Ideational Function Interpersonal Function

25 of metafunction in language, they are ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function.

2.2.1 Ideational Function

Halliday 1985: 203 states that all adult language is organized around a small number of ―functional components‖ which correspond to metafunctions as the purpose which underlie all language use and that these metafunctions have a systemic relationship with the lexicogrammar of the language. The ideational metafunction consists of two sub functions, the experiential and the logical. The experiential metafunction is concerned with content or ideas, while the logical metafunction is concerned with the relationship between ideas. In other words, the ideational function is language concerned with building and maintaining a theory of experience. The experiential function is realized by transitivity system and the logical system is realized by the taxis system. The experiential function strand of meaning will involve one major system, that of transitivity processes type, with the choice of processes implicating associated participant roles and configurations. Transitivity choices will be related to the dimension of field, with the choice of processes types and participant roles seen as realizing interactants‘ encoding of their experiential reality: the world of actions, relations, participants and circumtances that give content to their talk. In summary, meaning of this kind are most centrally by the field of discourse. Field itself is considered as the topic of clause or text. It refers to what is going on, including activity focus and object focus subject matter.

2.2.2. Interpersonal Function

Interpersonal function is one of the three metafunctions the others being ideational and textual. It concerns the interactional aspect of language, the speaker-hearer dimension: typified by mood system, modality expressions of degree of certainty, commitment, etc. Universitas Sumatera Utara 26 Interpersonal function represents the importance of language which is used to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand feelings, attitudes and judgements. Halliday 1985:234 states that the interpersonal function serves to establish and maintain social relations, including a speaker‘s assessment of the probability and relevance of a message. In understanding a text, we are able to reconstruct the context of situation because there is a systematic relationship between context and text. Moreover, the wordings of texts simultaneously encode three types of meaning; they are ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning. The interpersonal function refers to the grammatical choices that enable speakers to enact their complex and diverse interpersonal relations. This tenet of systemic functional linguistics is based on the claim that a speaker not only talks about something, but is always talking to and with others. Language not only construes experience, but simultaneously act out ―the intrepersonal encounters that are essential to our survival. Halliday 1985:22 states that the interpersonal component represents the speakers meaning potential as an intruder. It is the participatory function of language. It is through language that the speaker intrudes himself into the context of situation. He expresses his own attitudes and judgements and seeks to influence the attitudes and behaviour of others. The interpersonal function expresses the role relationships associated with the situation. We gain much of our sense of identity, of who and what we are, from our relationships both with animate and inanimate things, and language is an essential part of that personalizing process. We could say that rather than bringing the world into being, this function is concerned with the way we bring ourselves into being linguistically. According to Halliday, the sentence is not only a representation of reality, but also an interaction between speaker and hearer. The two halves of the sentence have a different function. The first half is a request and the second Universitas Sumatera Utara 27 half is an offer. Here, I am considering the sentence from the point of view of its function in the process of social interaction.

2.2.3 Textual Function