Group : 1

Lailatul M, M khoirul Wafa, M chikal M

LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

            Functions are essentially the purposes that we accomplish with language, e.g., stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting, ect. Functions cannot be accomplished, of course, without the forms of language: morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules, and other organizational competencies. While forms are the outward manifestation of language, function are realization of those forms. Functions are sometimes directly related to forms. Communication may be regarded as a combination of acts, a series of elements with purpose and intent. Communication is not merely an event, something that happens: it is functional, purposive, and designed to bring about some effect-some change, however subtle or unobservable-on the environment of hearers and speakers. Communication is a series of communicative acts or speech acts to use Jhon Austin’s (1962) term, wich are used systematically to accomplish particular purposes.

Halliday’s Seven Functions of Language

            The functional approach to describing language is one that has its roots in the traditions of British linguist J.R.Firth, who viewed language as interactive and interpersonal. Since then the term “function” has been variously interpreted. Michael Halliday (1973), who provided one of the best expositions of language functions, used the term to mean the purposive nature of ommubnication and outlined seven different functions of language:

1.      The Instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen.

2.      The regulatory function of language is the control of events.

3.      The representational function is the use of language to make statements, convey facts and knowledge, explain, or report-that is, to “represent” reality as one sees it.

4.      The interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance.

5.      The personal function allows a speaker to express feelings, emotions, personality, “gut-level” reactions.

6.      The heuristic function involves language used to acquire knowledg, to learn about theenvironment.

7.      The imaginative functions serves to create imaginary systems or ideas.

 Functional Approaches to Language Teaching

      The functional part of the national functional syllabus corresponded to what we have defined above as language function. The following function are covered in the first several lessons of an advanced beginner’s textbook, new vistas 1 (Brown, 1999):

1.      Introducing self and other people

2.      Exchanging personal information

3.      Asking how to spell someone’s name

4.      Giving commands

5.      Apologizing and thanking

6.      Identifying and describing people

7.      Asking for information

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

            Berns’s (194)comments above were prophetic. Two decades or so later, the language teaching profession is immersedin social, contextual, and pragmatic issues in communicative language teaching.We’ll begin to unravel the sometimes tangled threads of social constructive views of CC by first looking at discourse analysis-the examination of the relasionship between forms and function of language.