Abstracts

WORKSHOPS

Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar

Svabhavam and Field in Meaning–Making:
A Karmik SFL Exploration into Proverb Ideation

This workshop will be conducted in three parts. In Part I, the need for inclusion of svabhavam (disposition) as the most basic layer for meaning – making will be established by a theoretical exposition of meaning – making processes in proverbs and the need for its inclusion in SFL will be motivated. In Part II, the theoretical postulates outlined will be applied in the Hands on Activity of the participants to demonstrate how disposition plays the crucial role in the formation and use of proverbs. This will be done by involving the participants in choosing, commenting on, using, polishing, and discussing the choice and use of proverbs, antiproverbs, and ‘potential proverbs’ in different contexts. In Part III, the results of their activities will be discussed in the light of the principles outlined in Part I to find out whether disposition plays the crucial role in the formation and use of proverbs or not.
The process of proverbial meaning – making as an alternative way of saying the same thing is rooted in a dispositional choice; so also is proverbial antonymy, synonymy, variation in the status (polite Vs offensive Vs taboo) and prepositional content, choice of figures of speech, choice/non-choice of proverbs with certain meanings affecting the interpersonal relations in conversation, creation of new meanings by manipulating the speech act functions in discourse and adaptation of proverbs or creation of antiproverbs with new meanings.
The Interpersonal Layer, Genre, and Ideology in SFL are designed to account for only HOW the role relations and attitudes are constructed but not WHY certain meaning – making processes are chosen and not others by individuals and groups. So also the Ideational Layer and the Field do not. The WHY is crucial to interpret the HOW and also motivate and provide a principled account of the formation, variation, and use of proverbs.
It will be argued that Karmik Linguistic Theory proposed by Bhuvaneswar (1999, 2003) overcomes this problem by considering language as dispositional (or karmik) cognitional representational action of action in an open-ended network of options for the construction of karmik (as opposed to social) reality, and explains variation in meaning-making as due to variation in disposition resulting in variational dispositional cognition.

Robin Fawcett and Amy Neale

TRANSITIVITY analysis for the twenty-first century:
How to identify Process types and Participant Roles 
(including the use of Neale’s Process Type Data Base)

The central component in the analysis of the experiential meaning of a text is TRANSITIVITY.  Yet, as anyone who has tried to analyse real-life texts knows well, this is by far the most difficult area of meaning to deal with. Indeed, much of the correspondence on sysfling is on this topic. 
	Some types of problem are inherent in the data (and we shall discuss these at the workshop), but others, in our view, are the result of certain weaknesses and gaps in the most widely used framework for TRANSITIVITY analysis, ie the one set out in Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday 1985/96, Halliday & Matthiessen 2004, aka IFG).  One would normally expect that, over a period of thirty years, any such descriptive framework would be modified and improved - as it gets applied to more data and as our understanding of language increases.  Yet there have been hardly any changes to Halliday’s framework over this period.
	This workshop will present both (1) the Cardiff Grammar’s alternative SFL approach to TRANSITIVITY, and (2) a set of aids that make analysis easier and more reliable.  This model is based on the same SFL principles as Halliday’s, but it has been steadily  extended and refined as a result of the following factors: (1) its extensive use in text analysis by many generations of students and researchers; (2) the findings of corpus linguistics (especially as found in the COBUILD English Dictionary (1995) and the work of Francis, Hunston & Manning 1996); (3) its implementation in a very large computer model of language for generating text-sentences (as part of the COMMUNAL Project); and (4) its use in developing Neale’s Process Type Data Base (which covers over 5,000 verb senses).  While there have been many publications about parts of this model, this workshop will be the first public presentation of the current model of TRANSITIVITY as a unified whole.
	Butler (2003b:471), in his two-volume comparison of SFG with two other ‘structural-functional’ theories, writes: ‘there can be no doubt that SFG has lived up to its claim to be a text-oriented theory of language; ... it has achieved a much wider coverage of English grammar than other approaches, this being especially true of the Cardiff grammar’ - and also ‘In my view the Cardiff model represents a substantial improvement on the Sydney account.’  We hope that you too may find our approach helpful. We don’t have the answers to all possible problems, but we do have a good many of them! 
	The workshop will include the following components:

1	Introduction to TRANSITIVITY analysis
	•The goals and scope of TRANSITIVITY analysis
	•What criteria should we use in identifying Process types? 
	•An overview of the main Process types of English
	•The tests for Participant Roles and how to use them
	•Similarities to and differences from the IFG framework
	•An overview of the problems inherent in transitivity analysis

2	An overview of the Process Type Data Base
	•Its goals, methods, and current stage of development (over 5,000 verb senses)
	•A demonstration of its use in text analysis
	•How you can download it and use it.

3	Analysis workshop
	•Work as a group on a short text
	•Work on a text of your choice
	•Help with your problem examples

4	Conclusions: remaining problems, developing the PTDB further?

Method: Some of the workshop will inevitably be in lecture mode, but it will be interactive at all points, with participants engaged in analysis work whever possible (even in the ‘lecture’ stages). The final part will be practical analysis work.

Outcome: Participants will leave the workshop equipped with: (1) summary system networks of Process types and tests for all Participant Roles; (2) details of how to download the relevant part (145 pages) of Robin Fawcett’s forthcoming Functional Semantics Handbook: Analyzing English at the Level of Meaning, London: Equinox; (3) details of how to download Amy Neale’s Process Type Data Base; and (4) experience in using (1) and (3) in analyzing TRANSITIVITY in texts.

Jorge Arús Hita

Teaching ‘how’ to mean in a second language: a practical case

The integration of the extralinguistic with the linguistic is a sine qua non of successful second language (henceforth L2) teaching. Within the stratificational continuum, the register variables of field, tenor, and mode open up the gateway to the linguistic plane by determining the choices made at metafunctional level. L2 instruction should, therefore, focus on the appropriate exploitation of linguistic resources based on decisions made at the level of register. 
Zeroing in on the variable of field, this workshop looks at the design of a L2 teaching method where the exploitation of lexicogrammatical choices within the general system of TRANSITIVITY is seen as a way of realizing the expression of “what’s going on” and “what it is about”, i.e. the field (after Halliday and Matthiessen 1999: 320). The workshop is divided into the following tree parts: 

Part 1 (30 minutes): exposition of the method. The theoretical underpinning will be explained, followed by a general outlook of the method, a proposal for distribution of material across four levels (taking Spanish as a Second Language as an example), and the presentation of a tentative chapter layout.

Part 2 (30 minutes): a sample lesson of Spanish as a Second Language, based on the chapter layout presented in the first section. This sample lesson will include student’s book, teacher’s book, and workbook. Participants will be invited at this point to make comments on the potential successfulness of the method and how to improve the sample lesson presented, always keeping in mind the main goal pursued by this method: teach learners to make lexicogrammatical choices based on contextual considerations.
  
10-minute break

Part 3 (50 minutes): a hands-on activity to design an ESL –English as Second Language- sample didactic unit. ESL is chosen because it will most likely be the only language shared by all participants. The task here will be to work on the exploitation of a text, by designing a number of activities in order to make up a didactic unit in the light of the previous discussion. This group practice will allow drawing some conclusions in terms of the feasibility of undertaking the design of the whole method as presented in the first section of the workshop and/or ways to improve it.    

Reference
Halliday, M. A. K. and C. M. I. M. Matthiessen. 1999. Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition. London: Cassell.

Giuseppe Mammone

Language and Behaviour

Behaviour management, particularly in educational contexts is a major issue impacting on relationships, and the teaching and learning process. Rarely does a day go by without such issues manifesting themselves. This is inspite of current behaviour management programmes and interventions. In fact, some sections of the educational community are in despair, 
 Most other work in this area focuses on the psychological as well as the non-verbal aspects (physical level).  This workshop will take a different perspective and explore the crucial role that language plays in behaviour, more specifically (mis)behaviour in educational contexts. It will include a number of activities for participants, taking them through the journey that has lead to the development and subsequent success of a different approach to behaviour management: this approach being one that looks at language as central to relationships, teaching and learning. 
The theoretical frameworks used include Functional Grammar, Appraisal and Social Constructivism. These frameworks are being used to assist teachers to discover how students can be actively engaged in constructing their own understandings of and about language, how teachers can explicitly teach students about language and socio cultural context, and how the nexus between language and behaviour can be approached to support relationships and the teaching and learning process. This work is based on action research and teacher practice R-12 (K-12) spanning a period of six years.
The workshop will also examine the research process, research findings and the future directions of the Language and Behaviour Research Project. The project focus is on the following research questions:
•	What is it about the ways that students, particularly boys, use language, non-verbal and physical resources that hinders their learning?
•	What are the language, non-verbal and physical patterns of students, particularly boys, who are successful in their interactions at school?
•	What are the language non-verbal and physical patterns of students, particularly boys, who are unsuccessful in their interactions at school?
•	What is it about the ways that teachers/staff use language, non-verbal and physical resources when responding to student behaviour that supports/hinders the teaching and learning process, and relationships with students?
The research findings presented will also include student powerpoints and video discussions with student researchers.

Mick O'Donnell

Difficult Process-type Workshop

In this workshop, we will cooperatively examine a number of clauses whose classification as to process type is rather difficult. Together, we will attempt to develop clear criteria for classification of process types in general, in such a way as to cover the difficult cases as well as simple cases. The workshop will focus in particular in problems related to the distinction between material/behavioural on the one hand and mental/verbal on the other.

Geoff Thompson

Mapping semantics onto structure (and vice versa) in transitivity analyses

There is a general, though often unpublicised, feeling amongst many systemic functional grammarians that transitivity analysis is problematic in practice. Halliday (e.g. 1994: xx) has consistently argued that ‘all the categories employed must be clearly “there” in the grammar of the language’. However, in the case of transitivity, although certain key criteria for categorisation (such as the potential to project) have been carefully elaborated, it has proved difficult to implement that assumption in all cases: the grammatical criteria by which one process type can be differentiated from another are not always precisely definable, and purely’ semantic criteria may be implicitly or explicitly drawn on.
In this workshop, I will continue an investigation in which I have been engaged for some time into the theoretical and practical case for distinguishing structural and functional perspectives on transitivity. This kind of distinction is already fully accepted in the interpersonal metafunction: speech functions, such as statement and command, are recognised as being merely in a relationship of statistical probability to structural choices in the Mood system between declarative, interrogative and imperative. In transitivity, on the other hand, the distinction is elided, and broadly the same set of labels is used at the level of both lexico-grammar and semantics.
In the workshop I will provide participants with sets of concordance data for a number of verbs which are problematic for transitivity analysis in various ways – because they are polysemic and/or because they encode complex events which seem to encompass various process types on the semantic level. Through these we will explore the implications of applying the structural/functional distinction to transitivity, and work together on examples where problems of analysis can be ascribed to tensions between the transitivity structure and function. The main aim is to investigate to what extent different structural patterns (described as simply as possible, on the lines of pattern grammar as elaborated by Susan Hunston and her colleagues) can be identified and matched to semantic differences; and to consider the implications of success (or failure) in this attempt.

Alyson E. R. Steele G. Weickert  (NUPdiscurso / PGI, UFSC, and PhD  CAPES grantee, Brazil; Visiting Research Fellow, Birmingham University)

Exploring meaning-making: Implementing a semantic-pragmatic model (UFSC, Brazil) to detect and account for the notion of power in language at the ideational level of representation

 I propose a practical sitting conducting analyses of news reports, putting into action the semantic-pragmatic model under development at the ‘Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina’, Brazil. This model acts as a refinement to the clause level of representation (Halliday, 1985, 1994, 2004), creating an interface between sentence semantics and systemic functional grammar. During this workshop we will analyse British news reports collected online. The texts will be subdivided into ‘microscenes’, where a microscene, grossly equivalent to the clause, is a set of elements in an utterance which “encompasses one verb-predicator … interpreted in the light of the pertinent relationship it holds with the immediate context” (Oliveira, 1999: 115, my translation). The subsequent microanalyses will determine the semantic configurations of the microscenes and hence the semantic value of the predicators under analysis according to this model (Nicolacópulos, 1992, 1995, Nicolacópulos et al, 1995, Oliveira, M. G. 1995, 2003, Oliveira, A. T., 1999, Souza & Nicolacópulos, 2002, and Rocha, 2003). 
The latter categorises semantic domains under the following eight: 
Roles: Agent>Experiencer>Object>Benefactive>Locative>Temporal>Comitative>Holistic
The semantic role Agent (Agt) expresses action, the Experiential role (Exp) denotes sensation, emotion, cognition and listening. The Object role (Obj) is the case that, (i) denotes what is being described when the verb is stative, (ii) what suffers a change when the proposition is a process, or (iii) what undergoes the action when the verb is agentive. The Benefactive role (Ben) registers possession, power, leadership, gain, loss, benefit and transference of property. The Locative role (Loc) expresses location, the Time role (Tim) denotes chronological time, the Comitative role (Com) expresses company, while the Holistic role (Hol) expresses totality, the whole.
The objective being to provide an understanding of the experiential level of representation, this hands-on session aims to, through active group participation; familiarize the participants with this alternative semantic model.  The workshop will introduce the most recent facet, the power Benefactive (pBen) subdomain (Steele Weickert & Nicolacópulos, in press), which will subsequently enable the identification and representation of linguistic marks of power.