Pre-congress institute: workshops

Operationalising SFT in the disciplinary literacies of school English, science and history

Pauline Jones (University of Wollongong), Erika Matruglio (University of Wollongong), Annette Turney (Australian Catholic University) & Beverly Derewianka (University of Wollongong)

This workshop has both practical and theoretical intentions. It begins with an introduction to some recent projects in which we have worked with teachers of upper primary and secondary years using systemic functional theory and pedagogy to enhance students’ learning and literacy outcomes. Approaching literacy from the perspective of both verbal and visual resources as they are deployed in distinctive and increasingly more specialised ways in the different subjects, we will exemplify the approach taken in each subject and demonstrate some of the outcomes from the projects.

Then, in hands-on activities, we offer exemplar texts, students’ work-samples and other artefacts from each subject for analysis and discussion. We pay particular attention to the ways in which systemic functional concepts or tools come into play as actual classroom activities and actions, asking what kinds of practices are most useful for supporting students’ development across the primary and secondary transition. Participants will be encouraged to contribute their own knowledge and experiences to this discussion.

One goal of the workshop is to deepen collective insights into the semiotic nature of subject-specific literacies and to articulate the unique contribution of systemic functional theory to disciplinary literacy studies.  We identify some of the ongoing issues surrounding the recontextualization of SFL theory for classroom practice and consider ways of addressing these on the basis of participants’ experiences in different pedagogic settings. Participants will also have access to curated resources and readings for use in their own contexts.

Describing interpersonal grammar systemic-functionally

Dongbing (Mus) Zhang,
University of International Business and Economics, China

This workshop is designed for people who do not have prior experience in describing languages from a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) perspective. It focuses, in particular, on describing the interpersonal grammar of a language by drawing on example descriptions of Mongolian, Chinese, and English. In doing so, the workshop aims to make explicit some of the general assumptions and methodological considerations in the extant SFL descriptions of interpersonal grammar.

The workshop comprises three parts. First, we will review the basic theoretical parameters of axis, rank, metafunction and stratification, and discuss how each is relevant to the description of interpersonal grammar. Second, by using examples of Mongolian, Chinese, and English, we will consider ways to identify agnate and enate structures in data that are relevant to interpersonal meanings, turn them into paradigms, and convert the paradigms into system networks. Third, we will closely examine some interpersonal motifs that have emerged in SFL descriptive works in terms of comparability.

Suggested readings

Martin, J.R., Beatriz Quiroz & Giacomo Figueredo (eds.). 2021. Interpersonal grammar: Systemic functional linguistic theory and description. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Martin, J.R., Beatriz Quiroz & Pin Wang. 2023. Systemic functional grammar: A text-based description of English, Spanish and Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 2004. Descriptive motifs and generalizations. In Alice Caffarel, J.R. Martin & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.), Language typology: A functional perspective, 537–673. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Register: Resources for Understanding Context

Yaegan Doran,
Australian Catholic University

This course will focus on newly developed tools for analysing register in language and multimodal text. In particular, it will consider register in terms of resources for field, tenor and mode. It will consider field as a resource for construing phenomena in terms of the activities, taxonomies, properties and interdependencies text builds (drawing on Doran and Martin 2021).

It will consider tenor as a resource for enacting sociality, in terms of how we put forward and share our meanings, how we nuance them in their scope, stakes and spirit, and how we build rich and interconnected sets of values that underpin our lives (drawing on Doran, Martin and Zappavigna forthcoming). And finally, it will consider mode as a resource for composing text, in terms of how we demarcate text into distinct chunks of information, how we distribute this information across text, and how we foreground and background this information in relation to the needs of the situation. Through the course, we will consider how we can understand different components of register in a way that allows us to see the multifaceted meanings that occur in our social lives. Throughout, a focus will be on introducing tools for register analysis and getting stuck into (multimodal) texts.

References

Doran, Y.J. and Martin, J.R. 2021. Field relations: Understanding scientific explanations. In K. Maton, J.R. Martin and Y.J. Doran (eds) Teaching Science: Knowledge, Language, Pedagogy. London: Routledge.

Doran, Y.J., Martin, J.R. and Zappavigna, M. forthcoming. Negotiating Social Relations: Tenor Systems in English. London: Equinox.