systemic functional linguistics

Given the unquestionable significance of academic discourse in knowledge sharing, the present study investigates research articles published in high-ranked journals in two disciplines of Applied Linguistics and Medical Sciences. Considering the fact that abstract sections in a research article are factual representations of the details of the paper, they are of great importance. Moreover, academic writers attempt to publish more valued and engaging articles using numerous writing norms, a well-known way of which is Nominalization. The study follows genre analysis design and includes a corpus of 30 research articles in Applied Linguistics and 30 articles in medical sciences, half by natives and half by non-natives published between 2015 and 2024. Meticulous analysis and article-to-article comparison indicated higher frequency of verbal nominalization in all sets of articles and no statistically significant difference between native and non-native academic writers in both fields. However, there was a considerable difference between the deployment of nominalization between the academic writers in applied linguistics and medical sciences, the former outperforming the latter group. It is believed that the results of this study will help English for Specific- and for Academic Purposes practitioners in the inclusion of more writing instruction practices in their curriculum.

Systematic functional grammar is one of the theoretical approaches to linguistics that is opposed to formal linguistics. In this approach, the social and contextual roles of language are emphasized. The design of the study was corpus-based and qualitative research regarding systematic functional grammar (Halliday, 2014). In this study, seven types of cohesive devices (i.e., euphemism, passivization, collocation, reiteration, deletion, substitution, references) were analyzed to examine the coherence of English for specific purposes (ESP) of environment discipline articles in Persian and English articles. The research was to discover the significant difference between cohesive devices in the ESP texts of environment written by Persian and English authors. From among 173 articles in two languages in the last ten years, 100 articles (50 Persian and 50 English) were randomly selected and the number of words in each category was taken into account. The corpus-based data was used and the words in each text type were counted in articles. There were 45791 words in Persian articles and 44918 words in English articles. The Word count was used to collect a homogeneous sample. The results showed that in Persian environment texts, the highest frequency belongs to references, and the lowest one addresses substitution. In English texts, the highest frequency was in references and the lowest one refers to reiteration. There was a significant difference between Persian and English cohesive devices regarding euphemism, passivization, collocation, reiteration, and references were significantly different but there was no significant difference was observed in the use of the deletion.

Appraisal theory has provided researchers with a powerful analytical tool to explore how language users express their feelings, attitude and judgments in texts. The present study was conducted to explore the use of appraisals in Persian recounts with a focus on the attitude subsystem. Forty-eight online recounts were selected (22 female writers and 26 male writers). The analysis was conducted two times at a one-week interval using the UAM corpus tool software. The results indicated that women generally used more attitude resources in their recounts compared to men and they also used more affect than men, both men and women encoded their evaluation more explicitly rather than implicitly, and in both types of recounts, attitude subsystems appeared in a special order in terms of frequency. In conclusion, predominant use of attitude in Persian recounts can be considered as evidence of effectiveness and applicability of the appraisal theory.

This study investigated the features that characterize Iranian EFL high school teachers’ classroom discourse behaviors and what could be revealed about these teachers’ behaviors when analyzed through systemic functional linguistics (SFL). To this end, 10 Iranian EFL high school teachers (5 males, 5 females, mean age 30) were audio- recorded. The study results showed some behavioral patterns in the classroom discourse behaviors of the study participants, the most important of which were the use of the Grammar-Translation Method (translation) and several audiolingual techniques such as drill practices. Concerning SFL, thematizing based on whatever came at the beginning of English sentences and the use of so for thematizing, using it as a conjunction, concluding, and drawing and redirecting students’ attention were familiar. The results suggest several behavioral patterns common among Iranian EFL high school teachers. The implications of the study focus on the importance of knowing these behavioral patterns for teachers themselves and teacher trainers and policymakers.

Publishing in English has brought about great difficulties for scholars whose first language is not English. After submitting their manuscripts to English-language journals, they usually receive comments from the reviewers on the quality of their English. One of these challenges is how links and transitions are managed in the flow of discourse. The present study aimed to investigate how the successfully revised text differs from its originally submitted counterpart within the framework of systemic functional linguistics. Based on our examination of the revisions made to our corpus, the increased use of marked theme is believed to contribute significantly to textual cohesion and coherence, and thereby to the achievement of the writer’s argument. This would contribute to transforming a relatively immature and unpublishable piece of writing into a well-crafted and mature version. However, this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the texts to be published.

Essay genres are often employed to assess learning at higher education. Students are sometimes required to write essay in examinations and assignments. The expectations of assessors in writing essays are students’ ability to present analytical and reasoned arguments and to engage with alternative viewpoints. In fact, in evaluating essays, assessors consider the extent to which a student is able to meet these expectations. However, students may have challenges meeting these expectations and instructors, particularly instructors in the discipline, may not be prepared to provide students with an explicit linguistic description of how these expectations are met. Thus, this study draws from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to scaffold students’ challenges in meeting the expectations of essay genre. In fact, it uses Dreyfus et al’s (2010) 3 x 3 linguistic toolkit to analyze essays written by postgraduate students in the department of English at one university in India. The 3 x 3 linguistic toolkit is used to zoom in student’s challenges in controlling the resources of SFL’s three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) at the level of whole text, paragraph, and sentence. After the analysis, the findings revealed that students face challenges controlling the resources of the three modes of meaning at all levels. These challenges include difficulties in grammar, lexical choices, punctuation, following expected organization, answering the question, the use of signposts to create a coherent text, and the use of engagement resources to develop a consistent argument. This study has implications for teaching and assessing academic writing.

The present study aimed to explore how nominalization is manifested in a sample of Physics and Applied Linguistics research articles (RAs), representing hard and soft sciences respectively. To this end, 60 RAs from discipline-related professional journals were randomly selected and analyzed in light of Halliday and Matthiessen’s (1999) taxonomy of nominalization. Comparing the normalized frequencies indicated that articles in Applied Linguistics differ significantly from their counterparts in Physics as they include more nominalized expressions. Moreover, the analysis brought out the findings that deployment of nominalization Type Two is significantly different from the other three types of nominalization in each discipline. Subsequently, the obtained expressions were put into their context of use in order to extract the most prevalent patterns of nominalization in the RAs. The investigation into the embedded patterns introduced 15 common patterns for Physics and Applied Linguistics RAs. Chi-square analyses suggested statistically significant differences in using only four patterns. Finally, implications accrue to the findings in reference to academic writing teachers and course designers.