Figure 1: Prosodic Nature of the Interpersonal Structure Halliday, 19792002
As the figure represents, the prosody is not only about the phonological motifs of intonation contour, but also of the lexicogrammatical motifs as
exemplified by the system of person and modality above. The lexicogrammatical mode of realization of the interpersonal metafunction is captured in the
configurations of mood system encompassing the elements of Subject, Finite, Predicator, Complement, Adjunct, Polarity and Modality Halliday, 19812002;
Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004.
a. Speech Functions
In order for an exchange to be established, the participants or the speakers need to take turns at speaking. To do this, they assign themselves with
certain roles which affect the direction where the exchange is heading to. These speech roles, are by Halliday 1994 fundamentally classified into two: either the
speaker gives something to the listener giving or demands the listener to do something demanding. While doing this, the speakers should also recognize the
commodity they are exchanging, which are also classified into two fundamental categories: information and goods--services Halliday, 1994. Based on these
speech roles and commodities being exchanged, the speech functions can then be derived through cross-classification of the two considerations as presented in
Table 5.
Table 5: Speech Functions Halliday, 1994 Speech Role
Commodity Exchanged Information
Goods--services Giving
Statement I’m planning to go there
tomorrow. Offer
Will you come to dinner tonight?
Demanding Question
When do you plan to go there?
Command Come to dinner at 8 sharp
As is seen in the table, the four primary speech functions are statement, question, offer, and command. Each of these speech functions has its own kind of
responses either of expected responses or discretionary responses as summarized in Table 6. Speech function is significant in its contribution to the mood analysis
of a clause as certain type of speech function is often realized by certain typical mood structure known as mood type. As the speech function is a semantic system,
the mood is its grammatical representation in the interpersonal metafunction.
Table 6: Speech Functions and Their Responses Halliday, 1994 Speech Functions Initiation
Response Expected
Discretionary
Statement Acknowledgement Contradiction
She will go there tomorrow. I know.
No, she won’t. Question
Answer Disclaimer
When will she go there? Tomorrow.
Who knows? Offer
Acceptance Rejection
Shall I come to dinner tonight? Sure.
No, it’s fine. Command
Undertaking Refusal
Come here for dinner tonight Okay.
I won’t.
