Book Review
He describes language
Iswaril [2152220014], State University of
Medan
Introduction to Functional Grammar.By
Halliday in Fourth Edition.Revised by
Christian M.I.M Matthiessen, published by
Routledge, 2014.
The book that titled Introduction to
Functional Grammar is concerned about
meaning. For getting a better conversation or
a better text, learners need to understand the
grammar well because every sentences have
a rule, that’s why need to read this book. So
the learners needs to study about grammar
more specifically in Functional Grammar.
This book was written by Michael Halliday
in 2014 where this is the forth edition
belongs to him. This book was revised by
Christian M.I.M Matthiessen that published
by Routledge. It has ten chapters in 735
pages. But there is only one chapter that will
be reviewed.
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday was
born on April, 13 1925. He is a linguist from
England who developed the internationally
influential systemic functional grammatical
description go by the name of systemic
functional grammar.
as a semiotic system, “not in the sense of a
system of signs, but a systemic resource for
meaning’. For Halliday, language is a
“meaning potential”, by extension, he
defines linguistics as the study of “how
people exchange meanings by “languaging”.
Maybe that thing that becomes his
background or purpose to write 4 books
about functional grammar. His love to
functional grammar is undeniable.
This analysis is concern about chapter 5
where it concerns about clause as a
representative that we know the main idea of
that discussion is transitivity. In this case,
the author will compare it with a journal that
has similar discussion.
If you have read Halldiay’s book, you will
agree if the author say that the way Halliday
explains his theories is complicated, it is
twisted. Such as in explanation page 216,
Halliday uses diagram to show us about the
kind of process that will be discuss, but
unfortunately, it makes the readers difficult
to understand it. And in the next page, he
gives example and analyzes it based on
participant, but he doesn’t tell us before
what kind of participant in a process (ex.
Actor : material process). It is little bit
confused for beginner.
In his book, Halliday always asks the
readers to keep remember the previous
chapters, the author says like that because in
every chapter Halliday input previous
discussion, we can say it is good to remind
the readers about previous chapters but it
makes the readers focus to the chapter that is
discussing.
In this chance, the author wants to compare
a chapter in Halliday’s book that contains
about transitivity with a journal that also
discusses about transitivity. That journal is
titled Analyzing Clause by Halliday’s
Transitivity System that written by
Muhammad Rayhan Bustam, S.S. The
author of the article uses the Halliday’s book
as his reference.
In that article, the author uses the book of
Halliday that automatically it means that he
uses the theories of Halliday. Something that
must be compared is the way author
elaborates theory of Halliday. In article that
written in 2014, the author; Muhammad
Rayhan Bustam uses Halliday’s theory from
the beginning till the end. But he doesn’t
elaborates or expands them with the good
explanation I mean with his own
explanation.
If we notice, we will think that the author of
that article cannot make his own explanation
of Halliday’s theory that means it is same as
difficult as we try to understand Halliday’s
book. The author (of article) gives theory of
Halliday about transitivity, in this case we
hope he can elaborate the definition of
transitivity itself using his own explanation
but in fact he still use Halliday’s explanation
of transitivity itself. It is not good because it
means he just copy what Halliday says, not
discuss it.
If we compare the way they (Halliday and
author of that aricle/jurnal) we can conclude
that Halliday is twisted in explaining
theories because it is like he doesn’t focus in
discussing one theory/chapter because he
always input another explanation or previous
chapter. And in the article of article, the
author itself cannot elaborate or discuss the
theory well because he doesn’t discuss it. He
just copy what Halliday says.
Reference:
 Bustam, Muhammad Rayhan. Jurnal
Ilmu Sastra. 2011. Analyzing Clause by
Halliday’s Transitivity System.
 Halliday, M.A.K. 1985b. An
Introduction to Functional
Grammar.London: Edward Arnold