Functions of Language - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2003

This paper provides a corpus-based generic characterization of appointment-scheduling dialogues — a type of task-oriented conversation — by concentrating on the rhetorical and thematic choices made by the speakers that produce them. The analytical tools used for this study are Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), the notion of Theme as defined in Systemic Functional Linguistics, and Thematic Progression (TP) patterns. The results of the corpus analysis revealed a generic structure consisting of three clear stages: Opening, Task Performance and Closing, realized by characteristic thematic and rhetorical patterns. These patterns are interpreted functionally as indicative of the genre under study, providing linguistic evidence of the generic structure that characterizes this type of conversations. The paper also shows the usefulness of analytical tools such as RST and TP patterns, typically applied to written monologue, for the characterization of dialogic genres.

In recent research considerable interest has been shown in strings of linguistic items which appear to behave, in certain respects, as single items, and which are referred to in this paper as multi-word sequences. The aim of the paper is to investigate the interface between work on such phenomena and recent developments in the theory of Functional Grammar. A selective review of corpus-based approaches to multi-word sequences is followed by a brief introduction to Wray’s psycholinguistically-oriented model of formulaicity. A corpus example is then discussed in some detail. The discussion up to this point is then related to four recent models within the overall framework of Functional Grammar which aim to increase the level of psychological adequacy of the theory: Nuyts’ Functional Procedural Grammar, Hengeveld’s Functional Discourse Grammar, Mackenzie’s Incremental Functional Grammar and Bakker and Siewierska’s expression rule model. Brief comments are also made on multi-word sequences in relation to production vs. comprehension and on the relationship between formulaicity and levels of structure.

Semogenesis, the creation of meaning, has been promoted by Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) as a ‘guiding principle’ in their presentation of a systemic functional theory of language — that language has within itself the resources by which people can create new meanings. Halliday & Matthiessen illustrated three processes of semogenesis and used an example of English intonation to illustrate one of the processes, deconstruction. This paper proposes two other processes, blending and reconstitution, to account for three other developments in English intonation: the falling-rising tone, the so-called high rising terminal/tone (HRT) and the mid level tone for routine listing.