A critique of the systemic-functional approach to context

Introduction

In this chapter I begin with a first assessment of the use of the notion of "context" in linguistics. I shall do so by focusing primarily on the linguistic theory that has most consistently prided itself on its theory of context: Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), founded by M. A. K. Halliday. I shall show that the SF approach to context is misguided, and needs to be abandoned; but, although I also make some more general critical remarks on SFL explaining some of the shortcomings of its account of context, the critique in this chapter does not imply at all that SFL has no merit as a linguistic theory. On the contrary, much work on discourse in linguistics has been carried out in that paradigm, including many very original studies that go beyond the core theory, such as more recent work in semiotics, appraisal, and so on.

The reason I limit myself in this chapter to a critique of the analysis of context in SF linguistics is first of all that this analysis has had broad influence worldwide, for several decades, in many branches of linguistic discourse analysis, and in Critical Discourse Studies. Hence, a detailed critique is in order to show that SFL approaches to context need to be revised, and such a critique does not leave space, within one chapter, for a detailed examination of the analysis of context by linguists of other approaches.