cultural backgrounds, for school curriculum, materials and activities reflect social values.
In a more significant role, textbooks revision with regard to exposure of cultures is according to Salim 2005 needs to be considered as one of the initial
efforts to multicultural education. Johnson 2007: 28 is also in agreement that on a certain level, textbooks serve an academic gate-keeping role in society and that
it represents “fertile ground for promulgating the national narrative in divided societies”. Additionally, it is also known that “in 1995, UNESCO declared that
textbooks should be cleared of negative stereotypes and when presenting issues should promote a sense of ‘otherness’ while offering multiple viewpoints based on
scientific facts, not national or cultural background” Pingle, 1999 in Johnson, 2007: 28-29. There are still many other opinions underlining the importance of
learning materials and resources with textbooks as the mainly discussed topic. It is thus encouraged that in the beginning of the implementation of the new
curriculum in Indonesia, assessment of textbooks which have adapted the latest curriculum is of significance.
D. Systemic Functional Grammar
The term Systemic Functional Grammar SFG, often interchangeably used with Systemic Functional Linguistics SFL, cannot be separated from SFL in
the sense that it is one point of view in seeing the social semiotic model of language exclusively from the grammatical perspective. It represents the
grammatical description in SFL Halliday, 19612002. Some general ideas of
SFL, and thus, SFG, are summarized by Eggins 2004 into four main theoretical claims about language by systemic linguists:
1. that language use is functional, 2. that its function is to make meanings,
3. that these meanings are influenced by the social and cultural context in which they are exchanged,
4. that the process of using language is a semiotic process, a process of making meanings by choosing.
These four points respectively refers to the language use as functional, semantic, contextual and semiotic.
SFG is most well known in taking into consideration the large linguistic unit of text or discourse, the stratification theory, the systems as key organizing
principle, the notion of meaning potential and the view of language as social semiotic which evolved in use in response to realization of context. In this regard,
SFG is understood as a grammatical framework which demonstrates how grammatical choices simultaneously construe both experience and role
relationships within textsdiscourses which have particular social and cultural purposes. It is systemic as it conceives of lexicogrammar as resources for
expressing meaning Matthiessen et al., 2010. It evolves in use as it “has no existence apart from the practice of those who use it” Halliday 19852003: 185.
It is distinctive that it seeks to develop both a theory about language as social process and description of language patterns Eggins, 2004.
1. The Concept of Class and Function
SFG is also known to base heavily its analysis on the notion of rank. In defining rank, Halliday and Matthiessen 2004 refer to rank scale as hierarchy of
units related by what is called constituency, whereby rank is each step in the hierarchy. As Matthiessen et al. 2010: 170 points out that “units of one rank are
composed of the units of the rank immediately below”. Units set up to account for pieces of language, carrying different types of linguistic patterns Eggins, 2004;
Butler, 2003 in Ravelli, 2010. The units of lexicogrammar
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rank scale can be seen in Table 2.
Table 2: The Units of Lexicogrammatical Rank Scale Eggins, 2004 Units of Lexicogrammar
Highest rank largest unit Clause
phrasegroup Word
Lowest rank smallest unit Morpheme
These concepts of rank and unit mark the potential for rank shift, “whereby a unit of one rank may be downranked downgraded to function in the
structure of a unit of its own rank or of a rank below. Most commonly, though not uniquely, a clause may be downranked to function in the structure of a group”
Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 9-10. Rank shift then leads to the foregrounding of the difference between class and function in the labeling of the
units Ravelli, 2010. Class is defined by Halliday 19632002: 96 as “a set of items which are alike in their own structure”. It is the systemic term for the term
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As it has been pointed out earlier, despite its systemic approach to defining of the language, SFG uses structural representation for its discourse analysis Halliday, 1994. Therefore, units of lexicogrammar, which
represents structure, became the focus in the early part of SFG’s analysis for then to be reinterpreted with systemic description.
