Challenges of Developing SFL in China①

GUOWEN HUANG

(Sun Yat-sen University, China)

1.INTRODUCTION

Chinese scholars began to study Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in the early 1980s, with the first group of Chinese students completing their MA degrees at the University of Sydney.Among the four who studied SFL at Sydney at that time, Hu Zhuanglin of Peking University has played the most crucial role in teaching and researching SFL in China, especially at the initial stage.In terms of the number of people who claim to specialise in SFL studies, China has become one of the biggest groups in the international SFL community.This can be seen in terms of the kinds of SFL activities that take place in China (e.g.national and local SFL conferences and seminars, publications, courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and university graduates specializing in SFL).

There have been a number of surveys on SFL studies in the Chinese context (e.g.Huang 2002; Zhang, McDonald, Fang and Huang 2005; Wang 2009; Huang and Wang 2010).From these surveys and reviews, one can see both the rapid developments of teaching and researching SFL in China and the trends these developments have taken.

In a rather comprehensive review, Zhangetal(2005) report the Chinese situation of SFL studies up to the early 2000s, acknowledging and predicting that “great advances have been made in the field of systemic functional linguistics during the last two decades and judging by the health and vitality of the Chinese scholarship...there is every prospect that this will remain an exciting and productive field for decades to come” (Zhangetal2005: 30).The statements made by Zhangetal(2005) are still true even if we repeat them here after nearly 10 years.While we agree with the assumption and prediction made by Zhangetal(2005), it is also important to investigate the situation more critically.

As the Chair of the China Association of Functional Linguistics and as the Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association, I feel I have the obligation to critically analyse the Chinese situation of SFL studies so as to face the problems and challenges more directly.Thus, the aim of this paper is to critically examine, from an insider’s view, the Chinese situation of SFL studies and outline the challenges of developing linguistic studies (particularly SFL) in China.And I believe that the SFL situation in China is only one of the many similar situations of studies in other approaches to language and linguistics in China in particular and in other developing countries in general.

2.THE SITUATION OF LINGUISTIC STUDIES IN CHINA

As a science or a discipline, linguistics, like physics or chemistry, is not “language-bounded” or “country-bounded”.For example, strictly speaking, one cannot talk of English linguistics or British chemistry as if they were language- or country-specific.In his preface to the publication of the book series of “Contemporary Linguistics and Applied Linguistics”, Halliday (2000) says, “The availability of such a broad range of materials in linguistics...will...contribute to the development of linguistics as a discipline in Chinese universities and colleges, helping to overcome the divisions into ‘English linguistics’, ‘Chinese linguistics’ and so on which hinder the progress of linguistics as a unified science”.Clearly Halliday sees that in China, linguistics is divided into ‘English linguistics’, ‘Chinese linguistics’ and so on.The reason for Halliday to emphasise the importance of linguistics as an independent discipline, in my opinion, is that he understands the Chinese situation of linguistics studies very well, in which ‘linguistics’ is generally regarded as ‘language-specific’.In a talk given at a Chinese conference, Halliday (2006:13) reiterates the independent nature of linguistics by saying that “in any complex operation such as the design of a foreign language course it is essential...to have a clear picture of what a language is and how it works: not just about this or that particular language, but about the nature and functioning of human language as such”.He continues:

This is not always easy here in China, because your universities hardly ever have departments of linguistics.You have a department of Chinese, a department of English or maybe of ‘western’ or of foreign languages; but no-one is responsible for investigating and teaching about language as a whole, as a phenomenon in its own right.Each language is treated in isolation, as if it was the only language in existence; there is ‘English linguistics’ and ‘Chinese linguistics’, but no place for a general linguistic theory.This is in contrast, for example, with the situation in India: in India every major university has a linguistics programme, and the standard of research on language is very high.So also is the standard of the teaching of English.(Halliday 2006:13)

Halliday concludes his comment on the Chinese understanding and treatment of linguistics by saying that “If I was founding a university, I would start with a department of linguistics, because language is at the centre of all human knowledge and human understanding” (Halliday 2006:13-14).

The division of ‘foreign (language) linguistics’ (linguistics abroad) and ‘Chinese linguistics’ (linguistics at home) in China is evident not only in the administrative structure but also in the design and teaching of linguistics courses in the university.Thus, a course entitled ‘Introduction to Linguistics’ is taught in the same university by different teachers in different departments, with separate clearly-identified groups of students studying in different departments of the university and with different textbooks and reference books, usually written in different languages.It is rare for a student in a Chinese (or French, Japanese, or Spanish) Department to attend a linguistics course in the English Department, and vice versa.There are a number of reasons for this, one of which is that the course is taught in English with the focus on ‘English linguistics’ which would be difficult or impossible for a student from another department to follow.By the same token, a linguistics course in the French Department is taught in French and only those specializing in French as a major can follow the course.With MA programmes, the situation is the same.The majority of those who are in the ‘English MA programme’ are those who have completed their first degrees in English, and for those whose first degree is not English it is usually impossible to get into the ‘English MA programme’ because the strict entrance examination is conducted in English (in terms of both ‘English’ knowledge and proficiency).

One may suggest that the ‘Introduction to Linguistics’ course be taught in Chinese so that students in different departments can follow the same course.However, there are a number of problems with regard to this alternative, one of which is that the course (designed by different people in different departments with very different educational backgrounds) offered by the Chinese or English Department may not be the same as those offered in other departments, which means that the course taken is not regarded as the course that is required in the other departments.These practices show that the contents of linguistics courses in different departments vary widely, and people in different departments or universities seem to teach different kinds of linguistics or different approaches or aspects of linguistics.

Another more critical issue is that linguistic scholars in different language departments go to different conferences, which means that a linguistic conference is usually attended by people who study or teach the same (foreign) language.With scholars of the English language, the situation is even worse.As the number of people in China who study or teach English is so large, the participants of many of the conferences are teachers of English whose special interest lies in only one branch of or approach to ‘English linguistics’.For example, there are linguistics associations such as the ‘China Association of Functional Linguistics’, ‘China Association of Cognitive Linguistics’, ‘China Association of Pragmatics’, ‘China Association of Sociolinguistics’, etc., which means that people who have different research interests (e.g.SFL, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics) go to different academic activities.Therefore, at a conference on SFL, usually the plenary speakers are systemicists, even if there are more than 400 people attending the conference, because the participants are either SFL researchers or would-be SFL researchers.The consequence is that there is little academic dialogue amongst English linguists in China, not to mention the lack of communication among linguists who work on other foreign languages.

As SFL was introduced to China by Chinese teachers of English, almost all the SFL courses in different universities are taught by Chinese teachers of English, and all the SFL conferences, symposia and seminars are attended by teachers and students of English.There are occasionally one or two participants who are not teachers or students of English at these activities, but they usually feel confused, puzzled, or neglected because they are not expected to be members of the community or would-be members.There are also teachers and students of English who take part in activities organised by people in the Chinese or French (or German, Japanese, etc.) Departments, but their feeling is the same: they do not feel that they belong to the community and they do not understand what people are talking about.

If a conference is organised by ‘Russian linguists’, work by linguists in the USA, the UK, Australia or other countries is unlikely to be mentioned or discussed.The same goes for conferences organised by those scholars of ‘English linguistics’; one does not usually expect to hear people talking about linguistics conducted in Russia, in Germany, or in Japan, for example.Even with the ‘English linguistics’ conference, if the activity is organised by SFL researchers, American scholars such as Noam Chomsky and Frederick J.Newmeyer are unlikely to be the topic of discussion or even to be mentioned or referred to.Although Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics are sometimes treated, like SFL, as belonging to the ‘functional’ (as opposed to ‘formal’) stream of linguistics, they have their own recognised leading figures, and a leading scholar in Pragmatics or Cognitive Linguistics is not likely to be treated importantly in the study of SFL.

A survey of the Chinese situation of linguistic studies will reveal that people working within different theoretical frameworks (e.g.formal linguistics, SFL, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics) have their own theoretical assumptions and international leading researchers, their own groups of people, their own conferences and their own publications.To a certain extent, the situation is similar in other countries.

Nevertheless, there are ‘cater-to-all’ academic activities in China, one of which is the ‘foreign language teaching and research’ (or ‘foreign language education’ or ‘applied linguistic’) conferences.The topics of discussion in these conferences tend to be rather mixed or ‘eclectic’ in nature.It seems that anyone can talk about language teaching and learning (or ‘applied linguistics’).In terms of the degree of technicality, however, these activities are usually regarded as less academic because almost everyone in the English (or French, Japanese) can claim to be working in this area.Although there is often an eclectic mix of approaches and theories represented at these conferences, some ‘cater-to-all’ academic activities will provide different ‘rooms’ for people with different research interests to interact, and there is little general understanding and assumption of the issues being discussed.This is typical of conferences which have names such as ‘applied linguistics’ or ‘education’.Similarly, many conferences on translation studies are less technical than those on SFL or Cognitive Linguistics, because it is generally assumed that (applied) linguists who speak more than one language can say something about translation and translation studies.

Although this brief and oversimplified description of the Chinese research situation is not entirely unique, the discussion helps us understand the teaching and research situation of SFL studies in China.

3.SFL RESEARCH IN CHINA

To oversimplify, one can say that the majority, if not all, of SFL researchers are teachers and students of English in the department of English or Department of Foreign Languages in Chinese universities.Training in both the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes is basically English and the sort of linguistics that is taught or studied is ‘English linguistics’, as there are typically no linguistics departments in Chinese universities.As already noted, it is very difficult or almost impossible for a non-English undergraduate to pass the entrance examination of an ‘English MA programme’ because one of the basic prerequisites is English proficiency and knowledge of ‘English linguistics’.If one does not complete a four-year undergraduate in English, one has little chance of gaining the knowledge of ‘English linguistics’ and the English proficiency which enable a candidate to pass the relevant examinations.

For those who study or teach in an English department, they feel comfortable with the practice in the programme and the same is true with people who are in a Chinese department or Russian (French, German, etc.) department.Some teachers in an English department are willing or anxious to try to study Chinese, but there are obvious problems for them to overcome.One of the problems is that as they have not been trained in Chinese linguistics or they may not be competent enough to study and research Chinese or other languages.With a few who have some knowledge and skills of researching Chinese linguistics, they may not do Chinese linguistics as well as they do with English linguistics; those who can do Chinese linguistics well are likely to be in the Chinese Department, not the English Department.Even if teachers of English in the English Department can do Chinese linguistics well, their publications on Chinese may not be counted as equally valid by their own departments because their publications are expected to focus on English, not Chinese or any other foreign languages.

As Huang (2002), Zhangetal(2005), Wang (2009) and Huang and Wang (2010) report, since 1989 there have been over 20 Chinese national SFL conferences (under the headings of ‘Chinese National Conference on Functional Linguistics’ and ‘Chinese National Conference on Discourse Analysis’) and since 2000 there have been over 10 Chinese Systemics Weeks (one-week-long training programmes), apart from other national and provincial SFL activities, most of which invite well-known international SFL scholars to give keynote and/or plenary speeches.In terms of the number of participants at these activities, it varies, from 100 to 300, with the largest number reaching 450 at the 12thNational Conference on Discourse Analysis (Nov.2010, Tongji University, Shanghai).For the past five years or so, there have been at least two or three national SFL activities in the country each year.And the number of research papers, dissertations and theses is increasing steadily.

There are now three SFL research centres founded during the past years.Sun Yat-sen University took the lead in 2003 by setting up the Sun Yat-sen University Functional Linguistics Institute, and this was followed by Beijing Normal University, which founded the Centre for Functional Linguistics in 2006.And May, 2011 saw the Centre for Functional Linguistics established at the University Science and Technology Beijing.Professor M.A.K.Halliday, Professor Ruqaiya Hasan, Professor Robin P.Fawcett, Professor Christian Matthiessen, Professor James Martin and Professor Jonathan Webster are among the international SFL scholars who serve as guest professors and/or advisors of these research centres.

Apart from published research papers, research monographs and unpublished MA dissertations and PhD theses, there have been SFL book series, including (1)StudiesinFunctionalLinguisticsandDiscourseAnalysis, published yearly since 2009, which is the official journal of the China Association of Functional Linguistics (edited by Huang Guowen, and published by Higher Education Press, Beijing), (2)AnnualReviewofFunctionalLinguistics, published yearly since 2010, which is the official journal of Sun Yat-sen University Functional Linguistics Institute (edited yearly by Huang Guowen and Chang Chenguang, and published by Higher Education Press, Beijing), (3)ForumonSystemicFunctionalLinguisticsStudies(edited by Huang Guowen, Chang Chenguang, and Liao Haiqing, since 2010, and published yearly by Higher Education Press, Beijing).

Recently, 10 volumes of collected papers on SFL studies, under the editorship of scholars at Sun Yat-sen University and University Science and Technology Beijing have been published (by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2010-2012) under the series title of ‘Studies of Systemic Functional Linguistics’: (1)AGeneralIntroductiontoSystemicFunctionalLinguistics(edited by Huang Guowen and Xin Zhiying, 2011), (2)ContextinSystemicFunctionalLinguistics(edited by Chang Chenguang and Chen Yumin, 2012), (3)StudiesofFunctionalSyntax(edited by He Wei and Gao Shengwen, 2011), (4)FunctionalStudiesoftheEnglishTense(He Wei, 2010), (5)CriticalLinguistics(edited by Ding Jianxin and Liao Yiqing, 2011), (6)StudiesofAppraisalTheory(edited by Liu Lihua, 2010), (7)FunctionalStylisticStudies(edited by Dai Fan and Lü Dairong, 2012), (8)SystemicFunctionalLinguisticsandTranslationStudies(edited by Zhang Jingyuan, 2010), (9)SystemicFunctionalLinguisticsandDiscourseAnalysis(edited by Peng Yi and Cai Tongwen, 2010), and (10)FunctionalLinguisticsandForeignLanguageTeaching(edited by Zeng Lei and Liao Haiqing, 2010).The year 2012 will see the publication of a collection of survey articles entitledDevelopmentsinSystemicFunctionalLinguistics(edited by Huang Guowen and Xin Zhiying), published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Beijing.

Although great progress in SFL studies in China has been made steadily and increasingly, there are obvious problems and challenges as well, which will be outlined and discussed in the following section.

4.PROBLEMS IN SFL STUDIES

In Huang (2002) and Zhangetal(2005) a number of problems concerning the Chinese SFL research situation are identified.Firstly, although Chinese scholars began to study SFL three decades ago and they have been trying to work on the description of Chinese within the SFL framework, there is still no comprehensive systemic functional description of the Chinese language.Secondly, most of the SFL studies in China are concerned with English rather than Chinese or other languages, and Chinese SFL scholars are not working with linguists who are not teachers and researchers of English.Thirdly, Chinese SFL studies are mainly on the description of English rather than the teaching of English.Although the idea that SFL is an appliable linguistics is becoming widely accepted, the application of the theory to language teaching in China is not as successful.Finally, there are few studies which are concerned with the computational description and application of SFL to the study of English, Chinese, and/or other languages.

Huang (2009) identifies another four problems.Firstly, much of the work is on introducing and explaining SFL ideas to the Chinese audience rather than developing original research.Some of the SFL ideas and concepts are repeatedly introduced and illustrated and much effort is on introductory work rather than original thinking.Secondly, there is no obvious progress on the study of Chinese within the SFL framework.Although many people realise the importance of studying Chinese within the SFL framework, research on Chinese has remained a very challenging job.Compared with those who work on English, there are very few whose research focuses on Chinese.Thirdly, many of the SFL publications are in fact repetitive writings.If one surveys the SFL literature, one can easily see that there are numerous papers and dissertations which use a certain concept or analytical framework on a certain text type.Finally, the dialogue with international SFL scholars is not equal.Although there have been quite a large number of international leading SFL scholars who come frequently to China to give talks or attend Chinese SFL activities, the chance of ‘equal dialogue’ is rare, for most of the time Chinese SFL researchers play the role of ‘information receiver’ with the invited scholars serving as ‘information giver’.If Chinese SFL research is to keep abreast with that of scholars in the international community, then such unequal dialogues should become equal, which is a real challenge for the present-day Chinese SFL researchers.To say that equal interaction is important is to suggest that Chinese researchers should be armed with something original that can be ‘exchanged’ during the interaction.This, of course, is an obvious challenge to Chinese SFL researchers as well as to Chinese scholars in other fields of studies.

5.CHALLENGES

Now that we have identified the problems in the SFL community in China, we need to analyse the problems closely, and this section outlines some of the challenges in overcoming these problems.

Let me start with some comments made by a leading international SFL scholar who is quite familiar with the Chinese SFL research situation:

There is a very broad range of areas in which the work in systemic theory has been applied, which has not yet moved to China.In China it’s still too tied to English, and to language learning and teaching context.That needs to be broadened.Most of these should be going to be based on Chinese.If you work together with medical researchers, their patients are Chinese or English; we want to be able to show, for example, how to analyse the discourse of patients who have been affected by strokes or aphasia.The work hasn’t been done in Chinese.There is a whole block there.The work can’t be done until there is a really good authoritative Chinese grammar.This has held everything up because none of these applications have been pursued.(cited in Wang 2009: 167)

These comments are frank and to the point and they show that there are other problems apart from those already identified by Chinese scholars (e.g.Huang 2002, 2009; Zhangetal2005; Wang 2009; Huang and Wang 2010).

As is known to the SFL community, Halliday grew up with two fascinations, one of which was to come to China and the other was language (Webster 2005: 3).As a learner of Chinese during the 1940s, Halliday was often “puzzled by the grammar of Chinese and wanted explanations to questions like ‘how does one actually know what can (or cannot) be said?’ ” (Webster 2005: 5).Halliday started his research career from his study of Chinese and all these years he has illustrated how his approach to language, as a general linguistic theory, can be applied to the study of Chinese as well as other languages (e.g.Halliday 2008; Halliday and McDonald 2004).This fact makes it clear that a SFL analysis and a description of Chinese are not only possible but also feasible.However, why is the study of Chinese within the SFL framework so slow?

In Wang’s (2009: 168) study, it is reported that there is a senior Chinese SFL scholar who makes the following comment:

We have a big gap to fill in our study of Chinese....I feel we need to have it pushed.Halliday has been studying Chinese and there are others as well.But the mainland SFL scholars are afraid to deal with this topic because our daily job has nothing to do with the Chinese language and the scholars of the Chinese language may not accept us and our studies.That is why we still have not got a book on Chinese from a systemic functional perspective.

From Wang’s (2009: 169) report, we can also see the attitude of another senior Chinese SFL scholar who makes a conservative comment: “we must be clear of what we can do and what we can’t do.The international scholars expect us to work on Chinese, which is understandable, but we have our own problems”.And another senior Chinese SFL scholar in Wang’s study expresses a more conservative (or negative) comment, as can be seen from the following quotation:

Last year four of us were invited, as plenary speakers, to attend a symposium hosted by the City University of Hong Kong.The topic of my talk was on thematic structures of Chinese.There were different opinions on my analysis of Chinese thematic structures.Later, Professor so-and-so [i.e.one of the other three mainland Chinese professors] said to me, “studying Chinese is not our line of work; you are doing a hard but thankless job”.(Wang 2009: 169)

On the one hand, it is unfair to expect the present group of SFL researchers to work on Chinese whole-heartily because their job is teaching and researching English as they typically work in an English Department, not departments of Chinese or linguistics.The training they received and the training they give to the younger generation is concerned with the study of English or ‘English linguistics’, not Chinese or general linguistics.They were not trained to be general linguists but teachers of English or users of English.Most of them are neither competent nor confident in researching languages other than English due to the lack of training in the relevant field, especially general linguistics.Before the Chinese education system (e.g., course design, entrance examination of MA and PhD programmes) is drastically reformed, the problem will remain more or less the same.One cannot expect that most of the SFL researchers will work on Chinese in the next five years or so.On the other hand, since we realise the nature of this problem, we should make it a priority to study Chinese or at least try to do something towards that goal.As teachers we can encourage young scholars to focus on Chinese and help them see the importance of studying Chinese.But whether the general situation will be changed and improved within a short period of time remains a question.

Another obvious challenge is concerned with the creative nature of SFL studies in the Chinese context.As scholars and university teachers, Chinese SFL researchers are expected to conduct research that should be original in nature.But how can the idea of originality be understood and implemented in the present context? If one wants to have equal dialogue with colleagues outside China, one should have in hand something that is not available outside China.That is, Chinese SFL scholars should be able to be both ‘information seekers’ and ‘information givers’.There are a number of ways to work towards this goal.For example, contrastive studies of Chinese and other languages from a SFL perspective will help the researcher gain something that his foreign colleagues do not possess.And work of this kind is related to research concerning language typology (Caffareletal2004).Similarly, applying SFL theory to the study of translation will also lead to original research, and work of this kind will show how a SFL approach to translation studies works with translated texts in general and Chinese-English translations in particular.And using SFL in the analysis of Chinese texts of different kinds will bring interesting findings, especially in terms of genre studies, and work of this kind (i.e.treating text both as artifact and as specimen, see Halliday and Matthiessen 2004:3) will contribute to the development of SFL theory, which is evolutionary in nature.Besides, as SFL is an applicable linguistics model, multimodal and multisemiotic studies could be encouraged and conducted among Chinese scholars by focusing on different modalities in the Chinese context.

As can be seen from the literature to date, Chinese SFL researchers are now more and more interested in attending both national and international SFL conferences, seminars, or workshops.However, it is disheartening that at a SFL conference if a paper presentation is about Chinese, judging by the number of people attending such papers, there appear to be very few people who are interested in it.One of the senior Chinese SFL scholars decided to stop going to the international SFL congress to present his research on Chinese simply because his experiences at international conferences told him that papers on Chinese were not welcomed or unlikely to be shared by other participants.Here is what he says in an interview:

...in order to let people outside China know what we are doing on the SFL study of Chinese, we submit papers which are concerned with this topic, which is in line with Halliday’s suggestion that we Chinese should study Chinese.However, at the international conference the Chinese speakers who discuss studies of Chinese are put into one group in the parallel session and, although the language of presentation is English, there are only a few people coming to the presentation (most of whom are Chinese students who are studying abroad).Later, I find it useless to go to the international conference to present papers on Chinese studies.So this is another problem for us to go international.(cited in Wang 2009: 171)

In fact, this problem does not just happen to papers on the study of Chinese; papers on other languages except English will also encounter this problem.This brings us back to the difficulty of studying languages other than English.However, there is one point that should be made clear: The paper should be written to be understood by those who do not know the language being analysed.Otherwise there is no point for non-native speakers of the language to try to understand what is being presented.Another point is that at international conferences very often it is the speaker rather than the topic that determines the number of people who attend the presentation, for some people go to conferences to meet old friends (and to support each other) and to make new friends!

6.CONCLUDING REMARKS

While we are happy to say that Chinese SFL scholars are making great progress, we should at the same time realise that the situation can and should be improved.Therefore, this paper outlines problems and challenges encountered by Chinese SFL scholars and although it may seem that the situation is quite gloomy, the reason for highlighting the present situation in a matter-of-fact way is three-fold.Firstly, as devoted SFL scholars, we need to be clear of the real situation so that we can try to improve it and do a better job not just in terms of developing the theory itself, but of understanding language throughout its various and multifaceted contexts of use.Secondly, the problems and challenges encountered by Chinese SFL researchers are also problems for other Chinese scholars whose research foci may be formal linguistics, cognitive linguistics, or pragmatics, just to name a few.Thirdly, the Chinese research situation may be similar to that in other developing countries.

It is my wish that Chinese senior SFL scholars seriously consider these problems and try to work out possible solutions with the aim of doing more strategic planning and academic guidance.Furthermore, international leading scholars in the field need to be aware of the problems and dilemmas faced in developing countries, particularly where a language other than English is used.Needless to say, SFL researchers in developing countries need encouragement, understanding, and strong intellectual and psychological support.And International support is vitally important if the theory is to grow and develop through an application to the language and language related issues specific to less developed countries.

Finally, I’d like to emphasise that developing the SFL theory across various contexts through the study of various languages and situations of language use can be beneficial for ALL researchers, particularly in a world in which communication access is becoming increasingly more fluid and an understanding of what goes on elsewhere is becoming increasingly important.

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