Name: Zukhruf Umul Pratiwi

    Abdul Gani

LANGUAGE FUNCTION

Language functions refer to the purposes in which we use language to communicate. We use language for a variety of formal and informal purposes, and specific grammatical structures and vocabulary are often used with each language function.

Halliday's seven Function of Language

Halliday describes the way scholars from diverse disciplines have classified language use according to function (Malinowski, Buhler, Jakobson, Britton). Halliday demonstrates the similarity among these scholars' categories. A chart on p 17 lays out the functional categories, showing their similarities. He summarizes these by arguing that language is by its very nature functional, and that the organization of language must be explained in terms of a functional theory.

Through this analysis, we see that the language functions could be categorized as

§  experiential

§  interpersonal

§  logical

§  textual

Functional Approaches to Language Teaching

Applied Language Teaching (ALT) is just another local denomination for Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). In both cases, to do the job adequately, teachers are required to have “enough specific technical background” (HO, 1984, p. 36), in so far as teaching contents should be straddling two aspects: a technical component, consisting of the practical experiences in the specialisation field, and the linguistic component, as the basis and conveyor of those technical informational data.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

            Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyze written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis—discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event—are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences,propositions, speech, or turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary', but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language use, and not invented examples.Text linguistics is a closely related field. The essential difference between discourse analysis and text linguistics is that discourse analysis aims at revealing socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.^[1]

Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines, including linguistics, education, sociology, anthropology, social work, cognitive psychology, social psychology, area studies, cultural studies, international relations,human geography, communication studies, and translation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.

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