The primary intentions of giving information and explaining things are naturally em- bodied in similar forms of expression, different from the forms natural to entertain- ing, boasting and sharing feelings. Similarly, the secondary intentions of guiding the hearer take yet another set of forms of expression. The intentions thus group together in “functions,” which mediate the formulation of intention into utterances. Just as utterances commonly arise from both major and minor intentions, so do they com- monly serve two or even three functions at once.
I classify the functions into the Expressive, interpersonal and ideational. That is based on the “metafunctions” of Systemic Functional Grammar (see Halliday 2014,
§1.3.5), but excludes the Textual function, and adds the Expressive one. It effective- ly coincides with those of Lyons (1977, p. 50): the expressive, the social, and the descriptive.
Some language intentions and functions will not be considered here or later, since the book as a whole is not considering pragmatic and sociological issues, as noted in Chapter 1. They include such social functions as opening verbal interaction, and verifying that communication channels are operating (Couper-Kuhlen, 1993, p. 231, citing work by Schegloff).
3.3.2 Expressive function
By “Expressive” function, I mean the vocalisation of affect, seen most clearly in grunts of effort and cries of pain, pleasure or amusement. Put simply, affect is undifferen- tiated emotive response to a situation; more precisely, it can be seen as the psychic state that exists on the dimensions of pleasure-displeasure, tension-relaxation and calm-excitement. (See Matthews et al. 2003, p. 89, citing Wundt.) It does not come from cognition, but from a different “faculty” or “module” of the mind.
Considered narrowly, affect is “unmonitored, purely physiologically determined externalisation” of mental states (Couper-Kuhlen 1986, Chapter 10, §1). Considered more broadly, it includes a range of states, varying in the degree to which people’s affective responses are processed by their cognitive and value systems. So the term covers several things: undifferentiated tension which is discharged in action or ges- ture (rather than expressed in language); generalised feeling, such as pleasure and dislike (expressed in such words as horrible, nasty, nice); and specific emotions such as jealousy, envy and resentment. (Compare Taylor’s distinction (1980, p. 385) be- tween unsophisticated emotions such as anger and joy, and sophisticated ones such as shame, humiliation and guilt.)
In common understanding, expression of affect serves to release the tension or displeasure, leaving us feeling calmer. According to recent research (Swee and Schirmer 2015), crying out when we are hurt is not only an evolved signal of dan- ger, but reduces pain, because the effort required interferes with processing the pain signals. Expression is the most basic of the metafunctions in that evolutionary way, and in several others: it develops first in children; it relates to the speaker alone – no hearer is presupposed; it does not involve the higher mental faculties of judgement and intellect; it requires very little linguistic ability, or none; it is reflexive to some degree, rather than deliberate.
Grunts and cries are sublinguistic; but some such vocalisations of affect have be- come conventionalised, as ha ha for laughter, whew and bah (OED), and so on. Those interjections come from the Expressive function alone; they may make up the whole utterance, and may be spoken without any other utterance; more often, perhaps, they are part of a longer utterances, or alternate with them. Often, speakers combine the Expressive intention with a second intention, that of showing those present how they are feeling – in the interpersonal function. That pattern of combining the Expressive function with the interpersonal and ideational functions occurs in many forms other than interjections. For example, we mix expletives into descriptive statements; we use expressive marked intonation to release our feelings while making factual statements;
we lengthen vowels and aspirate initial consonants. The Expressive function thus mo- tivates a good deal of emotive language, along with the interpersonal function to be discussed in the next section. (Paralinguistic features commonly serve the same func- tion, as do many gestures, especially those that have no conventionalised meaning.)
This function has been relatively little discussed, and seldom appears in lists of language functions, although linguistic recognition of it goes back at least to Wittgenstein, who noted that expression “escapes” from the speaker (as cited by Lascaratou 2007, p. 24). It is supported by Wharton (2012), who suggests a spectrum ranging from the gag reflex, through “ugh” (with gh representing an aspirated gut- tural sound), and the interjection “Yuck!”, to yucky/yuckier/yuckiest, which are now standard words (2012, p. 582). It is supported also by Wray (2002, p. 64), who gives a similar gradation. It is supported indirectly by Cruse (2011, §3.4.1), who notes that an expression such as gosh “expresses an emotional state”, and that it has no truth value but has “validity” as a representation of the speaker’s current state. He compares such utterances to a cat’s purr and a baby’s cry.
While Expressive vocalisations such as cries and laughter are not linguistic and are outside the scope of semantics, words such as yucky and the use of features such as intonation and aspiration for the Expressive function are equally clearly within the scope of linguistics. The range and nature of English semantics will be misunderstood if we ignore them. However, as will be clear from the examples given so far, they rarely have a structure, being unitary; so they will receive less attention than the other functions.
3.3.3 Interpersonal function 3.3.3.1 Introduction
Most use of language is functionally less basic than Expressive language, since it involves a hearer as well as a speaker, and its function is social, or interpersonal (Halliday 2014). Language, said Firth (1957, p. 181), is “part of the social process.”
Hanks (2013, p. 409) says that “the fundamental purpose of using words is to facilitate human social behaviour.”
There are many social functions of language, so I divide this section in three, following distinctions made in Functional Discourse Grammar as set out by Van de Velde (2007).
3.3.3.2 Interpersonal action
As the literature on “speech acts” has made clear, all utterances constitute an action on the speaker’s part, such as stating, asking, commanding or exclaiming. Those ac- tions call for a corresponding action on the hearer’s part, of accepting the statement, answering the question, obeying the command, or sharing the feeling expressed in the exclamation. There is thus a two-way transaction, as in a commercial transaction, in which there is both buying and selling. The interaction follows conventions that are linguistic but are set socially, by the speech community; that social dimension extends from linguistics as conceived here, into the field of conversation analysis and dis- course analysis – where interaction becomes joint action, like ballroom dancing or us- ing a two-handed saw (Garrod and Pickering 2007, §26.1). This interpersonal- action function also includes the speaker’s intention to guide the hearer, in such ways as using articles to guide the hearer in identifying referents, setting up Topic- Comment structure to guide structuring the narrative or argument, and foregrounding some things while backgrounding others to guide evaluation of significance.
3.3.3.3 Personal relationships
Speakers often set up a personal relationship with hearers, inviting them to share feel- ing, or to adopt and share the attitude expressed. Here, there is not so much an action on the hearers’ part, as a response, and there are no set conventions for hearers to follow. This is the realm of emotive wording, of the subtleties of intonation, and so on.
3.3.3.4 Social relations
Intentions such as setting or enhancing social status and establishing group, class or regional identity belong in the third class of interpersonal function, that of social relations. They are realised in such forms as the syntax and diction that set the degree of formality, and in slang and dialect wording. This function is guided by socially set convention, in such matters as how a person of higher status should speak to one of lower status.
I include here what Givón (1993) calls the aesthetic function, and what Marchand (1969, p. 427), among others, refers to as being playful. It includes being funny or otherwise entertaining, playing with words, and creating works of art. It is the realm of the imaginative use of words and syntactic structures, in figures of speech for ex- ample. Sometimes, any Expressive and informational value there may be in the text is subordinate to the imaginative function, but in other texts the aesthetic element is like decoration in a functional room. Utterances in the personal-relationship function sometimes work this way, but I include it here as social because the roles of entertain- er and audience are set socially.
3.3.4 Ideational function
In the ideational function, we offer information about the world, but do not try to change the state of the world, as we do in the interpersonal function (by inducing the hearer to act); we embody our construal of experience, both personal experience and experience mediated through learning. It involves not only speaker and hearer – expressed in the grammatical first and second persons – but also the things talked about – in the grammatical third person. It is less basic than the other functions in that respect, in being the last to develop in the child, and in requiring integration of language not only with feeling and interpersonal relationships but with perception and intellect.
It is the realm of statement, description, reference, and truth value in propositions stated. It uses transitivity, dependent clauses and the other structures of syntax fully, but hardly needs intonation, for example. The nature of its relationship to cognition is controversial, but it is certainly close; and we may note Barsalou’s statements, report- ing other research, that “control of conceptual representation via language appears to be central” to representing “non-present situations” (2012, p. 244), and “conceptual processing relies on varying the mixture of the linguistic and conceptual systems”
(2012, p. 252). (The relationship between ideation and cognition will be discussed below, especially in §4.2.2 and §4.7.3.)
3.3.5 Conclusion
It is a truism that the function of language is communication; but that formulation is so vague as to be useless for our purpose. When it means “conveying information about the world”, as it often seems to, it is quite inadequate and in fact misleading, in limiting language to the ideational function.
There is considerable variation in the number and identity of functions given by various authors; but there is, I believe, general agreement that language is functional, since linguists who do not mention the fact do not deny it, but apparently assume it, and it has been discussed since at least Wegener, writing in the 1880’s (Geeraerts 2010,
p. 21). I claim validity for the threefold account given here for three reasons. First, it provides powerful explanation of many things in language, as the rest of the book should show. Second, it correlates with the three fundamentals of the speech situation and of the grammar of predication: the Expressive function correlates with the speak- er and the first person; interpersonal function correlates with the hearer and the sec- ond person; the ideational function correlates with what is spoken about and the third person. Third, it matches the stages of human development. However, it is proposed here only as a useful formulation that gives coherence to the exposition to follow, not being intended as a semantic structure, or as part of the argument for other structures.