Creativity and “New Ways of Meaning”: Systemic functional linguistics-based theories and frameworks for analysing creativity in multimodal texts

Abstract

<p>Three decades since Halliday (1990) presented a seminal paper to AILA in Greece entitled <em>New ways of meaning: a challenge to applied linguistics</em> and introducing the notion of an ecological study of language, “ecolinguistics” has been established and recognized as a field of research and activity, drawing centrally on Halliday (1990). But is his challenge being met outside the academic community? In this session, I will revisit the challenge and mission envisaged by Halliday. Key examples and quotes from Halliday’s seminal paper will be used as points of departure for discussions i) to help the audience who might be unfamiliar with Halliday’s paper to grasp the significance of his concepts and contribution to the field of ecolinguistics, and ii) to provide bases for answering two new questions, “What has changed in climate talk in the last decade?” and if we, linguists and language educations, want to save our planet, “What still needs to be done?”</p><p>I adopt both an appliable linguistics approach (see Matthiessen, 2012, 2014) and a corpus-driven systemic functional linguistics approach to investigate the questions in a wide range of registers where environmental issues are being processed semiotically and opinions are being formed, including examples (in English) from political discourse, news media, social media, and late-night talk shows on topics surrounding climate change, renewable energy, wildlife conservation and extinction, and economic inequality. I also pay attention to texts likely to be influential in the life of children and their gradual construal of their own world views with associated value systems (see Matthiessen, 2015). This provides a snapshot of the language use by the media outlets in construing climate talk in the 2010s. Alternative words to approach climate talk in the 2020s will be discussed. The content of this session is adopted from a paper by Law and Matthiessen (2022).</p><p>Thematic area: applied/appliable linguistics, SFL and corpus studies</p><p>Keywords: ecolinguistics, climate talk, climate change, global warming, sustainability</p><p><strong>References:</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Halliday, M.A.K. (1990). New ways of analysing meaning: A challenge to applied linguistics. <em>Journal of Applied Linguistics</em>, <em>6</em>, 7-36.</p><p>Law, L. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2022). Revisiting Halliday’s (1990) “New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics”: What has changed and what still needs to be done? <em>[Manuscript submitted to a journal]. Centre for Applied English Studies, The University of Hong Kong; Dep. of English Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid</em></p><p>Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2012). Systemic Functional Linguistics as appliable linguistics: social accountability and critical approaches. <em>D.E.L.T.A. (Revista de Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada)</em>, <em>28</em>, 437-471.</p><p>Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2014). Appliable discourse analysis. In F. Yan & J. J. Webster (Eds), <em>Developing systemic functional linguistics : theory and application</em> (pp. 135-205). Equinox.</p><p>Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2015). Subliminal construal of world order clause by clause: hierarchy of control in Noah’s Ark. <em>Linguistics and the Human Sciences</em>, <em>11</em> (2-3), 250–283. https://doi.org/<a>10.1558/lhs.34710</a></p> ​​​​​​​