Wildatun Nahdiah & Evi Eka Rahmawati (Group 6)

Language Function

Functions are essentially the purposes that we accomplish with language, e.g., stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting, etc. Function cannot be accomplished, of course, without the forms of language; morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules, and the other organizational competencies. While forms are the outward manifestation of language, functions are the realization of those forms.

Halliday’s Seven Function of Language

Michael Halliday (1973), who provided one of the best exposition of language function used the term to mean the purposive nature of communication 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. While such control is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the instrumental function, regulatory functions of language are not so much the “unleashing” of certain power as the maintenance of control.

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 feeling, emotions, personality, “: gut-level” reactions.

6.      The heuristic function involves language used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment. Heuristic functions are often conveyed in the form of questions that will lead to answers.

7.      The imaginative function serves to create imaginary system or ideas.

Functional Approaches to Language Teaching

The most apparent practical classroom application of functional descriptions of language was found in the development of functional syllabuses, more popularly nation-functional syllabuses. Grammar, which was the primary element in the historically preceding structural syllabus, was relegated to a secondary focus. Functional syllabuses remain today in modified form.