Lecture 2 Metafunction Summary

What are the three types of metafunctions?

• Interpersonal metafunction

• Textual metafunction

• Ideational metafunction

• Interpretational metafunction

Textual metafunction is about...

• how information is organised as text

• who the participants are

• which information is placed at the beginning of a sentence

• topic continuity, cohesion, coherence

Ideational metafunction is about...

• how reality is constructed in a conversation

• process, participant, circumstance, quality

• the word choice

• relation of speaker and listener

Interpersonal metafunction is about...

• how the speaker relates to the listener

• identities and power relation

• persuading others

• attitude and perspective

All three metafunctions...

• are not separable in a text or conversation

• aim towards specific communication purposes

• will be used in your Asm 1 (reflective analysis)

• can only be applied when sender and receiver have power difference