What is Ideational?

—Me

♦ Halliday developed a theory of the fundamental functions of language, in which he analyzed

lexicogrammar into three broad metafunctions: Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual. Each of the
three metafunctions is about a different aspect of the world, and is concerned with a different mode
of meaning of clauses. The Ideational Metafunction is concerned with how we represent reality in
language.
♦ The Ideational strand of meaning actually has two components: the Experiential and the Logical
Metafunction. The Experiential Metafunction organizes our experience and understanding of the
world, we are looking at the grammar of the clause as representation while the Logical
Metafunction looks at the meaning between clauses in clause complexes

♦ In our presentation we will only focus on the Experiential Metafunction

♦ So The Ideational Metafunction is concerned with how we represent reality in language, and so
what is represented? It is the Who does what to whom, where and when, why and how? of the world,
this will be further explained a little later

What Can it Reveal to us About Texts?—Gufran

Processes and Participants

♦ Coming back to the Who does what to whom, where and when, why and how, we find that What is the
process and Who and Whom are the participants, we will touch on the where, when, why and how later.

Material Processes and Participants

♦ One of the processes is the Material process, which pertains to concrete or physical actions such as running,
walking, kicking, something that is tangible. The specific participants that go with Material Process are
[+Actor], [+Goal], [+Range], [+Beneficiary], and Beneficiary can be further specified as either a recipient
or a client.

♦ The actor is the one doing the action, the goal is the participant at whom the process is directed (you may
know it as the direct object), the beneficiary is the participant that benefits from the process (you may
know it as the indirect object)

♦ And finally range, it’s the participant at whom the process is directed but it is less independent than a goal,
the range is a continuation of the process, it doesn’t exist except through a the process. Eggins says “The
Range is really just another name for the process itself” which is easier to see with sentences such as [They
ran a race] with ran being the material process and race being the range, where race is really a restatement
of the process run. It may be trickier to spot in such sentences as [Marg served dinner] as Marg the actor,
served the process and dinner is the range. For further examples look through pages 218 through to 220 in
our textbook and it may give you a better intuition as to when a direct object is a Goal vs. a Range.

♦
 Actor Material Beneficiary Goal

Olga gave Demetri the CD

Mental Processes and Participants-----Gufran

Verbal Processes and Participants

♦ The verbal process has to do with verbal action, therefore speech, and it can be the actual action or even
symbolic exchanges of meaning such as: My book says it was in 1987, that is verbal as well

♦ The participants that go with the verbal process are Sayer, Receiver and Verbiage. The Sayer is the one
doing the speech action, the Receiver is the one the speech is directed towards and the Verbiage is what
was said.

Saye Verbal Receiver Verbiage

r

Cho shouted at Kirk to stop

Behavioural Processes and Participants-----Gufran

Relational Processes and Participants

♦ The relational process states things exist in relation to other things, there are two different types of
relational processes, one is called Identifying Relational which serves the purpose of defining and the
participants involved with it are Token and Value. Thus the Value serves to define the identity of the
Token.

Token Identifying Value

Thomas is in green
 ♦ We identify Thomas as the one wearing green, though the most common identifying verb is be there are
other verbs that serve the purpose of Identifying Relational. An example is, One plus one equals three, one
plus one is the token, equals is the identifying relational

♦ The other type of relational process is the Attributive Relational which serves to describe. The participants
associated with it are Carrier and Attribute and we can say “the x (realized by Carrier) is a member of the
class y (realized by attribute)” and attributes are typically adjectives.

Carrier Attributive Attribute

Steve is intelligent

♦ These Identifying and Attributive may be difficult sometimes to tell apart so here are two things to
remember that may help you differentiate the two.

♦ In Identifying the Value is definite, therefore there may be “the” in Value, while in Attributive the Attribute
is an indefinite therefore there may be “a” in Attribute. For example: Garfield is the cat is an Indentifying
Relational while, Garfield is a cat is Attributive.

♦ The second thing to remember is that Attributive clauses are NOT reversible, this means there is no passive
form of the clause, the Carrier must always be the subject. With Identifying the clause can be reversed
therefore passive construction is possible.

Circumstances

♦ Coming back once again to the Who does what to whom, where and when, why and how, we talked about
the What as the process and Who and Whom as the participants, so that leaves Where, when, why, and how
and these are all Circumstances.

♦ The different Circumstances are the following [click]

Gufran: Extent, Cause, Location

Anika:Matter, Manner, Role, Accompaniment

Sentence Analysis

Gufran: introduce what we are going to do with the sentences (do 3 with them, then they do 3 on their own)

do the first sentence, The Scientists…

Anika: do the second sentence with them, “I heard the cat…”

Gufran: “The little girl”…

 Now go ahead and try the next 3 sentences on your own and we will circulate

Anika: take up sentence, “Running is good…”

Gufran: take up, “Gaurav told Sam…”

Anika: take up, “a dog is…”

Analyze this Text

Anika: Ok now we want you guys to analyze this text (tree one) on your own and we will take it up after

Gufran: We suggest that you first look for the processes, highlight them then you will be able to easily figure out
the participants and circumstances if there are any

Then we take it up with the class, answer questions….

DONE!!!!!!!!