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Language: The Three Functions Of Language By Halliday

885 Words4 Pages

Language has three major functions according to Halliday (1985a) namely: ideational, textual, and interpersonal. The first function, ideational, is language functioning as expression of content and communicating information. The focus is content but the transferring information clearly and effectively is given emphasis it can be easily and quickly comprehended. The ideational function involves two main systems, transitivity and ergativity. The second function of language is textual, where language use signifies discourse. Language becomes text and is related to itself and its contexts of use (preceding and following text) and the context of the situation. This function of language is classified into two structures which are thematic structure and information structure. Lastly, the interpersonal function of language is establishing and maintaining social relations and this involves modalities, which is related to modus system. The system is has two main elements, mood and residue. However, in this paper, only transitivity will be analyzed and will be explained more in detail.
Conventionally, transitivity is normally understood as the grammatical feature which specifies if a verb takes a direct object. We describe a verb as transitive if it takes a direct object and intransitive if it does not. An extension of this concept is the ditransitive verb, which takes both a direct and an indirect object. A new concept of transitivity has been found by Halliday, however, which

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