Systemic Functional Linguistics Text and Context

commit to user 13 announced “Anyone who was caught smoking or chewing tobacco near a church was excommunicated”. It was not until the twentieth century that the health problems associated with tobacco use came to light in the public eye. That was the time when businesses provided smokers with their own separate locations, so they could smoke without exposing the rest of the customers to the dangers and annoyance of smoke. In 1990s, California became the first state to issue a smoking ban, and this was in restaurants. Since that time, many cities have taken up the drive to ban cigarette smoking in public locations, particularly restaurants. In fact, recent estimates show that as many as thirty-four states have cities that have some sort of ban smoking laws.

B. Systemic Functional Linguistics

Systemic Functional Linguistics SFL is a functionally based theory which examines the functions that language has evolved to serve in society such as a view involves the examination of real language events to understand the purposes language serves in a variety of context, and to understand the way language itself functions Harrison, 2004: 1. Systemic Functional Linguistics SFL is originally introduced by M. A. K Halliday in 1960’s. Halliday considers that function and semantic are basis of human language and communicative activity. A key concept in Halliday’s approach is the “context of situation” which takes the language as the use. Bloor says people use the language to make meanings. They do so in specific situations, commit to user 14 and the form of the language that they use in discourse is influenced by the complex aspects of those situations 2004: 4. The situation affects the form of written English, which is not only the choice of word but also the grammar that is used. The situation can also have such a confining effect on language that society often develops clear conventions of use like those associated with business meetings or formal greetings which have to be learned before newcomers to the circumstances can behave appropriately. The context in which language is used frequently leads over time to the development of specific socially recognized forms that is known as genres and style or register.

C. Text and Context

Text is one of the main elements that play a significant role in communication. People speak a text, read a text, listen to a text, write a text, and even translate a text. A text is also defined as unit of language in use to utter the meaning contextually. A context of the text has a big role to know the meaning of the text. Widdowson mentions that people may know what the language means but still not understand what is meant by its use in certain text. It cannot be separated for both contexts, namely context of situation and culture 2006: 4. Santosa mentions that context of situation refers to the social process of an event or occurrence belongs to the participant, time and place, etc that supports the situation while the context of culture means the value and norm which become the background of that occurrence 2003: 15-16. In linguistics, there are three aspects of context in any situation that have linguistic consequences: field, mode and tenor. commit to user 15

D. Register