Silvia Riesco Bernier

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

The “Communicative Functions Network System”: A tool enabling the systematic analysis of EFL pre-school teacher talk.

The present investigation searched for the systematisation of the analysis of meaning in the EFL pre-school teacher talk departing from the assumption that “communicative functions” are the result of discourse-semantic options in the language instantiated through linguistic structures and thus, are operationalisable (Hasan 1985, Martin 1992, Halliday 1994, Hasan 1996).

This research presents the “Communicative Functions Network System” as a tool which specifies the semantic options made by the teacher at the discourse-semantic level (cf. Martin 1992) by drawing up the different criteria and variables coming into play when defining each particular function. The presentation will first thoroughly examine the dynamic configuration of the network system, designed with the Systemic Coder Software v.4.63 (O’Donnell 1995), and will secondly point at its advantages in allowing the analysis of authentic data.

References:

Halliday, M.A.K.1985/1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Hasan, R. 1985. “Offers in the making: a systemic-functional approach”.Revised and enlarged version of a paper presented at the XIIth Systemic Workshop. August 1985, Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Hasan, R. 1996. “Semantic networks: A tool for the analysis of meaning” in C. Cloran et al (eds.), Ways of saying: Ways of meaning. Selected papers of Ruqaiya Hasan. London: Cassell, 105-131.

Martin, J. R. 1992. English Text: System and Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

O’Donnell, M.. 1995. “From Corpus to Coding: Semi-Automating the Acquisition of Linguistic Features”. Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Empirical Methods in Discourse Interpretation and Generation. Stanford University, California, March 27-29.