Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis in Dickens

The existence of a strict relationship between literature and linguistics has always been a subject of debate within the linguistics community. As time passing by, several academics have stated their opinion about this issue. Thus, from the continuous study of the existing connection between these two areas, a new term was created, that is stylistics. Linguistic stylistics has been defined by Michael A. K. Halliday as

“[…] the description of literary texts, by methods derived from general linguistic theory and within the framework of a description of the language in question, and the comparison of such texts with others, by the same and by different authors, in the same and in different genres.”

As we can understand from the previous citation, along with the definition of stylistics we encounter another term as well, that is genre. Indeed, when we approach to a linguistic analysis we have to take in consideration also the type of genre we are analysing. Thus, it seems necessary to give a definition of genre too. According to Martin, genre is “a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture” . And later, Martin himself together with Eggins, will propose another definition of genre, that is

“[…] different genres are different ways of using language to achieve different culturally established tasks, and texts of different genres are texts which are achieving different purposes in the culture.”

Considering the above cited statement, the use of language varies according to the aim of the speaker. Thus, if we apply this idea to written texts, we can affirm that their styles are likely to change according to the purpose of the writer as well. This is the reason why it is extremely impo...

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...tic perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 12

Michael A. K. Halliday & R. Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English (London: Longman), 22

Michael A. K. Halliday & R. Hasan (1985) Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 45

SFG Page http://www.alvinleong.info/sfg/sfgtrans.html#material

SFG Page http://www.alvinleong.info/sfg/sfgtrans.html#verbal

Michael A. K. Halliday & R. Hasan (1985) Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 45

Matthiessen, Christian, and Michael AK Halliday (1997) ‘Systemic functional grammar: a first step into the theory.’ New developments in systemic linguistics. http://minerva.ling.mq.edu.au/resource/VirtuallLibrary/Publications/sfg_firststep/SFG% 20intro% 20New. html (17 February 2006).