Textual Framework Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory

adverb group or adverb phrase very beautiful. On the contrary, a phrase is a decreasing of clause, such as: preposition phrase at home. Picture 1.1 Unit of Language Grammar Clause GroupPhrase Word Morpheme

2.2.1 Textual Framework

A text is traditionally understood to be a piece of written language. A rather broader conception has become common within discourse analysis where a text may be either written or spoken discourse. In cultural analysis, by contrast, text does not need to be language at all: any cultural artifact – picture, a building, music – can be seen as a text. A text in contemporary society is increasingly multi-semiotic; text whose primary semiotic form is language increasingly combines language with other semiotic form. There are 2 kinds of text Refnaldy, dkk, 2006: 6.24-6.25: Duma Sari Lubis : An Analysis Of Experiential Functions In Reader’s Digest Magazine’s Selected Articles, 2008 USU Repository © 2008 a. Spoken texts The problems encountered with the notion of text as the verbal record of a communicative act become a good deal more complex when we consider what is meant by spoken text. The simplest view to assume is that a tape-recording of a communicative act will preserve the ‘text’ as well as the extraneous to the text coughing, chairs creaking, buses going past, lighting a cigarette. In general, discourse analyst works with a tape recording of an event from which she then makes a written transcription, annotated according to her interest on a particular occasion. She has to determine what constitutes the verbal event, and what form will transcribe it in. However, it must be further noticed that, however objective the notion of ‘text’ may appear as we have defined it, the perception and interpretation of each text is essentially subjective. Different individuals pay attention to different aspects of text. However, in discussing texts we idealize away from this variability of the experiencing of the text and assume that readers of a text or listener to a text share the same experience. A text frequently has a much wider variety of interpretations imposed upon it by analysts studying it. Once the analyst has created a written transcription from a recorded spoken version, the written text is available to her in just the way the literary text is available to the literary critic. When we discuss spoken text, it is important to remember the transitoriness of the original. It must be clear that our simple definition of ‘text’ as ‘the verbal record of communicative act’ requires at least two hedges: the representation of a text which is Duma Sari Lubis : An Analysis Of Experiential Functions In Reader’s Digest Magazine’s Selected Articles, 2008 USU Repository © 2008 presented for discussion may in part consists of a prior analysis or interpretation of a fragment of discourse and features of the original production of the language. b. Written Texts A text may be differently presented in different editions, with different type- face, on different sixes of paper, in one or two columns. It is important to consider just what it is that is ‘the same’. Minimally the words should be the same words, presented in the same order. The differences between spoken and written text: a. The syntax of spoken language is typically much less structured than that of written language: spoken language contains many incomplete sentences, often simply sequences of phrases, spoken language typically contains rather little subordination, in conversational speech, active declarative forms are normally found. b. In written language an extensive set of metalingual markers exists to mark relationships between clauses logical connectors. The speaker is less explicit than a writer. c. In written language, rather heavily premodified noun phrases are quite common – it is rare in spoken language. d. Whereas written language sentences are generally structured in subject-predicate form, in spoken language it is quite common to find topic-comment structure. e. In informal speech, the occurrence of passive construction is relatively infrequent. Duma Sari Lubis : An Analysis Of Experiential Functions In Reader’s Digest Magazine’s Selected Articles, 2008 USU Repository © 2008 f. In chat about the immediate environment, the speaker may relay on gaze direction to supply a referent. g. The speaker may replace or refine expression as she goes along. h. The speaker typically uses a good deal of rather generalized vocabulary. i. The speaker frequently repeats the same syntactic form several times. j. The speaker may produce a large number of prefabricated filler: well, erm, I think, you know, if you see what I mean, of course, and so on. Discourse analysis in its everyday practice deals with texts as heterogeneous as advertisements, biological research articles, police interview, newspaper editorials, and life stories. Furthermore, size is not principle in excluding texts from analysis since text may have varies in length. There are, of course, theoretical and practical considerations related to size. First of all, there is the issue of limits of text as a unit; discourse analysis is based on analyzing a text as an entity, a unit from beginning to an end. The increasing spreads of computer technology is also bound to influence conception of text and redefine its limit. From a practical point of view, there are difficulties in the analysis and presentation of results related to very large texts. As a result, most applications have been limited to rather small text – although there is a whole range of very small text that have not been studied: answering-machine talk, e-mail massages, headlines and captions, small ads, etc, Refnaldy, dkk 2006: 6.24- 6.28. Duma Sari Lubis : An Analysis Of Experiential Functions In Reader’s Digest Magazine’s Selected Articles, 2008 USU Repository © 2008

2.2.2 Contextual Framework