COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES (CoHu)

UNIVERSITY OF DARES SALAAM

COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES (CoHu) 

DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

SEMINAR VENUE:   ARC

PARTICIPANTS:

NAMES	REG. NO.	SIGN.
HAMAD, Baraka A	2011-04-06713
JUMA,    Hamad  A	2011-04-03435

QUESTION: What`s Halliday’s view of the context of situation? How does it help to analyze a text?

Halliday is a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systematic functional model of language. His full name is Michel Alexander Kirkwood Halliday. He was born 13^rd April 1925. Halliday has worked in various regions of language, both theoretical and applied.

He has been especially concerned with the applied understanding of the basic principles of language to the theory and practices of education.

Longman Active Study dictionary (2005), defines a context as the situation or events that are related to something and help you understand it. Therefore, context of situation is the surrounding world in which an event or situation takes place.

M. Halliday’s view of context of situation, employs Bronislaw Malinowski’s conception of “context of situation,” who examines the relations between language use and social interaction. Malinowski observed that, it is nearly impossible to understand another culture without understanding the contexts of situation in which they express themselves. Halliday agrees with Malinowski’s contention that, foreigners living outside a given society cannot fully understand texts written by members of that society even when they are translated into their own language. This is because; texts bring more meanings than those expressed in the words they contain. Consequently texts can only be understood in the context of the situations in which they were written or spoken.

According to this Holliday’s view, context of situation is explained in terms of major three elements; field, tenor and mode, which are very important to text analysis, as explained bellow.

Field. It refers to the subject matter and it may be similar to certain uses of the term domain in

Computational linguistics. According to Halliday Field implies what is happening, to whom, where and when, and why it is happening. Language differs depending to the field in which the writer or speaker falls. The same message or content can be represented in different ways depending to the reasons, places, time, and the participants of the conversation. For example, if speaker insists people on working, in agricultural domain for example, he or she can says “hence agriculture is a prominent sector in our country, peoples should participate fully on cultivation in order to serve their daily needs”, but the same massage, is presented differently in a literary domain, as speaker says “As you sow, so you shall reap”.  

Tenor: it refers to the social relation existing between the interactants in a speech situation. It includes relations of formality, power, and affect. Tenor influences interpersonal choices in the linguistic system, and thereby, it affects role the structures and the strategies chosen to activate the linguistic exchange. As in a field of discourse, the language differs depending to the relationship between the participants, based on their levels of formality, power and affect. For example, if the speaker intended to write a letter to someone else, he or she should consider the relationship between them. If they are friendly, friend letter is enough to them to communicate, but if not, he or she will supposed to write the official latter, and he or she must follows it`s rules, including the choice of the word used. For example Dear Sir/ Madam, uses of impersonal language and other features.

Mode: it describes the way the language is being used in the speech interaction, including the medium of spoken, written, and written to be spoken as well as the rhetorical mode such as instructive or persuasive. Also language differs depending to the medium used. The spoken language has its ways of presented quite different from the one to be written. Spoken language involves short sentences with many contractions, ellipses, sound imitations, and personal way of message presentation, which are deferent from written language.

For example:

Speaker A: Hallo! Maryam, how are you?

Speaker B: Fine.

Speaker A: You know what! We are no longer friend with John.

Speaker B: lo! lo! lo! lo! mhuuuu………I knew, but hided my face!

This example shows how mode affects the choice of language to be used.

These three elements of context of situation as explained by Halliday are very important on text analysis as follow.

First, field of discourse will helps us to determine the subject matter of the text or domain. As explained above that, texts differ according to its field, for example legal text differs to literary works, legal text always dominated with the legal vocabulary, long sentences as well as legal doublet. For examples,  cancel, annual and set aside to mean cancel, deem and conceder and sole and exclusive to mean consider. In literary text is always dominated with imaginary language, metaphor, similes and others literary devises. Therefore, it is through these three elements of context of situation we are able to determine which domain does the text is.  

Also, field of discourse is useful to text analysis, as it helps us to determine the audience of the speaker. It is through field of discourse where we can realize who are the target audiences intended by the speaker or writer of a text. The way the speaker or writer uses to express the idea can helps us to determine who his audiences are. For example   the choice of vocabulary. If the speakers or writer`s intention is the children, simple vocabulary are commonly used, for example common vocabulary such as improve instead of ameliorate, continue instead of proceed, and others.

Mode is another important element which plays a great role in text analysis as viewed by Halliday, because it helps us to determine if the text is spoken, written or spoken to be written. For example spoken text caries distinctive features of spoken language even if it is written. As an example shows:

LULU: Hallo! Maryam, how are you?

MARYAM: Fine.

LULU: You know what! We are no longer friend with John.

MARYAM: lo! lo! lo! lo! mhuuuu………I knew, but hided my face!

This example uses short answers, gap filler, and repetition of similar sounds, which are common in spoken media, but rarely used in written media.

Also, mode helps to determine rhetorical mode of the speaker or writer. Through mode we can determine if the language used is for threatening, persuading or instructing. For example when a speaker says “shall you buy this dress; it’s very beautifully for you!” this language implies persuasion. But if the speaker says “my God! We are dying, we have eaten the glass!” in such a sense language can be used as a threatening devices.

The last element according to Halliday’s view is tenor. This element is very important in text analysis, in extent that, it is a place where we determine who are the participants involved and their relationship. The relation between the participants is known by observing the way how the writer or the speaker has addressed them. The language differs depending to the relation between the interactants. The language used by the manager to his clerk differs from that of clerk to his manager. Likewise, the language used by the son speaking to his parent differs to that of parents to his son. Take a look of an example:

Mother: Alliy common! Why are you late?

Alliy:  sorry mother,  I am coming.

Mother: go and wash your clothes.

Alliy : Thank you mother.

From an example above, we can determine the status of mother to Alliy, and Alliy to his mother. Alliy seen to calm down as far as his mother speaks to him.

To conclude, the Halliday’s view of the context of situation seems to play the great role in text analysis, in extent that, it deals with almost the important aspects to be considered when analyzing a text. Through Halliday`s view we are able to know the speaker, audience, media used, genre, time as well as the language function as intended by a speaker or writer. 

  

REFERENCES:

Bronislaw M. (1923). The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages,  New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Longman (2005). Active Study Dictionary. Longman, Nutech Photolithographers, New Delhi

Firth, J. (1957). Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. London: Oxford University Press.

Firth, J. (1957). A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, Oxford: Blackwell.