It
was suggested before that taking a systemic functional approach to language
involves asking both how people use language, and how language is itself
structured for use. In beginning how people use language to achieve culturally
appropriate goals, trough the concept of genre. An authentic text can be used
to illustrate many of the principles of genre theory.
Native
speakers of (Australian) English can very quickly identify three key aspects of
this text. They are field, mode and tenor. First aspect is field. We can
rapidly identify the topic, what the text is about. We work out the field of
this text largely from the lexical items (a word which occurs in a very limited
number of contexts). Second aspect is mode. Mode is talking about the role
language is playing. Aspects of language used that indicate this mode to us
include the fact that we have only one speaker’s contributions. Third aspect is
tenor. Tenor is the interpersonal relationships between the interactants.
What
we have done so far is to describe the register
of the text. Register is describes the immediate situational context in which
the text was produced.
