

Discussion
This passage was used by some Australian linguists and colleagues (Ferguson et al.,
1995, p. 7) to explain to museum educators how their lexicogrammatical choices
shaped the way they represented Australian history and culture to museum visitors.
They comment that the first impression given is that this is quite a progressive take on
events. It acknowledges past violence by European settlers and appears to represent
the Warlpiri point of view. There is no attempt to disguise who did the killing. On the
other hand, closer analysis of the verb groups used in the passage provides a different
perspective. The Warlpiri are often referred to as being affected by events rather than
as agents (e.g. a severe drought forced [them] from the desert). Where the actions of
the Warlpiri are referred to using active verb forms, the choices made convey a sense
that their agency is limited (e.g. they tried to get food; [they] became dependent). Also,
the most violent act referred to is written in the passive, lessening its impact: A large
group … were killed by Europeans). The authors argue that the text unwittingly
perpetuates a view of Australian history which subtly promotes cultural stereotypes
and downplays the enormity of colonial violence. In doing so, they demonstrate that a
detailed analysis helps to explain how ‘a particular orientation is constructed for
readers’ (p. 7), even in a seemingly objective text. They show museum curators that
they need to be highly conscious of their language choices in order to avoid giving
unintentional messages.

16 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

3 Ideational meaning – talking about what’s going on

Whether or not you agree with this particular interpretation or not is less important here
than understanding how such choices matter when it comes to representing how the
world is and what happens in it.

17 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

4 Interpersonal meaning – interacting with and relating to others

4 Interpersonal meaning – interacting with

and relating to others
In this section we will look at interpersonal meanings by considering a communicative
situation with which many of us are familiar: that between a teacher who marks a piece of
written work and the student who has written it. As anyone who has received feedback on
their writing will know, it’s not just the information that is conveyed – e.g. about the
strengths and weaknesses of a piece of work – that is vital to the success of this
interaction. How this information is conveyed is also very important, particularly because
of the sort of relationship it sets up between the teacher and the student.

Activity 8: Communicating relationships in writing

15 minutes

Read the following lecturer feedback comment on an undergraduate essay then

answer the following questions:

1. What does this comment communicate about the social roles and relationship
between student and teacher?
2. Can you identify any aspects of the language that create this relationship?
3. If you received this comment as a student, how do you think you might feel?
Would you accept or resist such positioning?

You really have a problem with this essay, mainly for the reason that it is so
incoherent. It has no beginning, middle and end, no structure, no argument
… May I suggest very strongly that you go to the Study Centre and make
more enquiries about essay-writing clinics.
(Example taken from Lea and Street, 1998, pp. 166–7)

Discussion
1. This comment clearly constructs the lecturer (the feedback writer) as an expert,
being in a position to judge the student’s work with little need for the polite
language we often use when we wish to give advice or feedback to others. It also
positions the student-reader as subordinate, and as someone with a ‘problem’
who needs to seek a cure at the ‘essay-writing clinic’.
2. The language used here is very blunt. For example, the descriptive comment is
made up of a series of plainly-worded statements (You really have a problem, it is
so incoherent, It has no beginning … etc.) with no softening or hedging language.
These bare assertions are presented confidently, with the assumption that the
teacher’s evaluation of the text (and of the student) is beyond question – a matter
of fact, rather than opinion. To help you see this point, imagine how different the
effect of the comment might be if the teacher had written I think you may really
have a problem… or I find the essay lacks structure. In these cases, the
evaluative statements are preceded by the first person pronoun + a verb group
which explicitly frames the teacher’s views as one possible opinion or response.

18 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

4 Interpersonal meaning – interacting with and relating to others

3. I think most people would feel very deflated to receive this sort of comment on a
piece of writing, though they might also feel a sense of resistance: I’m not sure
this feedback would be guaranteed to get the student to pay a visit to the Study
Centre. So the interpersonal meaning conveyed in this comment is likely to make
it ineffective as well as disheartening.

This example illustrates how, even in a short text, the interpersonal metafunction can be a
very significant element of meaning. It’s worth pointing out that the research on feedback
comments from which this example was taken was conducted some time ago. In many
institutions, including The Open University, this sort of interpersonally unhelpful feedback
would no longer be considered acceptable, partly as a result of the work of researchers
like Lea and Street, who collected this example.

19 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

5 Textual meaning – organising messages to make sense in context

5 Textual meaning – organising messages

to make sense in context

Figure 9 A suitable context for spontaneity

In this section we will look at how we organise our messages. This is an aspect of the
textual metafunction. The lexicogrammatical choices we make not only construct a
representation of experience (the ideational metafunction) and signal social roles and
status (the interpersonal metafunction), but also provide a way of organising a message
so as to make it accessible to the listener/reader, taking into account the context, channel
and medium in which the text is produced. The first activity in this section is intended to
show how language is packaged in order to help the reader make sense of what is being
talked about. Three key questions can be asked about any act of communication which
help to determine how it is or needs to be organised:

Is it planned or spontaneous?
Is it interactive or more of a monologue?
Does the verbal message stand alone or does it work with other modes of meaning –
e.g. images, pointing and gesture?

These three variables form a spectrum of possibilities which in SFL is called a mode
continuum. At one end of this spectrum, face-to-face conversation would normally be
spontaneous and interactive, and the verbal language used would normally be
accompanied by physical gestures. In many cases, language might be taking second
place, for example when it is mainly being used to accompany actions. At the other end,
an academic article will be carefully planned, with no reader input, and with very few other
modes of meaning (though in some cases, graphs, diagrams and charts may well be used
alongside the words). This cartoon above plays on an apparent mismatch between the
highly planned, wordy monologic mode of expression being used by the person in the
pond and the apparent need for spontaneous, action-focused talk, given the situation.
However, there is no clear cut distinction between speech and writing. The mode
continuum is the movement from more spontaneous spoken-like language to more
formal, written-like language. Face-to-face informal conversation between friends may
have characteristics similar to written communication between friends while a political
speech may be organised in ways similar to newspaper reports. Communications via
phones and the internet are useful in demonstrating the ways in which contextual
variables, such as how well the interactants know each other, where they are, and the
immediacy of response, can all work to blur the distinction between grammar in speech
and in writing. For example, when exchanging text messages or chatting on social media,
our language often reflects the relatively immediate timeframe and extent of contextual

20 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

5 Textual meaning – organising messages to make sense in context

knowledge shared between participants, aspects which are often associated with
conversation.
Take this brief exchange of texts:

Figure 10 Short text ‘conversation’

The second texter has responded knowing that in fact ‘vicky’ is the name of a nearby park
(Victoria Park) and both participants are working on the basis that the communication will
be almost instant, because the second person will be making a meal to suit the timing of
the first person’s journey home ‘soon’. The way in which texts are nowadays represented
on a screen, using speech bubbles, is an acknowledgement of their conversational
nature, as is the tendency to omit any form of punctuation. Because of the way in which
text messages automatically flag the sender’s name, there is no need for greeting or
signing off, which is more like face-to-face conversation (where we know who is speaking
because they are in front of us) than typical written contexts. On the other hand, there are
features here that are associated with writing rather than speech – e.g. the first text
message omits the personal pronoun ‘I’ and the verb ‘am’, which might be expected in
speech abbreviated to I’m (though the pronoun is retained in the reply), and the second
uses x to indicate affection (or a kiss).

5.1 It’s all in the packaging

In the next activity, you will look more closely at ways of organising messages, by
analysing two different texts.

Activity 9: Comparing texts at different places on the mode continuum

20 minutes

Compare the two short texts below, paying particular attention to the noun groups
that have been underlined for you. (Don’t worry about why some have not been
underlined.)

1. What differences do you notice in the way meaning is packaged?

2. How do you account for these differences?

Text A: A storytelling text

(The speaker is describing a friend’s first skiing holiday. Dashes indicate
hesitations or repetitions.)

He was coming down this – this track and he’s been a few times
so he’s got some idea of it um so he said that he saw this slight
rise so he said he headed up the rise and he found out it was a ski
jump! he– he’d lost one ski at the top and eh apparently he was
flying through the air with one leg up in the air with a ski on it and
he landed head first in the snow but he caught his head his mate

21 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

5 Textual meaning – organising messages to make sense in context

with him, he hit a tree on the way down came back all bruised and
scraped …
(Eggins and Slade, 1997, p. 250)

Text B: An academic science text

The steady increase in life expectancy in human populations
shows that longevity is a plastic phenomenon. Although lifespans
are species-specific, they can be modified greatly by the
environment as well as genes. For many human populations, the
fixed three score years and ten allotted for human longevity are
already but a distant memory. Much of this increase in lifespan
has been achieved by improvements in public health, medical
care and domestic circumstances. We are beginning to view
ageing-related damage as a side-effect of other adaptive
processes. This may allow us to reduce the impact of ageing-
related diseases as the limits on human lifespan recede.
(Adapted from Partridge and Gems, 2002, p. 921)

Discussion
A long, tightly structured unit at the start of the clause is not easily achieved in the
dynamic context of speech, which allows no time for preparation and places a heavy
information-processing load on the listener, so starting with an elaborate idea is not
typical in speech. In Text A, therefore, the pronoun he is repeated throughout without
any descriptive elements or elaboration about the person being referred to. A writer,
however, has the opportunity to create such structures in a more considered way, free
from the pressures of production in ‘real time’. Moreover, units in written text can be
rapidly scanned by eye and so writers may compress more information into fewer
words. Such units are described as ‘lexically dense’ as they have a high number of
lexical words, words that carry the main content of a text. Lexically dense text is more
easily understood when reading a written text than in the rapid processing necessary
to understand spoken texts.
The frequent use of pronouns as participants in Text A reflects its subject matter – a
story about a friend. On the other hand, Text B, as noted, has lengthy noun groups
(e.g. the fixed three score years and ten allotted for human longevity, the impact of
ageing-related diseases), which allows more information to be packed into these parts
of the clause. Academic texts frequently have long noun groups as the readership is
expected to be able to handle meanings compressed into such groups as a result of
their familiarity with these types of texts and with the technical concepts of the field of
study. The aim of the text is to move the argument forward as succinctly as possible.
Information that can be taken for granted as understood therefore gets packaged up
as long noun groups. The use of these abstract and often complex noun groups
reflects the subject matter, while in Text A the nouns refer to the people and things that
the story is about.

22 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

6 Summary of the types of meaning

6 Summary of the types of meaning

In the last three sections of this course you have had an opportunity to consider the three
different overarching types of meaning – or metafunctions – in turn. However, it is
important to realise that these strands are always operating together in any text. For
example, the scientific text you have just looked at is ‘packaged’ densely with information,
and this is an aspect of the textual metafunction. At the same time, this sort of academic
text, in which the focus is on relationships between phenomena, causes and effects and
on evidence and logical arguments, also reflects a way of viewing the world in a scientific
manner and so reflects typical ideational meanings of scientific texts. It also comes
across as relatively impersonal, with only minimal use of personal pronouns, for example,
and when they are used (‘we’, ‘us’); they have a rather generalised meaning. This is an
aspect of the interpersonal metafunction. For definitions of these terms, see Box 1 in
Section 2 ‘What do we mean by “meaning”?’
In the next section of the course, you’ll look more closely at this type of scientific text in the
context of education, with a focus on the grammar of textual meaning.

23 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

7 Grammar in the real world

7 Grammar in the real world

In previous sections of this course you have seen how a functional understanding of
grammar can apply to a wide range of contexts. In this section, you will see how a
functional approach, and particularly SFL, is being applied in a professional context, in
this case secondary education. Shortly, you will learn about the work going on in an inner-
city school in Birmingham, UK, to use functional grammar to improve student learning and
achievement in their school subjects such as PE and Science.
First of all, however, it will be useful to introduce a particular aspect of grammar called
‘nominalisation’. This has been identified by functional linguists as an important feature of
academic and scientific language, but one that can make scientific texts hard for learners
to understand and produce scientific writing. The term will be explained as you work
through the activity.

Activity 10: Raining cats and dogs

15 minutes

Figure 11 Raining cats and dogs?

Compare these two short sentences and answer the following questions (note that the
idiom ‘raining cats and dogs’ is used in British English to indicate heavy rainfall):

1. What context might you expect each to have been produced in?
2. What differences do you notice between the grammar patterns in each?

It got muggy really quickly and then it came down cats and dogs.
The rapid rise in humidity was followed by heavy precipitation.
Discussion
1. You may have commented that the first sentence is more likely to have come up
in spontaneous, informal, face-to-face conversation, where someone is telling a
personal story to someone they know quite well. The second describes a similar
event but seems to come from a weather report or some other scientific record of
the event, and was probably written rather than spoken.
2. There are a number of features you may have pointed out here. A key difference
is in the way that information is packaged in each case. In the first sentence, a lot
of the information is conveyed through the verb groups and adverb groups got
muggy really quickly and came down cats and dogs, the noun groups are simple
(e.g. made up of one pronoun) and there are two clauses linked by and. In the
second, there is only one clause and one verb group was followed, which
conveys information about the sequencing of events but not about what actually

24 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

7 Grammar in the real world

happened. Most information is instead conveyed through the noun groups A rapid
rise in humidity and heavy precipitation. This can be shown as follows:

Noun Verb Adverb Noun Verb Noun

group group group group group group

It got really and then it came cats and

muggy quickly down dogs.

Noun group Verb group Prepositional group

The rapid rise in humidity was followed by heavy precipitation.

A compression of information has been enabled by the nominalisations humidity and

precipitation.

This feature often seen in scientific and academic texts is called nominalisation. You saw
a good example of it in Activity 9. Nouns and noun groups can be used to package
meanings about entities in the real world – things or persons like mangoes, bluebottles,
windowpanes, schoolgirls and clouds (often called concrete nouns). However, we can
also use noun groups to talk about processes and qualities. If someone is leaving, for
example, we can talk about their departure, and if they are feeling frustrated, we can talk
about their frustration. Departure and frustration are both nouns, but they are not really
‘things’ in the way that a bluebottle or a windowpane is (they are often called abstract
nouns). Nominalisation is the use of a noun to represent a process or quality. Through
nominalisation, it becomes possible to pack into one noun group a number of meanings
that might otherwise be expressed using verb groups and adverb groups.

Figure 12 From concrete to abstract

This cartoon emphasises the fact that nominalisation can sometimes make language
unnecessarily difficult and obscure. But in fact, without the ability to nominalise, i.e. to turn
processes and qualities into nouns, it would be impossible to conceive of many common
concepts such as ‘ownership’ or ‘movement’, or to measure abstract things such as
‘growth’, ‘birth rates’, etc. Below are some examples of processes in their verb form and
their nominalised form.

Table 1 Nominalisation of
processes
Verb form Nominalised form
(to) evaporate evaporation

25 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

7 Grammar in the real world

(to) deliver delivery

(to) arrive arrival

Nominalisation in scientific texts enables writers to describe the world and its phenomena
in a particular way. It makes possible:

● the formation of technical terms that stand for complex but commonly occurring –
and commonly understood – phenomena (e.g. reproduction, mutation, stability).
● the development of abstract concepts and properties.

When we use nominalisations, especially for abstract concepts and properties, we open
up the possibility of precisely measuring and recording what was previously intangible.
This makes nominalisation an important feature of the language of school subjects in
which pupils need to learn how to understand the world of science, history, geography and
so on in precise and more academic ways (for example, they need to be able to talk about
the rise in humidity and heavy precipitation rather than about raining cats and dogs). In
technical fields this is particularly useful, since so much activity revolves around
measuring, comparing and ordering.

7.1 Subject learning in schools

In the next activity you will watch a video (which lasts 20 minutes). You’ll see two classes –
physical education (PE) and science. The school where the action takes place is
Hamstead Hall Academy, an inner-city school in Birmingham. Hamstead Hall is a
secondary comprehensive school (pupils are aged 11 to 18 years) with a diverse school
population. Fifty per cent of the pupils have an English as an Additional Language
background and prior academic attainment on entry is, on average, significantly below the
national average.
In the PE lesson, you will hear some terminology which comes from SFL and which has
not been introduced in this course. The teachers are recapping a previous lesson and are
using the concepts of ‘macro theme’ and ‘hyper theme’ to remind students of how to
organise what they write at the whole text level as well as within individual paragraphs.
You should not need an in-depth knowledge of these terms to make sense of what is
going on here. This approach of giving students a metalanguage – that is language to talk
about language – to help to scaffold their understanding of how language works is typical
of the Hamstead Hall initiative. You may also have noticed that this is also the approach
taken in this course!
In both classrooms you will also see examples of how students are being supported to
use nominalisation to make their writing more scientific. The focus is partly on the lexical
element – vocabulary – but also on the grammatical element of nominalisation and the
way in which lexical choices and grammar patterns work alongside each other in technical
and scientific writing. Aside from the classroom sequences, the video features the
teachers talking about their experience of making language more central to their teaching
and why and how the school developed a language and learning policy. The teachers you
will hear from include Mark and Lee, two PE teachers who you will see co-teaching a
lesson, and Alistair Clarke, a science teacher who you will also briefly observe. In
addition, you will hear from Eileen Mawdsley, the assistant head, and Helen Handford, a
literacy and language consultant to the school.

26 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

7 Grammar in the real world

Activity 11: SFL in action: examples from the secondary school classroom
1 hour

As you watch the video, make notes on any points that strike you in relation to the
following questions:

1. What in your view are the pros and cons of the approach being taken in this
video?
2. If you are familiar with an educational context, including your own schooling or
that of your children, how could this approach be applied to that?
3. How far does this example of grammar awareness in practice back up Lise
Fontaine’s claim, which you heard at the beginning of this course, that grammar is
at the centre of everything we do?

Video content is not available in this format.

SFL in the classroom

Provide your answer...

Discussion
1. There are certainly a number of very positive claims made in the video about this
approach. In particular you may have noticed head teacher Eileen Mawdsley’s
emphasis on how the approach has enabled students to take control of language
for themselves and to be independent autonomous communicators who can
judge how to use language in different contexts, both inside and outside school.
Eileen was also particularly insistent that, by becoming more aware of how
language works, rather than students losing their creativity or criticality, the
inverse occurs. On the down side, it’s clear that this kind of approach requires
teachers of different subjects to really take on board their responsibility for
teaching children to write in their subject. This seems to involve a new mindset

27 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

7 Grammar in the real world

and considerable training, meaning that the whole approach may take a long time
to fully embed in a school.
2. You may be able to recollect experiences at school where you felt you understood
some of the concepts being taught, but found it hard to express these in a
scientific manner. Perhaps the technical vocabulary in some subjects put you off.
The Hamstead Hall example provides evidence that difficult language issues
across the entire school curriculum needn’t be such a barrier. The idea that PE
teachers, for example, would be engaged in supporting students’ literacy, may
seem radical but there is a lot of evidence that it is not helpful for schools to leave
language learning and development only to the English department.
3. This example is school-focused, but it does show that attention to grammar and
language awareness can be of great use in a range of different areas of human
activity and knowledge. If we extend this notion to the later stages of education
and training – to university studies, professional and vocational training and
beyond – it is not difficult to see how awareness of grammar can play a central
part in our communicative lives at home, in the community and at work.

28 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Conclusion

Conclusion
This free course, Grammar matters, has introduced you to a particular way of
understanding grammar, focused on what language does, rather than on what it is.
Because it is concerned with grammar as a way of making meaning (i.e. what it does), a
functional approach to grammar can be particularly useful for understanding how
language works in real-world contexts. Additionally, you’ve seen that the expanded view
of meaning proposed by Halliday and other SFL scholars, which takes into account the
ideational, interpersonal and the textual dimensions, enables a functional grammar
approach to be used as a tool for intervening to address communicative issues in people’s
lives. You’ve learned, for example, about how the insights of SFL can be applied to legal
and educational contexts.
We hope this free course has given you more insight into the relevance of grammar to
everyday and professional life, and has gone some way towards convincing you that
grammar matters.

29 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Keep on learning

Keep on learning

Study another free course

There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to choose from on a range of
subjects.
Find out more about all our free courses.

Take your studies further

Find out more about studying with The Open University by visiting our online prospectus.
If you are new to university study, you may be interested in our Access Courses or
Certificates.

What’s new from OpenLearn?

Sign up to our newsletter or view a sample.

For reference, full URLs to pages listed above:

OpenLearn – www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses
Visiting our online prospectus – www.open.ac.uk/courses
Access Courses – www.open.ac.uk/courses/do-it/access
Certificates – www.open.ac.uk/courses/certificates-he
Newsletter –
www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/subscribe-the-openlearn-newsletter

Glossary
active

30 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Glossary

An active clause contains an active verb group with a subject which is the agent of the
main verb, i.e. carries out the action, e.g. The dog bites.
adverb group
A group of words used together with an adverb as its head, for example the italicised
phrase here He was completely and utterly insensitive.
clause
A grammatical unit consisting of a verb phrase together with any associated elements
such as subject, object or adverb group.
context
The situation in which an utterance is used.
declarative clause
A clause that most commonly functions as a statement, e.g. He read the book in a
week.
ideational metafunction
One of the three metafunctions in SFL, this is the overarching function of language
which expresses experience or ideas. It describes how we use language to talk about
our experience of the world, including the worlds in our own minds, to describe events
and states and the entities involved in them.
imperative clause
A clause with no subject, typically used for commands, e.g. Wake up! Put your
clothes on!
interpersonal metafunction
One of the three metafunctions in SFL, this is the overarching function of language
which enacts social relation. It describes how we use language to interact with other
people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behaviour, to
express our own viewpoint on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs.
interrogative clause
A clause that most commonly functions as a question, e.g. Did he read the book in a
week?
lexical
Relating to lexis, i.e. to the vocabulary of a language.
lexical verb
A ‘content’ verb, i.e. which carries informational content, such as walk, study, swim.
lexicogrammatical choice
The choices of wordings that people make to convey their meaning. This involves
deploying lexis in particular grammatical patterns.
mode continuum
The spectrum of ways of communicating, ranging from more spontaneous spoken-like
to more formal, written-like language.
noun
Nouns represent ‘things’ whether these be concrete objects, places and people or
abstract ideas. They may be either countable (e.g. penny, egg, idea) or uncountable
(e.g. money, sugar, information).
noun group
A group of one or more words which together function as a noun e.g. regulations, plenty
of fresh orange juice, a long wait for the bus.

31 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

References

object
In a clause, the object is the participant that is affected by the action indicated by the
verb. For example, in Everybody hates Chris, the object is Chris, and in Please bring
some identification with you, the object is some identification. This is sometimes called
the direct object, to distinguish it from the indirect object.
passive
A passive verb group typically consists of be followed by a past participle, e.g. is
protected, has been repainted. A passive clause contains a passive verb group, and
has a subject which instead of carrying out the action, is affected by it, e.g. Gandhi was
assassinated.
prepositional group
A unit in which a noun group is linked into the clause by a preposition.
pronoun
Pronouns are one of the closed word classes, and typically stand for or replace a noun
group. Common examples are: I, you, he, it, they, we, us, herself, these, another,
somebody, anyone, nothing. ‘I’ ‘me’ ‘mine’ ‘we’ ‘us’ and ‘ours’ are first person pronouns
because they relate to the speaker or writer when referring to themselves.
question tag
A question attached to the end of a statement; often a positive statement is followed by
a negative question tag and vice versa, e.g. You hit him first, didn’t you?
subject
In a clause, the subject is the participant that carries out the action indicated by the
verb. For example, in Everybody hates Chris, the subject is Everybody (Everybody
does the hating).
text
In certain branches of linguistics, a text is any piece of language, whether spoken or
written, which forms a unified whole (however short or brief). Texts can be written,
spoken and multimodal e.g. email, greetings card, text message, transcription of a
conversation, magazine article, screencast.
textual metafunction
One of the three metafunctions in SFL, this is the overarching function of language
which relates meaning to context. It describes how we organise our messages in ways
that indicate how they fit in with the other messages around them and with the wider
context in which we are talking or writing.
verb
Verbs represent actions or states. They typically occur in finite and non-finite forms;
e.g. She started to walk away, where started is a finite form and to walk non-finite. A
verb is also a compulsory element in a clause, indicating what process is involved; this
may be an action, event or situation, e.g. The referee blew the whistle; It was snowing
last night; The soup tastes good.
verb group
A group of one or more words which together function as a verb, e.g. has been waiting,
will vote, may be delivered.

References
Eggins, S. and Slade, D. (1997) Analysing Casual Conversation, London, Cassell.

32 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Further reading

Ferguson, L., MacLulich, C. and Ravelli, L. (1995) Meanings and Messages: Language
Guidelines for Museum Exhibitions, Sydney, Australian Museum.
Fontaine, L. (2013) Analysing English Grammar: A Systemic Functional Introduction,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Lea, M. and Street, B. (1998) ‘Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies
approach’, Studies in Higher Education, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 157–72.
Partridge, L. and Gems, D. (2002) ‘A lethal side-effect’, Nature, vol. 418, no. 6901.
Thompson, G. (2014) Introducing Functional Grammar, 3rd edn, London, Routledge.
Today (2013) BBC Radio 4, 22 November.

Further reading
You might like to read this open access blogpost by Lise Fontaine to whom you were
introduced at the beginning of the course, writing about Halliday’s functional emphasis on
how we chose from a system of meanings rather than structures.
http://semioticon.com/semiotix/2012/03/language-as-social-semiotic-in-hallidays-sys-
temic-functional-linguistics/
If you are interested in the application of SFL to education, you might also like to look at
the following open access publication about the teaching of English as an Additional
Language:
Coffin, Caroline (2010). Language support in EAL contexts. Why systemic functional
linguistics? (Special Issue of NALDIC Quarterly). NALDIC, Reading, UK.
Available at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/25026/1/
For a more general introduction, a good place to begin would be with Geoff Thompson’s
book which we have drawn on in the preparation of this course:
Thompson, G. (2014) Introducing Functional Grammar, 3rd edn, London, Routledge.

Acknowledgements
This course was written by Jackie Tuck.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this
content is made available under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to
Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources
for permission to reproduce material in this free course:
Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently
overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the
first opportunity.
Images
Course Image: courtesy Jackie Tuck.
Figure 1: © The Open University

33 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019

Acknowledgements

Figure 2: © unknown
Figure 3: courtesy Jackie Tuck
Figure 4: ilbusca/Getty Images
Figure 5: © The Open University
Figure 8: © akg-images.
Figure 11: ©_Gearsolid/iStockphoto.com
AV
Video: Section 7.1: © The Open University
Don’t miss out
If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the
millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting
The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses.

34 of 34 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/grammar-matters/content-section-0 Wednesday 6 March 2019