A Newsletter of the North
American Systemic Functional Linguistics Association
(NASFLA)
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A Message from the Newsletter Editors
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Dear NASFLA members,
This newsletter is a special issue dedicated to the life and work of M. A. K. Halliday that will be further highlighted by the upcoming
International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association Conference to be held in Boston from July 19-27 2018. This issue is the first to include a featured interview and four featured articles written by our NASFLA members. In the interview, Tairan Qiu gets up-close with Professor Jim Martin who provides valuable insights about the past and delineates a path to look forward in the future of SFL. Our four feature articles include a vision for our newly redesigned webpage by Michael Maune, as well as a plethora of useful connections to the work of Bernard Mohan for SFL researchers and practitioners by Tammy Slater. The other two featured articles are equally insightful and relevant. While Laura Flores describes SFL-related projects (and challenges) in South America with a special focus on Uruguay, Christina Cavallaro walks us through the ways SFL scholars have dealt with critiques of SFL in Australia (mostly) and how we can learn from their experiences.
Throughout this current issue, we will highlight specific events at the conference such as the new book launches (we have some sample books to give out to attendees), the teachers as SFL practitioners strand, the NASFLA business meeting, and the NASFLA database event. As we continue our efforts to expand our organization's reach and membership, we hope to continue this line of content in future issues of our publication.
We hope you enjoy this newsletter and consider joining NASFLA's leadership and/or joining this publication as a reviewer, editor, or contributor. We really need your talent and sustained involvement so we can keep on growing!
Sincerely,
Your Editors
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Tairan Qiu
The University of Georgia
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Florida Atlantic University
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Dr. Marianna Ryshina-Pankova
Georgetown University
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ISFC
Boston will certainly be a memorable conference! In addition to top keynote speakers, an exciting conference strand on teachers as SFL researchers, book launches, and state-of-the-art pre-conference institutes, there are a total of 18 colloquia, 183 papers, as well as over 60 round tables and posters! Watch the video, visit the website, or search the online program for more information!
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In this featured interview, Professor
Jim Martin, a world-renown leader in SFL, shares his insights on the last SFL conference in the United States about 30 years ago, the significance on bringing the conference back to the US, his hopes on the advancement of the SFL theory and application for the years to come and much more!
By Tairan Qiu, The University of Georgia
Special thanks to Christina Cavallaro (Florida Atlantic University) for her help with transcription.
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NASFLA OPEN BUSINESS MEETING
MONDAY, JULY 23, 4:30-5:30 PM, FULTON 130
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The agenda for the upcoming NASFLA meeting includes:
- Changes and updates to newsletter, website, and social media
- Treasurer election
- Financial status of the organization
- Non-profit status discussion
- National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) sponsored sessions (Peter Fries)
- The M.A.K Halliday Prize (Yaegan Doran)
- Call for papers SFL series (David Caldwell)
- GRADNASFLA symposium
Following the business meeting, Michael Maune will lead a
NASFLA database event
in the same room (pizza included!) in which NASFLA members and non-members can learn about procedures to get involved and update their contact information and scholarly interests.
Participants must bring their own laptop.
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Teachers as SFL Practitioners Day
Wednesday, July 25, 8am-4pm
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Tear Down This Wall: A Vision for NASFLA.org
By Michael Maune
Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
A spectre is haunting North America. It is a wall, not of bricks and mortar, but of meaning and action. Social inequality--that is the wall that haunts us. It is the wall we as SFL practitioners and scholars are all working to dismantle. But it is not the only wall that restricts access in North America. There is another wall. It is a wall that SFL is stuck behind. And it is a wall that needs dismantling as well. And if we do not face this wall of access, we will be less effective in working to tear down the bigger wall of social inequality.
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Expanding SFL resources and making connections:
Revisiting and reimagining Mohan’s social practice theory
By Tammy Slater
Iowa State University
As Michael Halliday has argued, language is the primary medium through which education is carried out and assessed in all content areas (Halliday, 1999, 2007; Wells, 1999). This is one of the key reasons why educational researchers have adopted SFL, and in particular, those looking to improve education for students who struggle with language. SFL has migrated from its origins in Australia to North America with an aim to help teachers understand how language works to construct meanings in register- and genre-specific ways so that they can help their students succeed.
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Introducing SFL-Related experiences in Uruguay to SFL practitioners
By Laura Flores
Consejo de Formación en Educación, Uruguay
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
There are three rather small communities which have taken up, to different extents, the project of developing materials, courses and even their curriculum in English language teaching from an SFL perspective. There were a number of academic events that supported these endeavours. I am first going to outline those events, and then I am going to describe these SFL-related projects, referring to their achievements and the challenges they are facing.
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The Battles of Systemic Functional Linguistics: Learning from the Past to Respond to Critiques of Today
By Christina J. Cavallaro
Florida Atlantic University
As the popularity of SFL increases throughout the U.S., it continues to clash with practices of traditional linguistics. Traditional practices exclude groups of learners, primarily students of historically marginalized groups, yet they still permeate our school settings. While SFL implementation aims to combat biased practices, it has been critiqued as promoting “a modernist and sometimes racialized divide between academic language development and the hybrid social interactions of multilingual learners” (Flores & Rosa, 2015; as cited in Harman & Khote, 2015, p. 2).
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Want to Publish your work in this Newsletter?
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GRADNASFLA SYMPOSIUM
Call for Proposals
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Session 1
Tuesday, July 24, 4:15-4:45pm
Campion 139
(limited space available. Maximum capacity 36 people.)
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THE LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING
Authors include Mary Schleppegrell and Frances Christie.
Book presented by
Mary Schleppegrell and Frances Christie
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By David Rose and Jim Martin
Book presented by Isabel García Parejo and Claire Acevedo.
This is a Spanish translation of the book Learning to write, reading to learn: Genre, knowledge, and pedagogy in the Sydney school.
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SUCCESSFUL UNIVERSITY TEACHING IN TIMES OF DIVERSITY
Edited by Nicola Rolls, Andrew Northedge, and Ellie Chambers.
Book presented by David Rose
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ATTITUDINAL EVALUATION IN CHINESE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ENGLISH WRITING
Authors
include Anne McCabe
Book presented by
Anne McCabe
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MAPPING GENRES, MAPPING CULTURE: JAPANESE TEXTS IN CONTEXT
Editors include Elizabeth A. Thonpson, Motoki Sano, and Helen de Silva Joyce.
Book presented by Victor Menco
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SEARCHABLE TALK: HASHTAGS AND SOCIAL MEDIA METADISCOURSE
By Michelle Zappavigna
Book presented by Cole Kervin
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Some sample books are available to raffle among participants
Winners will be announced during the Friday lunch
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Session 2
Tuesday, July 24, 4:45-5:15
Campion 139
(limited space available. Maximum capacity 36 people.)
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THE DISCOURSE OF PHYSICS
By Yaegan Doran
Book presented by Yaegan Doran
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BILINGUAL LEARNERS AND SOCIAL EQUITY: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SFL
Edited by
Ruth Harman
Book presented by
Ruth Harman
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SEARCHABLE TALK: HASHTAGS AND SOCIAL MEDIA METADISCOURSE
By Michelle Zappavigna
Book presented by Cole Kervin
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By David Rose and Jim Martin
Book presented by Isabel García Parejo and Claire Acevedo.
This is a Spanish translation of the book Learning to write, reading to learn: Genre, knowledge, and pedagogy in the Sydney school.
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DISCOURSE AND DIVERSIONARY JUSTICE: AN ANALYSIS OF YOUTH JUSTICE CONFERENCING
By Michelle Zappavigna and Jim Martin
Book presented by Jim Martin
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FUNCTIONAL GRAMMATICS: RECONCEPTUALIZING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LANGUAGE AND IMAGE FOR SCHOOL ENGLISH
Authors include
Mary Macken-Horarik, Kristina Love, Carmel Sandiford, and Len Unsworth
Book presented by
Len Unsworth
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Some sample books are available to raffle among participants.
Winners will be announced during the Friday lunch.
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Other New and Noteworthy Books
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Describing Language: Form and Function
The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan, Volume 5
Edited by Jonathan Webster and Carmel Cloran
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How does one’s grammar depend on one’s conception of language? In systemic functional linguistics, language is viewed as a meaning potential, thus embracing the view, now supported by contemporary theories of the evolution of human consciousness, that language has evolved in the living of life in society.
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The Birth of the Academic Article
Le Journal des Sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions, 1665-1700
By David Banks
This study is a linguistic analysis of the first two academic periodicals from their creation in 1665 until the end of the seventeenth century. These were the Journal des Sçavans in France and the Philosophical Transactions in England. The analysis is carried out within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The linguistic features and aspects of the theory necessary for understanding the rest of the book are explained, and the historical situation is described in order to place the texts in the context from which they derived.
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A Systemic Functional Grammar of French
A Simple Introduction
By David Banks
This concise introduction to the systemic functional grammar (SFG) framework provides illustrations throughout that highlight how the framework can be used to analyse authentic language texts.
This will be of interest to students in alternative linguistic frameworks who wish to acquire a basic understanding of SFG as well as academics in related areas, such as literary and cultural studies, interested in seeing how SFG can be applied to their fields.
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Remember
NASFLA
OPEN BUSINESS MEETING (and database event)
MONDAY, JULY 23, 4:30-5:30 PM
FULTON 130
(Pizza will be provided for database event participants.)
BRING YOUR OWN LAPTOP TO DATABASE EVENT
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Don't miss out.
All invited!
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President:
Marianna Ryshina-Pankova, Georgetown University
Vice-President:
Andrés Ramírez, Florida Atlantic University
Secretary:
Dong-shin Shin, University of Cincinnati
Treasurer: Vacant
Newsletter editors
: Tairan Qiu, The University of Georgia,
Andrés Ramirez, Florida Atlantic University, and
Marianna Ryshina-Pankova, Georgetown University
Web managers:
Michael Maune, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
Jackie Nenchin, Molloy College
Social media:
Silvia Pessoa, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
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The North American Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (NASFLA) was founded in 2002 to foster research in Systemic Functional linguistics and to provide an organizational focus for Systemic Functional linguists in teaching and research positions throughout North America.
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North American Systemic Functional Linguistics Association | [email protected]| Website
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