CONTEXT IN MEANING CONSTRUCTION: A FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS APPLICATION TO LITERARY TEXTS

Nurul Fadhillah, Nurlaila Nurlaila, Andi Asrifan, Alexis Arizabal Enriquez

Abstract


Context and meaning formation are crucial to functional linguistics, especially literary texts. Using language within texts and meanings drawn from textual units to form interpretations, this essay examines this dynamic. Based on systemic-functional linguistics (SFL), the exploration stresses language's flexibility and ability to connect micro and macro textual elements. The study uses Halliday's context description as a fluid, ever-changing construct to analyse how context influences and reshapes meaning through meaning-making. The structure explains the context, analyses lexicogrammatical selections and patterns, and applies these theoretical descriptions to literary narratives. The study examines fictive narratives, integrates socio-semantic theory to show how context works in diverse literary settings, and reflects on SFL in literary studies. According to functional linguistics, literary interpretation is based on the fundamental processes that shape literary texts. So that understanding related to language constructing meaning in literature by using genre-specific frameworks, digital humanities tools, cross-cultural studies, interdisciplinary collaborations, and dynamic socio-cultural contexts can be better and these methods will illuminate the broad and complex realm of literary expression.


Keywords


Contextual Meaning; Systemic-Functional Linguistics; Literary Analysis; Lexicogrammatical Patterns; Socio-Semantic Theory

References


Aida, N. (2022). Representation of Elon Musk in business segment of New York Times during Tesla controversy (Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang)

Al-Awawdeh, N. (2022). The function of ideology in translation: a case study of selected Aljazeera news headlines translated into Arabic. Ijaz Arabi Journal of Arabic Learning, 5(1). 48-58.

Alean, A. M. M., Tuiran, K. J. R., & Lara, D. G. (2023). Short story-based systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and reading comprehension skills in 10th graders: An action research [Thesis, Universidad de Córdoba]. Universidad de Córdoba.

Almehamdawi, S. A. (2020). Schema, culture, and language: A cognitive linguistic study. Journal of Al-Qadisiya in Arts & Educational Science, 20(2).

Antoniou, K., Veenstra, A., Kissine, M., & Katsos, N. (2020). How does childhood bilingualism and bi-dialectalism affect the interpretation and processing of pragmatic meanings? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(1), 186–203. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918001193

Axon, S. (2020). The socio-cultural dimensions of community-based sustainability: Implications for transformational change. Journal of Cleaner Production, 267, 122108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122108

Barratt-Pugh, C. (2020). The socio-cultural context of literacy learning. In C. Barratt-Pugh & M. R. Rohl (Eds.), Literacy learning in the early years. Routledge.

Catalano, T., & Waugh, L. R. (2020). Critical discourse analysis, critical discourse studies and beyond (Vol. 11). Cham: Springer

Cahyani, F. P. K., Rukmini, D., & Fitriati, S. W. (2021). The role of representational meaning of images in supporting ideational meaning in English in Mind: Students’ Book. English Education Journal, 11(1), 74–104.

Christensen, J., Ekelund, N., Melin, M., & Widén, P. (2021). The beautiful risk of collaborative and interdisciplinary research. A challenging collaborative and critical approach toward sustainable learning processes in academic profession. Sustainability, 13(9), 4723

Cutting, J., & Fordyce, K. (2020). Pragmatics: a resource book for students. Routledge.

Da Silveira, F. M., De Sousa, F. D. J. S., Diniz, G., Gonçalves, H. A. R. D. F., & Sousa, L. E. M. (2022). The banalization of mental disorders and its relationship with the improper judicial sentence of individuals in the prison system. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS), 7 (1), 55-63.

DJIMET, I. (2022). Exploring feminism in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes and Anowa: A systemic functional approach. Liberty Publisher

Do, M. L., Papafragou, A., & Trueswell, J. (2020). Cognitive and pragmatic factors in language production: Evidence from source-goal motion events. Cognition.

Fadhillah, A. M., & Rahmadina, K. P. (2021). Interpersonal metafunction analysis of a literary response text in tertiary education. Indonesian Journal of Functional Linguistics, 1(2), 58–71.

Faradina, W. N., & Emilia, E. (2024). An Analysis of Student's Recount Text: An SFL Approach. Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 83-98

Farahani, M. V., & Kazemian, R. (2021). Speaker-audience interaction in spoken political discourse: A contrastive parallel corpus-based study of English-Persian translation of metadiscourse features in TED talks. Corpus Pragmatics, 5(2), 271-298.

Feher, K., & Katona, A. I. (2021). Fifteen shadows of socio-cultural AI: A systematic review and future perspectives. Futures, 132, 102817

Fontaine, L., & McCabe, A. (2023). Systemic functional linguistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics(pp. 322-335). Routledge

Garcia, A. O. G. (2023). Reading Suffering Between the Lines: Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature. University of South Florida

Gibbs Jr, R. W., & Colston, H. L. (2020). Pragmatics always matters: An expanded vision of experimental pragmatics. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1619

Gresser, V. (2021). Elementary Pre-service Teachers Learning to Use SFL-Informed Strategies for Literacy Instruction (Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida).

Hakim, M. A. R., & Medina, S. (2017). Metaphorical expressions in the book Ngawur Karena Benar by Sujiwo Tejo: A pragmatic approach. Journal on English as a Foreign Language, 7(1), 17-34

Hamman‐Ortiz, L., Santiago Schwarz, V., Hamm‐Rodríguez, M., & Gort, M. (2023). Engaging teachers in genre‐based pedagogy for writing arguments: A case study of shifts in practice and understanding. Tesol Quarterly, 57(2), 402-432

Hao, J. (2020). Analysing scientific discourse from a systemic functional linguistic perspective: A framework for exploring knowledge building in biology. Routledge

Hermayanti, W. D., & Gunawan, W. (2024). Understanding analytical exposition text writing with an SFL approach: A comparative analysis of model text and student’s text. JEPAL (Journal of English Pedagogy and Applied Linguistics), 4(2), 124-136

Hertel, R., & Hühn, P. (2022). From the Second Half of the 20th Century to the 21st Century. In English Poetry in Context: From the 16th to the 21st Century (pp. 325-408). Erich Schmidt Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin

Hu, Z. (2021, May). A multimodal approach to translation quality assessment of interlingual subtitling: Theoretical reflections. In 7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2021) (pp. 297–309). Atlantis Press.

Izquierdo, M., & Blanco, M. P. (2023). Interactional metadiscourse: Building rapport and solidarity in informational-persuasive discourse. An English–Spanish case study. Journal of Pragmatics.

James, J. (2021). Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Community College Composition Class: A Multimodal Approach to Teaching Composition Using the Metalanguage of SFL.

Jeffries, L. (2023). Critical stylistics. The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics.

Kapau, H. M. (2021). A study of the ideational metafunction in Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A monogeneric corpus-based analysis.

Katawazai, R., Monib, W. K., Hassanzoy, M. S., Quvanch, Z., & Omar, N. A. M. (2021). Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Approach and Sports Texts of the Postgraduate Students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Sains Humanika, 13(3).

Koivunen, A., Kanner, A., Janicki, M., Harju, A., Hokkanen, J., & Mäkelä, E. (2021). Emotive, evaluative, epistemic: A linguistic analysis of affectivity in news journalism. Journalism, 22(5), 1190–1206.

Kövecses, Z. (2021). Standard and extended conceptual metaphor theory. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics.

Kövecses, Z. (2022). Cognitive Linguistics: A Perspective on Emotion in Literature. In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion (pp. 38–49). Routledge.

Leyland, C. (2021). The interactional construction of the academic reader in writing tutorials for international students: An advice-giving resource. Linguistics and Education, 61, 100900..

Logi, L., & Zappavigna, M. (2023). A social semiotic perspective on emoji: How emoji and language interact to make meaning in digital messages. New Media & Society, 25(12), 3222-3246.

Lugea, J. (2022). Dementia mind styles in contemporary narrative fiction. Language and Literature, 31(2), 168-195

Luppicini, R., & Walabe, E. (2021). Exploring the socio-cultural aspects of e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 19(4), 560-579

Maagerø, E., Mulvad, R., & Tønnessen, E. S. (2021). Women in social semiotics and SFL: making a difference. Routledge

Maíz Villalta, G. (2023). The representation of trauma in Art Spielgelman's Maus: a Survivor's Tale. The Holocaust Experience as traumatic memory and its transformation into narrative memory in a multimodal medium.

Malbas, M., Dacanay, L., & Kilag, O. K. (2023). The Synergy Between Generative Grammars and Literary Style: A Chomskyan Perspective. Excellencia: International Multi-disciplinary Journal of Education, 1(5), 73–84.

Matthiessen, C. M. (2020). Translation, multilingual text production and cognition viewed in terms of systemic functional linguistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition (pp. 517–544). Routledge.

Matthiessen, C. M., & Yousefi, M. (2022). Systemic functional linguistics as a resource for teacher education and writing development: Emerging properties and applications. Language, Context and Text, 4(1), 114-145.

Matthiessen, C. M., & Yousefi, M. (2022). Systemic functional linguistics as a resource for teacher education and writing development: Emerging properties and applications. Language, Context and Text, 4(1), 114-145

Matthiessen, C. M., Wang, B., Ma, Y., & Mwinlaaru, I. N. (2022). Some conceptual issues in systemic functional linguistics. In Systemic Functional Insights on Language and Linguistics (pp. 93–124). Springer Singapore.

Mayne, E. A. (2020) An Old Tradition in a New Space: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Youtubers’ Metalinguistic Commentary on Quebec French. Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. Available at chrome-extension: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/96422d7c-13e1-4025-a611-c0905100ff20/content

Miller, D. R., & Luporini, A. (2020). Guiding towards register awarenessin an undergraduate EFL curriculumin Italy: The special case of verbal art1. Register Studies, 2(2), 209-240.

Mohammed, H. H., & Mohammed, M. A. (2023). Author–Text–Reader: Hermeneutic, Interpretations and Reception Theory: Based on the Material of James Joyce “Ulysses”. Journal of Namibian Studies: History Politics Culture, 33, 2042–2064.

Prinsloo, M., & Krause-Alzaidi, L. (2023). Culture and literacy: situated social literacies. International Encyclopedia of Education, 296-307

Prostko, L. (2021). Twentieth-Century Feminine Visionary Poetics: Vulnerable Visions of Survival and Healing.

Prostko, L. (2021). Twentieth-Century Feminine Visionary Poetics: Vulnerable Visions of Survival and Healing. State University of New York at Albany. https://search.proquest.com/openview/ae4a06164a0a001be55b82c1c9d6a2d2/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Purser, E., Dreyfus, S., & Jones, P. (2020). Big ideas & sharp focus: Researching and developing students’ academic writing across the disciplines. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 43, 100807

Quammie-Wallen, P. (2021). A Functional-Stylistic Approach to Stage Directions.

Ramadhani, M., Nainggolan, J. K., & Sitompul, D. M. (2023). Analysis Ideational Metafunction In Recount Text At SMAN 1 Panai Hilir Labuhanbatu, Sumatera Utara. Jurnal Ilmu Pendidikan dan Sosial, 2(1), 29–35.

Romano, M. (2021). Creating new discourses for new feminisms: A critical socio-cognitive approach. Language & Communication, 78, 88-99

Rosmala, D. (2024). Investigation of rhetorical strategies in writing English argumentative essay by Indonesian EFL and Native English students (Doctoral dissertation, University of York).

Ryshina-Pankova, M., Barthold, W., & Barthold, E. (2021). Enhancing the content-and language-integrated multiple literacies framework: Systemic functional linguistics for teaching regional diversity. System, 96, 102403.

Said, K. (2023). The grammar of folklorization: An integrated critical discourse analysis of the linguistic depiction of Amazigh social actors in selected Moroccan EFL textbooks (1980s-present). Cogent Education, 10(2), 2240162

Sánchez, M. Á. C. (2021). From the Metafunctions of Language to the Hyperfunctions. The New Multimodal Reality of Hypertext. International Journal of Transmedia Literacy (IJTL), 2, 25-35

Schleppegrell, M. J., & Oteíza, T. (2023). Systemic functional linguistics: Exploring meaning in language. In The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 156-169). Routledge.

Schwarz, V. S., & Hamman-Ortiz, L. (2020). Systemic functional linguistics, teacher education, and writing outcomes for US elementary English learners: A review of the literature. Journal of Second Language Writing, 49, 100727

Shekhani, H. A., & Taha, J. A. (2023). Halliday’s Interpersonal Meta-function Analysis of Entrepreneur’s Public Speech in English and Central Kurdish: A Comparative Study. Koya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 6(1), 22–31.

Shevtsova, M. (2022). Interaction-interpretation: The Mahabharata from a socio-cultural perspective. In Peter Brook and the Mahabharata (pp. 206-227). Routledge

Smith CA (2022) Understanding Multimodal Discourses in English Language Teaching Textbooks: Implications for Students and Practitioners. London: Bloomsbury Publishing..

Smith, R., Snow, P., Serry, T., & Hammond, L. (2021). The role of background knowledge in reading comprehension: A critical review. Reading Psychology.

Suissa, O., Elmalech, A., & Zhitomirsky-Geffet, M. (2022). Text analysis using deep neural networks in digital humanities and information science. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 73(2), 268–287.

Sun, Y. (2022). Literary translation and communication. Frontiers in Communication, 7, 1073773

Suratno, A. (2020). Discourse Research in The Multitude of Approaches: An Academic Journey of Anton Suratno. Available in http://repository.unika.ac.id/id/eprint/22883

Tabassum, S., Butt, M. I., & Ali, G. (2023). An investigation of deictic expressions in the selected poems of Sylvia Plath. Kashmir Journal of Language Research, 26(1), 127-141.

Thwaite, A., Jones, P., & Simpson, A. (2020). Enacting dialogic pedagogy in primary literacy classrooms: Insights from systemic functional linguistics. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 43(1), 33–46.

Tian, J. (2020). Construction of top university identity in high-stakes genres of public communication–a systemic functional discourse analysis of three genres of PKU and THU presidential talk and letter to prospective students. Journal of World Languages, 6(1-2), 113-160.

Troyan, F. J., Harman, R., & Zhang, X. (2021). Critical SFL praxis in teacher education: Insights from Australian SFL scholars. Language and Education, 35(5), 383-401.

Troyan, F. J., Herazo, J. D., & Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2022). SFL pedagogies in language education: Special issue introduction. System, 104, 102694

Tsakona, V., & Chovanec, J. (2020). Revisiting intertextuality and humour: fresh perspectives on a classic topic. The European Journal of Humour Research, 8(3), 1-15..

Vershinina, T. S., & Ilyushkina, M. Y. (2020). Social practices of advertising discourse: influence of stylistic expressive means on forming value orientations. Russian Linguistic Bulletin, (3 (23)), 94-101..

Wan, Y. N. (2023). Exploring Interpersonal Language in Wedding Discourse on Social Media. International Journal of English Language Studies, 5(3), 48-57

Wang, B., & Ma, Y. (2022). Introducing MAK Halliday. Routledge.

Wang, K. (2022). A Contrastive Analysis of Lexical Features of Government Work Report for 2020 and Its Translation-From the Perspective of Halliday's Three Meta-Functions Theory. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 12(10), 2133-2142.

Wang, R. (2024). Study on William Faulkner’s long sentence style based on ‘The Sound and the Fury.’. Journal of Education and Educational Research, 7(1), 26-32.

Wishart, J. (2020). Informed choices: Investigating the resources used by Western Australian primary school teachers to inform the teaching of written grammar. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Western Australia. https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/informed-choices-investigating-the-resources-used-by-western-aust.

Wu, X., & Pan, L. (2023). Introduction: Multimodality in translation studies: Themes and models. In Multimodality in Translation Studies (pp. 1-20). Routledge.

Xuan, W. W. (2022). Writing as meaning-making: A systemic functional linguistic approach to EFL writing. Springer Nature

Zahra, G. M., Emilia, E., & Nurlaelawati, I. (2021, April). An analysis of cohesion and coherence of descriptive texts written by junior high school students. In Thirteenth Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2020) (pp. 195-202). Atlantis Press.

Zrazhevska, N. (2023). Тheoretical foundations of the media culture study as a socio-communicative phenomenon. State and regions. series: social communications, 4 (52), 3-10.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.29300/ling.v11i2.7079

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Linguists : Journal Of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Pusat Publikasi - Lembaga Penelitian & Pengabdian Masyarakat (LPPM)
UIN Fatmawati Sukarno Bengkulu
Jl.Raden Fatah, Pagar Dewa Kota Bengkulu, Bengkulu, Indonesia
Telp. (0736)51171,51172,51276 Fax.(0736) 51172
Website : https://uinfasbengkulu.ac.id/
Email : linguists@mail.uinfasbengkulu.ac.id 

 

Abstracting and Indexing by: