An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 1

An Application of Systemic Functional Grammar on Rilke’s poem ‘A

Walk’.

Mubarak Ali Lashari1

Dr. Faraz Ali Bughio2

Abstract
The intention, this study was launched with, was to explore the applicability of the

Systemic Functional Grammar, the linguistic development promoted by famous linguist M.A. K.

Halliday. The theory establishes the view of functionality of linguistic phenomena in the pieces of

literature. The study in hand is aimed to find the functional elements in Rainer Maria Rilke’s

poem ‘A Walk’. The poem was analyzed into three major functional methods of the theory

including Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual analysis. In the first category, the transitivity

patterns and the clauses having active and passive voices were analysed. In the second, the

interpersonal elements; having the persons involving in the process and showing relationship

with each other were seen. And finally, the textual meaning and the sense emerging from all the

above findings were discussed. It further sought the theme of the poem and the basic functional

idea of the poetic expression. And in the final stage the emanating message of the poem was

discussed in the conclusion.

1
Mubarak Ali Lashari is PhD Scholar at Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad. He
earned his M.Phil from IIUI in 2010. He is author of 2 books on Postmodernism, Postcolonialism and Literary
Theory. Currently, he is working as faculty member of English linguistics at Institute of English Language and
Literature, University of Sindh, Jamshoro.

2
He is assistant professor at Institute of English Language and Literature, University of Sindh, Jamshoro. He
completed his PhD in 2013.
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 2

Key words: systemic functional grammar, ideational, experiential, transitivity, interpersonal,

textual, linguistic functions

1. Introduction

Systemic Functional Grammar or SFG or Functional Grammar FG or also called Systemic

Functional Linguistics, is well-recognized contribution in the study of language with regard to

language-context and language-function. The person who propounded this grammatical theory is

Austrian linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, well-known as M.A.K Halliday. He

after analyzing different linguist theories and systems reached to the idea of exploring the

function of language playing in the discourse or literary expressions. In theoretical perspective

SFG consists of two components: SYSTEMIC GRAMMAR and FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR.

Both are foremost basis of the grammatical and linguistic theory.

Systemic grammar aims to explain the internal relations in language as a system network,

or meaning potential. And this network consists of subsystems from which language

users make choices. Functional grammar aims to reveal that language is a means of social

interaction, based on the position that language system and the forms that make it up are

inescapably determined by the uses or functions which they serve.

(Hu Zhuanglin, 1988: 307).

Furthermore, Halliday thinks that stylistic analysis should be carried out through three logically

ordered phases: Analysis, Interpretation and Evaluation (Wang, 2010:255). In continuity of the

above phases he takes this analysis to more abstract and well-coded linguistic/grammatical

analysis or functions-meta-functions that is said to be the lying intrinsic in every language. Those
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 3

intrinsic functions of language are called as ideational function, the interpersonal function and

the textual function.

a. Ideational Function

The first function Halliday points out is the ideational function. What is ideational function?

It is through this function that the speaker or writer embodies in language his experience of the

phenomena of the real world; and this includes his experience of the internal world of his own

consciousness: his reactions, cognitions, and perceptions, and also his linguistic acts of speaking

and understanding (Halliday, 1971: 332)

In other words, this function is to convey new information, to communicate a content that

is unknown to the hearer. It reflects the events and experience in both objective and subjective

worlds.

The ideational function mainly consists of “transitivity” and “voice”. Hu Zhuanglin, a

Chinese linguist, points out: “This function not only specifies the available options in meaning

but also determines the nature of their structural realizations” (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988: 312). For

Example, Kitty flies a kite can be analyzed as: the Actor is Kitty, the process is Material and the

Goal is a kite. The Actor, Process, Goal, and their subcategories reflect our understanding of

phenomena that come within our experience.

The ideational function is mainly represented by the transitivity system in grammar. In

this system the meaningful grammatical unit is clause which expresses what is happening, what

is being done, what’s felt and what the state is and so on (Yumin, 2007). The transitivity system
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 4

includes six processes: material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process,

verbal process and existential process.

Material processes are those in which something is done. These processes are expressed

by an action verb (e.g. eat, go, give), an Actor (logical subject) and the Goal of the action

(logical direct object, usually a noun or a pronoun). (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988) e.g. Marry is eating a

banana.

Mental processes express such mental phenomena as “perception” (see, look), “reaction”

(like, please) and “cognition” (know, believe, convince). A mental process involves two

participants, Sensor and Phenomenon. (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988) e.g. Tom likes chocolate.

Relational processes can be classified into two types: Attributive and Identifying. The former

expresses what attributes a certain object has, or what type it belongs to, for example, The

temperature is high. The latter expresses the identical properties of two entities. For example,

Lily is a girl; The girl is Lily. (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988)

Verbal processes are those of exchanging information. Commonly used verbs are say,

tell, talk, praise, boast, describe, etc. In these processes the main participants are Sayer, Receiver

and Verbiage.

Behavioral processes refer to physiological and psychological behavior such as breathing,

coughing, smiling, laughing, crying, staring, and dreaming, etc. Generally there is only one

participant—Behaver, which is often a human. This kind of processes is much like the mental

process. Behavioral process may sometimes be hardly distinguished from a material process that

has only one participant. This depends on whether the activity concerned is physiological or

psychological. When Behavioral process has two participants, we may take it as material

process, for example, His father beat the disobedient boy. (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988)
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 5

Existential processes represent that something exists or happens. In every existential process,

there is an Existent. For Example,

There is a girl in the garden.

Does ghost exist on earth?

Here comes a bus.

b. Interpersonal Function

In the second place, language serves as interpersonal function. As Halliday observed,

The speaker is using language as the means of his own intrusion into the speech event: the

expression of his comments, attitudes and evaluations, and also of the relationship that he sets up

between himself and the listener—in particular, the communication role that he adopts of

informing, questioning, greeting, persuading, and the like. (Halliday, 1971:333)

Hu Zhuanglin (1988:313) points out: “The interpersonal function embodies all uses of

language to express social and personal relations. This includes the various ways the speaker

enters a speech situation and performs a speech act.”

Modality and Mood are often used to express the interpersonal function. Mood shows what

role the speaker selects in the speech situation and what role he assigns to the addressee. If the

speaker selects the imperative mood, he assumes the role of one giving commands and puts the

addressee in the role of one expected to obey orders. For example, Pass me the book. (Hu

Zhuanglin, 1988)

Modality refers to the intermediate ranges between the extreme positive and the extreme

negative. It is one of the most important systems in social communication. On the one hand, it
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 6

can objectively express the speaker’s judgment toward the topic. On the other hand, it can show

the social role relationship, scale of formality and power relationship. In English, except modal

verbs, modal adverbs, adjectives, there are also personal pronouns, notional verbs, tense, direct

and indirect speeches to express the modalization.

c. Textual Function

The third role of language is called textual function. Halliday described, “Language makes

links between itself and the situation; and discourse becomes possible because the speaker or

writer can produce a text and the listener or reader can recognize one” (Halliday, 1971:334).

According to Hu Zhanglin,

The textual function refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch

of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living passage

different from a random list of sentences. Although two sentences may have exactly the

same ideational and interpersonal functions, they may be different in terms of textual

coherence. (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988: 315)

The textual function fulfils the requirement that language should be operationally

relevant, having texture in a real context of situation that distinguishes a living passage from a

mere entry in a grammar book or a dictionary. It provides the remaining strands of meaning

potential to be woven into the fabric of linguistic structure. Information can be clearly expressed

in a discourse. It can also be implicated between the lines. Therefore, all discourses are unities of

explicit and implicit message. (Halliday, 1971)

It is because language serves as a generalized ideational function, we are able to use it for all

the specific purposes and types of context which involve the communication of experience.
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 7

Because it serves a generalized interpersonal function, we are able to use it for the specific forms

of personal expression and social interaction. And a prerequisite to its effective operation under

both these headings what we have referred to as the textual function, whereby language becomes

text, is related to itself and to its contexts of use. Without the textual component of meaning, we

should be unable to make any use of language at all (Hu Zhuanglin, 1988).

2. Introduction to the poet

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875- 1926), the Bohemian-Austrian poet is considered most significant

poet and art critic in German language in modern age. He is considered as the poet of depicting

the images of different combinations. He, with regard to the themes in his poetry, is said to be

the poetic figure of transition as connecting the traditional concepts of 19 th century with the

modernist concepts. He wrote both in verse and the also fine lyrical poems. He was soon well

recognized in the younger peoples regarding changes according to the modernist development.

His poem “A Walk” is a fine mental picture in poetic version.

3. Introduction and Analysis of the Poem

This poem is a finely depicted picture of his vision and imagination. In it the poet seems to

be walking towards the hill in some deep thoughts but his vision and his thinking/imagination

reaches the hill far ahead of the physical distance covered by his feet. Not only the vision of the

poet is faster but the personification of the hill: the feelings of the hill and its inner light grasps

his own soul and consequentially transforms it spiritually much before his own inner

luminescence reaches it. Here the hill seems to have human characteristics of making gesture
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 8

of kinship with him in response to his own gesture. All that the poet is feeling is the tender

wind, which is touching his face while going there.

In this poem, sensory impressions are used to create beautiful images in description like

paintings. To express poets own vision the hill is personified featuring to it human persona such

as “charges”, gesture”, “grasping”. A beautiful combination of the visual and perceptible

elements recreates the situation in which the poet re-experiences the intensity of the moments

as “emotion recollected in tranquility”.

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has ITS inner light, even from a distance-

and CHARGES us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are; a gesture waves us on

answering our own wave...

but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

4. Ideational Function
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 9

In ideational function the language is carrying the message of embodying writer and the

reader and speaker and the listener. It does so firstly be sentence patterns and transitivity. In

sentence patterns the clauses are observed and in transitivity the processes (verbs patterns) are

seen. Following tables are showing the transitivity patterns in the poem.

Table 1

OVERVIEW OF PROCESS TYPES

Process types Core meaning Participants

Material “doing”, “happening” Actor, Goal

Mental “sensing”
Sensor,
phenomenon

Relational “being” Attributive:

(Attributive+Identifying) Pri:attributive+Carrier+Value
Identifying:Pri:Identifying+Toekn+At
tribut
Verbal “saying” Sayer, Receiver, Verbiage

Behavioral “behaving” Behaver

Existential “existing”
Existent

Table 2

Transitivity Pattern in the Poem

Process Process words Number Percentage

Material “Touch”, “begun”, 5 41.66%

An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 10

“charges”, “reach” and

“waves”
Mental “grasped”, “grasp”, 4 33.33%
“sensing” and “feel”
Relational --- ---

Verbal ----- ----

Behavioral ------ ----

Existential “has”, “are” and “is” 3 25 %

Total 12 100 %

From table 2 we can notice that material process is used most in the poem to show the

action that consists of around 41 percent. Such as “Eyes touch the hill, I have begun, (it)

charges us, we reach it, a gesture waves us.” As it is well-known that material process shows

“doing” so the description of such things in the poem reveals that under discussion thing/object

or agent is active to do and leave some effects on the goals.

On the other hand second most used process is mental that consists of 33 percent. Such

as “we are grasped, we cannot grasp, we feel. In poetry this kind description is vital to have

emotional or sentimental effects especially in romanticist concept and flow.

Then there are existential processes that are 3 and has 25 percentage, such as “it has

light, we already are, what (we feel) is the wind in our faces”.

And finally relational, verbal, and behavioral processes are not found in the poem whereas the

process “has” can share the idea of relational with existential process.
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 11

5. Interpersonal Function
This category of grammatical analysis of the systemic functional grammar is to analyse the

interacting elements in the text. It approach is entwined with the discourse analysis and its

speech act theory. “Halliday approaches the grammar of interaction from semantics

perspective. He points out that whenever we use language to interact, one of the things we are

doing with it is establishing a relationship between us” (Eggins, 1994). In that perspective

following is the analysis of the relationship of the factors.

Table 3

Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronoun types Personal Pronouns Total number Percentage

First person “I”, “we”, “we”, “we”, “we”,” 6 35.29 %

we”

Third person “it”, “it”, “it” 3 17.64 %

Possessive “my” (eyes) “its”, “our”, “our” 4 23.52 %

Accusative “us”, “it”, “it”, “us” 4 23.52 %

Total 17 100%

From the table 3, it can be observed the participants in the poem are mostly “first

person pronouns” or “third person pronouns.” It is because the poet embodies the readers with

him and considers the readers as him or considers himself as the readers. Thus the use of first

person pronoun in its cases like possessive 23.52 percent in which three possessives are related

to first person pronouns as, “my”, “our” and “our” while “its” is related to third person pronoun
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 12

and accusative case 23.52 percent in which two items are accusatives of first person like “us”

and “us” and two items are accusatives of third person pronoun like “it” and “it”.

From the context of the poem the reader and poem or poet relationship is expressed with

subjective mode of expression. It is that area which distinguishes the poetry or piece of

literature from ordinary descriptive writing. It is obvious from the poem that first person is used

in abundance and third person pronoun is given not for reader-writer gap but here third is used

to describe the things or phenomena that are same from the readers and the poet. And there is

no second person to whom poet may address or tell something him as second person as

considering it as separate entity from him. The subjective type of poetry giving vent to his

feelings is closely associated with the romantic poetry and poets; thus we can say from the

standpoint of abundant use of first person pronoun that this poem is subjective rather than

objective or descriptive type of poetry.

6. Textual Function
The textual function is aimed to the realization that the language has in a way of coherent

mechanism, written or spoken discourse, rather that random selection of sentences. It also

makes the written or spoken discourse as living piece of writing and a unified text that offers

logic and thoughtful. In it the sentence structure or specifically “theme” and “rheme” is

analyzed in order to know that what is said to whom.

From this point of view it can be seen that poem is mostly about the objects which are doer

or described rather that the observer or the poet who is walking over there such as;
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 13

(my) eyes (already) touch the sunny hill (going far ahead of the road I have begun.)

(By what) we are grasped

We cannot grasp

It (hill) has its inner light even from a distance, and charges us,

(Even if) we do not reach it.

From above few examples of theme/rheme description (in which bold words are theme and

the italics are rheme) we can see that the it is very subjective poem in which doers or action

oriented things are objects like eyes, hill, by what we are grasped rather than we can grasp that

is said to be an adoration of nature like romantic poets. It can be seen that when subject/theme

is “we” regarding observer/reader/poet it is unable to do anything and is helpless before the

fascinating things of the nature like we cannot grasp, we are grasped or it charges us even if we

do not reach it. Before doing any action the reader or poet is already done by the object

described in the poem.

Furthermore the poem is coherently weaved with cohesive words like “so”, “and”, “even if”,

“which” and “but”. These words join the ideas and share the structure of the poem in an

organic way to make it as one whole.

7. Conclusion
To conclude on the basis of above analysis it can be said that the poet is so captivated with

nature and objects of the nature or nature observing organs (like eyes) that he becomes unable
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 14

to perform any action. Next it is seen that there is personification of the natural objects like hill

that acts. It is described as the human or living objects that is acting like grasping, charging,

answering etc. and possesses humanly characters. In on the one hand is well use of poetic

device and the romantic expression and adoration of the natural objects on the other.

Furthermore there is no use of modality or model auxiliaries also shows the poet’s bent of mind

to be absorbed in the subjectivity going beyond the moderate expression or grey area in the

subjective or objective expressions.

References

Eggins, S. (1994). An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, London: Pinter

Publishers.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1979). Linguistic function and literary style: an inquiry into the language of

William Golding’s The Inheritors. In Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse. ed.

Jonathan J.Webster. 88-125. Peking: Peking University Press.

Hu Zhuanglin.(1988). A Course of Linguistics. Peking: Peking University Press.

Wang, J. (2010). A Critical Discourse Analysis of Barrack Osama’s Speeches. Journal of

Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 254-261, ACADEMY PUBLISHER

Manufactured in Finland.
An application of Systemic Functional Grammar 15

Yumin, C. (2007). An Analysis of Style Features of Inaugural Speeches Given by American

Presidents Based on the Functional Theory of Han Lide. From the thesis of a master. Tai

Yuan Science University.