An Investigation into the Phenomena of Meaning Making and Wording in Non-Fiction Novel from Systemic Functional Linguistics

Abstract

In the light of Systemic Functional Linguistics, language is both a source of meaning-making and a source of wording modes in texts. To further clarify this ideology in practice, the article uses the phenomenon of wording in the non-fiction novel "Silent Spring" by Carson - the world's most famous female writer for her environmental protection works- for analysis aiming at teaching grammatical metaphor to the students of English at a University. The article briefly introduces the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics, including the Grammatical metaphor (GM). Next, descriptive, qualitative, quantitative, and quasi-experimental methods are used with more than 200 samples selected to determine the relationship between the lexicogrammatical and semantic aspects in the impact of the context; the article pays special attention to congruent expressions and metaphorical expressions. Based on applying the quasi-experimental method to English classes of 373 students, the writers describe the three stages of teaching (GM), analyze the data related, and present research results. The conclusion consists of application suggestions in terms of language research and language education, such as reading, understanding, evaluating, and building relevant types of text.