Systemic-functional linguistics in China (2010–2016)

Abstract

This article reviews Systemic-Functional Linguistic Studies in China in the period of 2010–2016. To keep scholars up-to-date about Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) in China, there have been several state-of-the-art introductions and reviews of different periods before the present one. The present is a continuation of previous reviews; it covers the period from 2010 through 2016, when SFL continued to thrive as an appliable and general linguistic theory. This can be seen from the number of studies published as journal articles, collections, monographs, and regular conferences, “systemics weeks” and colloquia. We group the studies into eight areas according to the research topics: theoretical explorations, syntax, discourse analysis, studies of Chinese, translation studies and language comparison, the Appraisal Theory (AT) and its applications, grammatical metaphor (GM), and other topics. We will discuss the new trends shown in these studies and suggest directions for future research.

Keywords:

• SFL
• China
• discourse analysis
• theory
• application

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There are two catalogues: Tian et al. (2016) and Sun et al. (2016). The former is a full list of research articles published in China from 1977 through 2007, and the latter of graduation theses from 1995 through 2010.

2. There are also stylistic analysis of other literary texts from the perspective of AT, e.g., Li (2010), Wang (2010b), and Nie (2015)

3. Shuowen Jiezi is the most important work of traditional Chinese linguistics in the Han Dynasty.

4. Xu (2013) reviews studies on AT from 2001 through 2011.

5. For a review of studies on GM in China, see Zhang & Lei (2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by China National Social Science Funding Project [grant number 17BYY183].