Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Magisterská diplomová práce

Functions of language

In the two recent studies contributing to the discourse on translation-inherent explicitation and implicitation (Kamenická, 2007a, Hopkinson, 2008), the Hallidayian framework for classifying meaning types was employed in order to categorize translation-inherent explicitation. Both Kamenická and Hopkinson believe that “essentially any meaning can be explicitated or implicitated, and there is no reason to restrict the focus of research to cohesion only” (Hopkinson, 2008: 68) as e.g. Blum-Kulka (1986) did. In accordance with Halliday’s division of the linguistic system into three types of function, the following three types of meaning have been proposed: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. This view has been adopted in the present thesis as well.

The three main language metafunctions as described by Halliday will be outlined briefly in the following subsections and later used when identifying which meanings tend to be explicitated and/or implicitated most often and consequently possibly form the centre of the prototypical categories of translation-inherent explicitation (and implicitation). This approach has been chosen as Halliday’s metafunctions—unlike for example those of Bühler (1934: 24-33) or Jakobson (1995: 78-82)—“are functions inherent to language as such and inevitably jointly present in every language use and every utterance”, not “functions reflected in certain configurations in specific use of language” (Kamenická, 2007a: 35).

Jakobson’s concept, however, will be utilized in the following chapter as well. In this concept, language functions are perceived from the communication point of view. Each communicative act requires an addresser who sends a message to an addressee. Each message, moreover, requires a context, it needs to be encoded into a certain language code and transmitted from the addresser to the addressee through a channel. Addresser (sender), addressee (receiver), message, context, common code and contact thus form the main building blocks of the classical communication model as described in Jakobson (1960: 350-377). The basic language functions correspond to these basic elements of language communication: addresser—the emotive function, addressee—the conative function, context—the referential function, contact—the phatic function, code—the metalingual function, message—the poetic function (Jakobson, 1995: 78-79). This categorization will be referred to when the styles of the texts included in the corpus will be analyzed.

2.1 The ideational function

In his Explorations in the Functions of Language, Halliday pointed out basic macro-functions, or rather functional (semantic) components of the grammar general to all adults’ uses of language “through which the meaning potential associated with them is encoded into grammatical structures” (Halliday, 1973: 99). The first component he recognized is the ideational component, i.e.

including both the processes within and beyond the self—the phenomena of the

external world and those of consciousness—and the logical relations deducible

from them” (ibid).

The ideational function of language is the function that enables the users of language to speak about things. It is the observer function, a function mediating the speaker’s meaning potential at the level of content, it is the communicative content, language “about things” (Kamenická, 2007a: 36). Speakers can express in language their experience of reality, they can comment on beings, objects, their properties, processes, events and activities, states and relations, etc. (cf. also Hopkinson, 2008: 69).

The experiential component mediates individual events as configurations of a certain process, its participants and the circumstances related to the process; the logical component mediates individual events as a sequence. The experiential function “concerns the internal structure of experiential events—at the level of clause”, the logical function “mediates their arrangement in time […]—by means of inter-clausal relationships” (Kamenická, 2007a: 39).

In Kamenická’s view, two types of explicitation and implicitation correspond to these two components/functions: the experiential one (EE, EI) and the logical one (LE, LI). For the purpose of describing the centre and the periphery of the hypothesized universals of translation, experiential explicitations and implicitations can be classified into three categories: meanings related to participants, processes and circumstances.³ As far as the categorization of the logical function/logical explicitation and implicitation is concerned, individual occurrences can be classified as belonging to one of the following sub-systems: temporal relations and causal relations (cf. Kamenická, 2007a: 54-56, Hopkinson, 2008: 150-153).

For better understanding of the concept of experiential and logical explicitation, examples follow⁴; in the first two sentences a new experiential component occurs, in the third utterance temporal and in the fourth one causal relations are explicitated:

• 
  Craniometry, the jewel of nineteenth-century objectivity, was not destined for continued celebration.
  

• 
  Lions stayed mostly in open savanna and grassland and tigers in forests, although the segregation was far from perfect.
  

• 
  Let me stress that point.
  

• 
  The trouble with doing this is that the back cloth is so old as to have all but moldered away. Looking back in time is like using a telescope to view the limits of the Universe.