Professor Malcolm Coulthard
Out of date information: No SFL in undergraduate courses, but two SFL modules as part of the MSc in TESOL/TESP :
MT: "Systemic linguistics is the descriptive and theoretical approach which predominates in a number of our undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and is also used by some of our doctoral students in their work. At the u/g level it is prominent in our Literary Stylistics, Language & Ideology, and Advanced Grammar courses, among others. We use various of the well-known introductions -- Eggins, Bloor and Bloor, Thompson, Butt et al, etc - as well as other coursebooks which use SFL, such as my own Language in Literature. At the graduate level we naturally extend to the more specialized studies, including Kress and Van Leeuwen, Martin, and so on. IFG (94) itself is, of course, the point of departure, shall we say, for all these studies.
Staff who teach or apply SFL include: Carmen-Rosa Caldas Coulthard, Charles Owen, Murray Knowles, and myself (Michael Toolan)."
Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard adds: "We teach a course called Describing Language - Introduction to Functional Grammar to our M.A students doing Translation Studies, Special Applications of Linguistics, English for Special Purposes and Stylistics, which is essentially an introduction to SFG plus Critical Social Semiotics. The teachers are myself and Michael Toolan."
Peter White adds (2002): At the post-graduate level: The 'Text
Analysis
Research Group' at Birmingham provides a forum for post-graduates and
staff
to explore the application of SFL to various text/discourse analytical
issues and problems. Ph.D and M.Phil students currently working
specifically
within SFL are researching topics such as email list interactions,
academic
English, the language of politics and various sub-types of journalistic
discourse. A larger number of post-grads make some use of SFL in their
research.
At the undergraduate level: Functional Linguistics now constitutes a substantial component of the curriculum of our specialist undergraduate English language strand. (Birmingham Single Honours undergraduates can now choose to do a degree which is half literature and half language/linguists, while our Joint Honours students can choose an English language-only option). Our undergraduate language specialists are introduced to SFL in their first year and it is taught as part of various second and third year courses. Our second year students are introduced to the Appraisal framework in their "Mass Media Rhetoric" course.
Contact:
Department of EnglishWeb Pages:
University of Birmingham
Westmere, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT
Phone: 44 (0) 121 414 7371/5696
Fax: 44 (0) 121 414 3238
Guide to MA courses, most of which include at least one module of SFL. Michael Toolan's Literary Linguistics MA English Department home page with links to all post-grad courses, both literary and linguistics.
Centre for English Language Studies
This centre, based within the Department of English, runs a variety of postgraduate courses of interest to Systemics. This includes both in-house and distance MAs in TEFL/TESL, Translation Studies and Applied Linguistics. In-house MAs coder linguistics and lexicography, corpus studies, and critical discourse. A Ph.D. programme is also offered.Dr. Lise Fontaine
Dr. Tom Bartlett
This was previously the department of Robin Fawcett and Gordon Tucker, although both have retired from teaching. Currently SFL teaching continues with Lise Fontaine and Tom Bartlett.
SFL courses taught in the department include:
Ph.D. supervision
Contact:
Dr Lise Fontaine
Centre for Language and Communication
School of English Studies,Communication and Philosophy
Cardiff University
Email: fontainel@cf.ac.uk
Description: William Downes uses Halliday's functional grammar in an undergraduate unit, Modern English Language, and teaches his own notion of social semiotics in an interdisciplinary MA unit: `Linguistics and Culture and Communication'.
For info contact, Barbara Betts, Admissions Office, b.betts@uea.ac.uk
Description: SFG is rather important in the Linguistics & English Language courses at u/g & p/g levels.
Prof. Tony Hartley
Dr. Serge Sharoff
Little explicit teaching of SFL, but both Tony and Serge are
available
to supervise doctoral students in SFL applications to translation.
Serge specialises in corpus analysis, translation, lexicography,
computational linguistics.
Department of Linguistics
Bethan Davies
Bethan is available for the supervision of doctoral students in areas
of SFL.
Prof Michael Hoey (hoeymp@liv.ac.uk)
Dr Michaela Mahlberg (m.mahlberg@liv.ac.uk)
Dr Mike Scott (m.r.scott@liv.ac.uk)
Mr Geoff Thompson (geoff9@liv.ac.uk)
SFL informs a great deal of
our teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The most
obvious
examples are the Semester 1 (September – December) module on Functional
Grammar
on our MA in TESOL (http://www.liv.ac.uk/english/ma_courses/post_ma_tesol.htm)
and MA in Applied Linguistics (http://www.liv.ac.uk/english/ma_courses/post_ma_appling.htm),
and the Semester 2 (January – May) module Grammar in Discourse on our
undergraduate programme; but many of our other modules dealing with
text
analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics draw on
SFG.
The research of a number of
our current and former PhD students is SFL-inspired: Theme and the
interpersonal metafunction have been particular areas of interest,
together
with information structure and cohesion, and with occasional forays
into
transitivity. Every year a good proportion of our MA students do their
dissertations on Functional Grammar, usually oriented towards text
analysis
(including the transitivity of medical and political texts, the
representation
of women in different periods of the 20th century, interpersonal
choices in
tourist brochures, adverts, and bank leaflets, and appraisal in
political
speeches).
Geoff Thompson (who teaches
the Grammar modules mentioned above) is the only card-carrying SFLer
amongst
us; but the others listed above are at the least fellow-travellers and
use - or
react to - SFG in various ways. It was the commonality of interest
across
colleagues working in a range of different areas which enabled us to
host both
the 1998 Euro-International Systemic Functional Workshop and the 2002
International Systemic Functional Congress.
Contact:
School of English
University of Liverpool
Liverpool L69 7ZR
UK
tel +44 151 794 2771
fax +44 151 794 2739
Description: Systemic Functional Grammar is taught on the BA Linguistics and BA Modern English Studies courses. 025 Fax: +44 (0)1582 489014
Some Systemic-Functional teaching still going on, although
Margaret
Berry has
retired, Hillary Hillier has moved to the Open University.
Staff who work with SFL (to a greater or lesser extent) are currently located in the following research centres where further information can be obtained about the centres and the expertise of each staff member regarding postgraduate supervision. EdD and PhD supervision are both available (see here for further details).
The
Applied Language and Literacies Research Unit
Caroline Coffin (affiliate member)
Sharon Goodman
Ann Hewings
Theresa Lillis
Barbara Mayor
Sarah North
The Educational Dialogue Research Unit
Caroline Coffin
Jim Donohue
Kieran O’Halloran
SFL informs a great deal of the Open University's English Language distance teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and is particularly prominent in the courses detailed below. These form part of OU degrees in Applied Linguistics, English Language and Literature and Modern Language Studies. However, they can also be taken as part of a diploma or as free standing modules. Course books can be purchased if you do not want to enrol on a course (see here) and there is some freely accessible material available here.
In the Open University system an undergraduate degree consists of 6 courses (or the equivalent of 360 credit points) and a postgraduate degree 3 courses (each worth 60 credit points). Therefore each 60 credit course is quite sizeable and equivalent to a year’s part time study. All Open University courses are available for study in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Switzerland and countries belonging to the European Union. The MA courses (with electronic tutoring) are available globally. Information regarding content and course dates are available by clicking on the links below.
OpenELT, the English Language Teaching Unit of the Open University also uses SFL to inform its production of English language courses. The first of these, Professional Communication Skills for Business Studies, produced in collaboration with the Open University Business School, will be launched in May 2008 (30 credit points for level 1 and 2 students) (Course code: LB160).
Bethan Benwell
For details of course, please see: http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/undergradunits/language/units/.
Postgraduate supervision of SFL-oriented theses is done.
NOTE: The following was true in 2004, may be out of date given that Meriel Bloor, Sheena Gardner and Hilary Nesi have moved elsewhere. However, Meriel says (Sept 2007) that "there is still linguistics (both grammar focused and text/discourse focused) on their course descriptions and this will be SFL oriented"
At undergraduate level, there is a four
year
B.Ed. honours degree in TESOL. This includes four years of linguistic
studies
of which the final year is SFL
The following post graduate degrees include a 30 contact hour module entitled Grammar of English (largely SFL and its applications) and a 30 hour module in Text and Discourse Analysis (from an SFL perspective). There is also a 30 contact hour Option called The Use of English: Current Research Issues, which incorporates Critical Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics and SFL.