A review of interpersonal metafunction studies in systemic functional linguistics (2012–2022)

Abstract

Abstract Substantial research has drawn upon the notion of interpersonal metafunction proposed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to approach the interpersonal meanings construed in different contexts. However, there is a lack of review on the recent research of this domain. The objective of this paper is to survey the patterns and trends of literature on interpersonal metafunction in SFL tradition and guide future research. This paper reviews 160 studies published from 2012 to 2022. Four themes emerge from the review: theoretical explorations, multilingual studies, discourse analysis, and language education. These contributions shed light on the applicability and flexibility of SFL as a theoretical tool across a wide range of genres and languages. The four streams of research are guided by the fundamental concepts of SFL and interrelated by the concept of context and the tenet of language as social semiotic. Future directions lie in theoretical model refinement, methodological developments, typological descriptions of interpersonal grammar, and the extension of application areas.