Systemic Functional Linguistics: Exploring Choice

Cambridge University Press, 12/19/2013
EAN 9781107036963, ISBN10: 1107036968

Hardcover, 552 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

This stimulating volume provides fresh perspectives on choice, a key notion in systemic functional linguistics. Bringing together a global team of well-established and up-and-coming systemic functional linguists, it shows how the different senses of choice as process and as product are interdependent, and how they operate at all levels of language. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it covers a range of linguistic viewpoints, informed by evolutionary theory, psychology, sociology and neuroscience, to produce a complex but unifying account of the issues. This book offers a critical examination of choice and is ideal for students and researchers working in all areas of functional linguistics as well as cognitive linguistics, second-language acquisition, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics.

Introduction
choice in contemporary systemic functional theory Lise Fontaine
Part I. Choice
Theory and Debate
1. Meaning as choice M. A. K. Halliday
2. The teleological illusion in linguistic 'drift'
choice and purpose in semantic evolution David G. Butt, Alison Moore and Kathryn Tuckwell
3. Choice and language variation
some theoretical reflections Maria Freddi
4. Grammatical choice and communicative motivation
a radical systemic approach Carl Bache
5. Semantic options and complex functions
a recursive view of choice Lise Fontaine
6. Choice and choosing in systemic functional grammar
what is it and how is it done? Robin P. Fawcet
Part II. Cognitive and Neurolinguistic Views on Choice
7. Systemic networks, relational networks, and choice Sydney Lamb
8. The twin paradoxes of unconscious choices and unintentional agents
what neurosciences say about choice and agency in action and language Elissa Asp
9. A neurocognitive interpretation of systemic functional choice José María Gil
Part III. Linguistic Constraints on Choice
10. There-constructions as a choice for coherence in the recent history of English Ana Elina Martínez-Insua
11. Picking an argument
politicians' choice of persuasive strategies Geoff Thompson
12. A dynamic view of choice in writing
composition as text evolution Michael O'Donnell
Part IV. Cultural and Contextual Constraints on Choice
13. Choice, system, realization
describing language as meaning potential Ruqaiya Hasan
14. 'Choice' in relation to context
a diachronic perspective on cultural valeur Claire Urbach
15. Material action as choice in field Wendy L. Bowcher
16. 'I'll manage the context'
context, environment and the potential for institutional change Tom Bartlett
17. Towards a study of the differences between formal written English and informal spoken English Margaret Berry
18. Genre-driven constraints on semantic choice Víctor M. Castel
Part V. Interpreting Choice
19. Choices in analyzing choice
methods and techniques for register analysis Elke Teich
20. 'Register-idiosyncratic' evaluative choice in congressional debate
a corpus-assisted comparative study Donna Miller and Jane Johnson
21. Not exactly black letter law
emergent choices and textual symbolic design in Athenian legal-political oratory Astika Kappagoda
22. Interlanguage lexicogrammatical fossilization or not? That's an SFL-related question from the viewpoint of choice Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho.