Other invited talks at ESFLC34
Activities at the 34th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference (ESFLC34): Ecosocial Environment
Workshop on How To Do System Networks
Jim Martin (Professor of Linguistics, The University of Sydney) and John Bateman (Professor of Linguistics and English, Bremen University)
This workshop offers a preliminary guide to designing system networks, a central component within Systemic Functional Linguistic theory as far as modelling meaning potential is concerned.
Jim will begin the session with a focus on some of the key theoretical underpinnings, conventions, and analytical significance of system networks in language description. John will follow up on some of the challenges that get added in when working multimodally.
Jim and John will try and involve face-to-face participants in some hands-on practice, so have a pencil, eraser and some scraps of paper to draw on handy.
Time will be limited, but participants can follow up with the new edition of the axial relations book, revised by Pin Wang and Jim for Bloomsbury. Therein chapters begin with English examples and follow up with Tagalog and Chinese.
A Practical Guide to System Networks: Modelling Paradigmatic Relations for Language Description in Systemic Functional Linguistics (J R Martin and Pin Wang). London: Bloomsbury. 2026.
For pursuing the discussion of multimodality, participants can follow up with the chapter on “The materialities of semiosis” in the new textbook prepared by John and Janina Wildfeuer and Tuomo Hiippala:
Multimodality – A Hands-On Guide (J A Bateman, J Wildfeuer and T. Hiippala). Berlin: de Gruyter. 2026.
A Panel on Positive Discourse Analysis with Professor Jim Martin and Professor Tom Bartlett
Positive Discourse Analysis research has become a vibrant area of scholarly work since its inception in Jim Martin's work around two and a half decades ago. A large number of empirical works adopting a PDA approach have been undertaken in the intervening years, responding to a range of challenges experienced in modern societies - in topics which fall under the remit of the eco-social environment (e.g. education, health, the environment, etc.). Scholars working in this area have also engaged in theoretical and methodological debate regarding purpose, reach and praxis of PDA. In this panel, Professors Jim Martin and Tom Bartlett will reflect on the development of PDA research, and discuss the present status and future outlook of the approach in applied linguistics research.
Jim R Martin
Professor of Linguistics at The University of Sydney
Positive discourse analysis (PDA): retrospect and prospect
The paper 'Positive Discourse Analysis: solidarity and change' has its origins in a presentation I delivered at a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) conference I was invited to in Birmingham in 1999 and was eventually published in 2004. At the time I was hoping to encourage critical discourse analysts to shift their focus "from deconstructive activity to productive activity" (Kress's 1996) – suggesting that this would involve a change as far as the discourses analysed were concerned and that a complementary of deconstructive and constructive activity was necessary if analysts were to act "upon the world in order to transform it" (Caldas-Coulthard & Coulthard 1996). And I offered some discourse analyses of texts which I considered to have made a world a better place.
As part of my contribution to this panel I should perhaps clarify that I was not proposing a new theory. PDA, like CDA, is an orientation to discourse analysis, and has drawn on many different theories of communication across disciplines. The theory I myself use is Systemic Functional Semiotics (SFS), which in my practice is inspired by Halliday's notion of linguistics as an ideologically committed form of social action. The main site in which I have tried to change the world is education – through the evolving literacy programs of the 'Sydney School.' It is hard.
The enduring criticisms of the nudge I tried to give CDA would appear to be i. that analysing texts is not enough (taking into account their social context is crucial); and ii. that celebrating world changing discourse is not enough (getting instrumentally involved in social change is essential). I agree with the gist of these critiques. For me they pose the challenge of (i) how to develop a richer SFS model of context and (ii) how to embed SFS more effectively in a process of change. I've perhaps learned some things over the years that I can share.
Tom Bartlett
Professor of Functional and Applied Linguistics at The University of Glasgow
From positivity to immanence: Applying linguistics for social change
In response to a perceived overemphasis on deconstruction and the negative side of criticality within the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, Kress (1996) proposed a move towards the Design of alternative and more progressive discourses, while Martin (2004) pointed to the need of positive models in order to facilitate such a transition.
Building on these core ideas, in my own work I have primarily stressed the need to contextualise any study of what the analyst sees as positive change in order to understand the conditions of possibility that gave rise to existing discourses and to better understand the potential for alternative discourses – and hence practices - to gain traction (Bartlett 2012).
In a handbook contribution on Positive Discourse Analysis (Bartlett 2017), I provided an overview of work self-identifying as in some way PDA and suggested how essential elements of each approach, along with core CDA work, could be incorporated within a general framework for PDA. This included identifying a problem with my earlier work in not working sufficiently with local communities within a participatory action research framework.
Building on this idea, I have most recently been preoccupied with the need to move from external critique (including its positive elements) to immanent critique (Herzog 2016), arising from a discourse community’s existing norms, values and practices. Alongside this shift in emphasis in the application of linguistics (see also Bartlett and Montesano Montessori 2021), I have been working with Gerard O’Grady (O’Grady and Bartlett 2023) to develop an SFL-based account of how social and linguistic systems co-adapt.
In my contribution to the panel I will briefly expand on this trajectory before exploring how SFL-derived theories of language and the sociological concept of immanent critique can be put to work together within specific contexts.