Systemic Functional Linguistic Comparison of News Text and Spoken Conversation

Systemic Functional Linguistic Comparison of News Text and Spoken Conversation.

Introduction A news text and a spoken conversation will be considered by using a systemic functional linguistic approach. Linguistic evidence will be given to support the register analysis of field, tenor and mode which highlight the differences and similarities between the context of use of the two texts, and an explanation given as to why the variation in registers occurs.

TEXT 1 – NEWS TEXT

|FIELD | |
| | |
|Register analysis |Linguistic evidence |
| | |
|Semantic domain: | |
|Current affairs – |References to military and aeronautical equipment and terminology. ( e.g. fighter |
|Breach in security of American |jets, airspace, warning flares. |
|airspace |References to consequences of an air attack (e.g. forced to land, ignored |
| |warnings, ordered to seek safety) |
|Implication of possible terrorist |People and places connected with American politics named (e.g. Capitol building, |
|activity. |President George Bush, supreme court) |
| |Many of the text’s participants (both as subjects and objects of clauses) and

References: Biber, D. and Conrad, s. (2004) ‘Corpus–based comparisons of registers’ in Coffin,C. et al. Applying English Grammar : Functional and Corpus Approaches , London, Arnold