Plenary 1: The Role of SFLIG In Supporting Isolated Scholars To Build A Foundational SFL Toolkit
Dr Sally Humphrey , Australian Catholic University
Abstract:
As we know, our community of SFLIG was established primarily to support the vast the number of scholars, teachers and students who are working with its changing and challenging systems without the benefit of formal apprenticeship in the form of courses and seminars led by an expert. While conferences, the associated publications and social media communication of SFLIG offer great benefits to those who are working in isolation, presentations at such forums necessarily focus on the ever-changing knowledge that comes from the ever-changing contexts of SFL research. It is astonishing that so many in the community not only keep up but contribute to the growth of theory without formal apprenticeship. In this presentation I would like to respond to the conference theme by reflecting on how SFLIG can support foundational knowledge building activities to broaden and deepen such contribution. I will review a range of ‘self-study’ resources that have been developed in the form of print and/or digital reference, text and workbooks – and, drawing from 30 years teaching and developing such resources in university and professional learning settings, make suggestions for the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of effective apprenticeship to SFL’s rich toolkit.
Biography: Sally Humphrey is a senior lecturer in literacy education at the Australian Catholic University in New South Wales. Sally has worked for many years as a TESOL and languages teacher, teacher trainer and educational linguist in Australia and internationally. She has been involved in research using systemic functional linguistics for over thirty years, particularly to describe the literacy demands of a range of educational and social contexts. She has contributed to a number of influential research projects led by Professors James Martin, Frances Christie, Beverley Derewianka and Len Unsworth and contributed to many research publication. Sally has also co-written a number of tertiary level text books and work books designed to introduce pre-service and practicing teachers to Functional Grammar for learning in primary and secondary schools.
Plenary 2: From Empathy to Activism: An Analysis Of Letters To The Minister Which Resulted In Successful Outcomes For A Person Living With Severe Intellectual Disability And Their Family
Assoc. Prof. Shoshana Dreyfus, University of Wollongong
Abstract:
People living with intellectual disability are known to experience greater disadvantage than either people without disabilities or people with only physical disabilities (WHO 2011). They have poorer outcomes across most areas of life, including education, employment and health (Roulstone & Barnes 2005). They are also known to experience higher levels of poverty, violence and incarceration, and it is typically incumbent upon their family members and supporters to champion their rights, especially when they have communication challenges. One study of intellectually disabled adults living in residential care (Mansell et al. 2002) found that 43% had major communication difficulties, 63% had impaired social interaction and 35% used severe challenging behaviour (also called behaviours of concern), when they have no other means to get their needs met.
Families who live with a family member with intellectual disability who uses behaviours of concern typically face a range of challenges that can include interpersonal violence, destruction of their home and environment, sleep deprivation, high levels of depression and stress, lower quality of life generally and social isolation (Biswas, Moghaddam, & Tickle, 2015; Duignan & Connell, 2015; Griffith & Hastings, 2014; Hubert, 2011; Maes, Broekman, Dosen, & Nauts, 2003; Ng & Rhodes, 2018, Dreyfus & Dowse 2018). When these challenges are ongoing and extreme, and when governments and organisations are not able to be responsive and provide enough support to families, one way forward is to write letters to one’s Disability Minister, to try to initiate change. These letters are not always successful in gaining the desired response, however some letters are successful.
This talk discusses the analysis of two such letters to the New South Wales Minister for Disability regarding problems identified within the disability service sector. Both letters resulted in successful outcomes, meaning that what was asked for in the letters was delivered to the benefit of the family and the person/s living with disability whom the letters were focused on. The aim of the research was to understand how the letters did their work of convincing the Minister and relevant departments that the problems identified were worth remedying, in order that we may be able to model this kind of letter writing to other families who feel the need to write such letters.
The letters were analysed for their generic structure and key discourse features, to make visible the phases and stages this hortatory exposition genre (Martin 1985) moves through to achieve its purpose of change. Appraisal analysis (Martin & White, 2005) was the point of departure with two other sets of social semiotic/SFL analytical tools to supplement the appraisal analysis findings: Legitimation (van Leeuwen, 2007) and connexion (Martin, 1991; Martin & Rose, 2007). The findings of this analysis show particular patterns of meaning realising the different phases that form this kind of letter writing.
Biography:
As a (systemic functional) linguist, my research covers a wide range areas. These include language disorder, language and power, social media text, disciplinary knowledges and academic discourse, disability studies (including family members and carers of people with disabilities) and different applications and aspects of systemic functional linguistic theory. I am the co-convenor (with Associate Professor Pauline Jones) of the Interdisciplinary Discourse Analysis in Education, Arts and Social Sciences (IDEAS) research group. IDEAS focuses on the applications of theories of linguistics and semiotics to a broad range of social issues and objects of study. Its membership comprises an intergenerational group of scholars from across UOW and beyond who meet regularly for a program of seminars, workshops and student and visiting scholar presentations. I started and am also the co-convenor of UOW’s Global Challenges funded Disability Research Network (DRN). This network has brought together UOW scholars researching in the disability space and is forging links between UOW, people living with disability, the disability sector, the local council, and scholars at other institutes. The DRN hosts seminars at UOW on disability related topics. I supervise students in many areas where systemic functional linguistic analysis is used as a theoretical framework for the analysis of language, texts and meaning, such the genre and register analysis of textbooks, and peer reviews of journal articles; second language development children with autism spectrum disorder, circumstantial meanings in academic journal articles, sports discourse, multimodal discourse analysis and more.
Plenary 3: Cultures, Texts and People: Challenges Of Change In SFL Practice
Dr David Rose, University of Sydney
Abstract:
Thanks to Jay Lemke, SFL has a model for interpreting change at three time scales, named for us by Michael Halliday as phylogenesis for the evolution of semiotic systems, ontogenesis for the growth of persons, and logogenesis for the unfolding of texts. Jim Martin has associated these scales of change with three hierachies in our model of semiosis. Phylogenesis is associated with the hierachy of realisation, between evolving systems at the strata of genre, register, discourse, grammar and phonology. Ontogenesis is associated with the cline of individuation, from personae to groups, communities and master identities. Logogenesis is associated with the instantiation cline, from systems to text types to texts to readings. Perhaps most relevant to the research themes of this conference are clines of individuation – how communities affiliate around issues of environment, governance and conflict, how semiotic repertoires are allocated by institutions such as education and healthcare, and now how to characterise the place of AI in semiotic communities.
For SFL researchers, variations in affiliation and allocation are found by comparing patterns instantiated in texts. A difficult question is how to grapple with this complexity in our data and our arguments. The traditional practice of listing features with clause examples falters beyond systems of grammar and phonology. One alternative is to leave linguistic analysis for statistics, mining texts for clause or item types and counting their frequencies. Another is to interpret data discursively with loosely defined topologies.
But if our goal is changing practices in these fields, we need to be able to show how systems are instantiated and individuated at each semiotic stratum, in ways that will be useful for non-specialists. For me, that means hanging on to texts, and presenting them in novel formats that foreground the patterns we are concerned with. These formats must also be economical for the analyst, and concise enough for publication. In this talk I will illustrate some processes for designing analyses, that couple multiple perspectives on texts, while keeping them intact.
Biography:
David Rose is Director of Reading to Learn, an international literacy program that trains teachers across school and university sectors, and an Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney. His research interests include literacy teaching practices, teacher professional learning, analysis and design of classroom discourse, language typology and social semiotic theory. His books include The Western Desert Code (Pacific Linguistics, 2001), Working with Discourse, with J.R. Martin (Continuum, 2007), Genre Relations, with J.R. Martin (Equinox, 2008), Learning to Write, Reading to Learn, with J.R. Martin (Equinox, 2012), Reading to Learn, Reading the World, with Claire Acevedo & Rachel Whittaker, Equinox, 2023) and Languages of Australia’s First Peoples in Narrative: Australian Stories (Bloomsbury, in press).
Plenary 4: Breaking The Chains That Constrain Writing Instruction: SFL Genre Pedagogy In Action
Prof. María Estela Brisk, Boston College
Abstract:
Writing instruction in the schools is limited by two forces: the dominance of reading series that guide literacy instruction and the limitation of using the country’s dominant language for education. Reading series typically include cycles of modules with multiple reading and content activities to develop students’ reading comprehension skills. Toward the end of a cycle a writing activity is suggested that uses the readings the students have done to promote writing, i.e. text-based writing. There is no attempt to actually teach writing, depriving the students of resources to be able to make decisions as to what and how to write.
In a world where populations move due to political or economic conditions populating schools with speakers of multiple languages, education, to a great extent, is conducted through the dominant language. When students are restricted from using all their linguistic resources to produce writing, especially in the early stages of acquiring the new language, their products are limited and do not reflect their cognitive abilities.
SFL genre pedagogy that uses the students’ full range of linguistic resources, promotes the development of writing, giving students informed agency in producing text to the full extent of their cognitive abilities.
The presentation will use an SFL lens to dissect the products constrained by the chains of text-based and monolingual writing and illustrate the potential of writing when those chains are broken by instruction guided by SFL Genre Pedagogy and the acceptance of students bi/multilingualism.
Biography:
For decades, Maria Brisk’s work has focused on language and education—individually and where they intersect. Teaching since the mid 1960s, her expertise has centered on how literacy and bilingualism are developed.
After joining the Lynch School in 1999, Brisk served as Chair of the TESpECI Department from 2007–2012. She uses systemic functional linguistics to teach writing and implement genre-based pedagogy, most recently and successfully at Russell Elementary School.
Brisk earned her first degree from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina, her master’s degree from Georgetown University, and her doctorate from the University of New Mexico. She recently won the AERA Bilingual Research SIG Lifetime Achievement Award and was appointed chair of the 2018 International System Functional Congress.
Her illustrious career includes dozens of book and scholarly journal publications, as well as speaking engagements around the world. Brisk has been a translator, Spanish instructor for the U.S. Peace Corps, and even served as an expert witness on several court cases on desegregation and bilingual education. She was a long-standing member of the Board of Editors for the Bilingual Research Journal.
Plenary 5: The Role of Film Sounds In Constructing Plot And Setting In Narrative Films: A Systemic Functional Semiotics Perspective
Dr Thu Ngo, University of New South Wales
Abstract:
Sounds in narrative films refer to speech sound, sound effect and music. Studies on narrative films from the systemic functional semiotics perspective have largely focussed on the visual mode outside of language (O’Halloran, 2004; Unsworth, 2014; Wildfeuer, 2014). In understanding and appreciating narrative films as literary works, it would be a great gap to not consider film sounds. This paper proposes the conceptualisation of the semiotics of sounds in constructing interpreting plot and setting in narrative films. The paper starts with the concepts of plot and setting in literature (Moon, 2017) before explaining how different sound resources (together with other filmic resources) contribute to the representation of plot and setting in films. The knowledge presented in this paper will add to Language Arts teachers’ toolkit for teaching critical comprehension and interpretation of film as multimodal digital literary texts.
Biography:
Dr. Thu Ngo is senior lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, School of Education, University of New South Wales. She is director of the B.Ed Primary (Honours) program, commencing at UNSW in 2024. Thu’s teaching focus is on the K-6 English curriculum. Her current research takes the Systemic Functional Semiotics approach to examine children’s literature filmic adaptation. Thu’s work focusses on conceptualization of literary meaning realised by language, visual and sound elements of film. The two publications below represent Thu’s recent research focus:
Ngo, T., & Unsworth, L. (forthcoming). Digital Multimodal Adaptations of Children’s Literature: Semiotic Analyses and Classroom Applications: Routledge.
Ngo, T., Hood, S., Martin, J. R., Painter, C., Smith, B., & Zappavigna, M. (2022). Modelling paralanguage from the perspective of Systemic Functional Semiotics: Theory and application. London: UK: Bloomsburry.
Plenary 6: Using Systemic Functional Linguistics For Crossing Boundaries In CLIL
Dr Anne McCabe, Saint Louis University
Abstract:
One of the needs for education in a world which is becoming increasingly trans/cross/inter/multi-disciplinary is a focus on language which brings meaning-making to the forefront. Those who work within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) know of its immense potential to help bridge understandings of what language is and how it works across a range of semiotic endeavours. However, it is not always easy to take this understanding into new contexts, where participants are not used to thinking and talking about language in ways which are unfamiliar to them. This session will showcase an application of SFL for analysing how language works in a Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) situation in Spain, and then for taking the understandings back to the teachers as a way of fomenting inter-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary conversations about how language works and how it can be best taught. In the first part of the talk, we will look at findings of how secondary school age Spanish students construct cognitive discourse functions (Dalton-Puffer, 2013), focusing on define and evaluate, through the language of instruction, English and across a range of disciplines. Then we will follow the students’ responses through content and English language teachers’ perspectives, mediated by an exercise in comparative judgement of the students’ CDFs. We will see how the focus on meaning, in this case the expression of CDFs, led to fruitful conversations between content and language teachers about the role of language in the subject classroom, conversations which then led the design of activities for both content and language classrooms to help students build their range of semiotic resources for expressing CDFs across disciplines. Thus, this session highlights a way in which SFL can help bridge disciplinary boundaries from the bottom up in educational contexts, “creating new forms of activity which are thematic rather than disciplinary in their orientation” (Halliday, 2003[1990]: 140).
Biography:
Anne McCabe is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Saint Louis University’s Madrid Campus, where she teaches courses in rhetoric, academic writing, linguistics, public speaking, and ESL. She has published numerous articles and book chapters using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) related to language teaching/learning. She has co-authored edited collections, Language and Literacy: Functional Approaches and Advances in Language and Education (Bloomsbury), with Rachel Whittaker and Mick O’Donnell, and recently published A Functional Linguistic Perspective on Developing Language (Routledge). She is a member of the UAM-CLIL research group, which carries out applied linguistic research on Content and Language Integrated Learning in school settings.
Plenary 7: Speaking of Change: Theories to Live By
Prof. Jonathan Webster, City University of Hongkong
Abstract:
Halliday’s metafunctional approach owes in part to Karl Bühler’s earlier work: Bühler’s representational corresponding to Halliday’s ideational, and Bühler’s conative and expressive to Halliday’s interpersonal. However, Halliday uniquely added a third metafunction not mentioned by Bühler, or anyone else, i.e. the textual metafunction. There is an unfortunate tendency to treat the ideational and interpersonal as core metafunctions, and the textual as something almost like a third wheel, providing only peripheral support to the other two. But the textual is not just some third-wheel metafunction. Rather, arguing that the textual metafunction is intrinsic to human language, Halliday describes a text as having its own structure as metaphor for the structures it is imposing on the material world. Our theories are told through our texts. We tell stories, we theorize about the world, we try to change the world, and we do so by means of the metaphor-making potential of text. The textual metafunction actualizes a non-linear step into the theory-making potential of discourse/text, something which Halliday likens to the Knight’s Move in Western-style chess. This ability to articulate symbols/metaphors results from the partial freeing of the lower-level systems (lexico-grammar and phonology) from the control of the semantics, or what Mukařovský called ‘de-automatization’. De-automatization enables our theories to live by. In verbal science, processes instead of being realized by verbs are now realized grammatically by nouns, i.e. grammatical metaphor. In verbal art, the poet foregrounds their theme against the background of a pattern of grammatical choice specific to the text. Toward the end of their lives, Halliday and Hasan were collaborating on a book showing how grammatical metaphor in verbal science and foregrounding in verbal art are really but one phenomenon relying on the metaphor-making potential of text.
Biography:
Professor Jonathan Webster is Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, and Professor at the City University of Hong Kong (retired). He was the Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies (2005-2021), and Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong (2005-2011). Professor Jonathan Webster is the Founding Editor for Linguistics and the Human Sciences published by Equinox, and Managing Editor for WORD. Professor Jonathan Webster is also the Editor of 36 books on topics in Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Systemic Functional Linguistics Interest Group (SFLIG) 