The MATHETIC Function of 반말

[kellogg]

T: 어. 엄마 기분이 어떠실 거 같아요? 얼굴을 좀 보세요. 얼굴 좀 봐 봐.

태근: 웃고 있다.

The exchange I’ve chosen is from a Korean 듣말쓰(which means listening, speaking and writing) class. I have two questions about this exchange:  what is the teacher’s intention? What is 태근 doing when he responds to the teacher.

Good. Notice that Ms. Choe begins with a question. We said they were two possibilities.

a) Hypothesis then research. When we do this, we ask a question FIRST, and then we analyze the data. Actually, Ms. Choe did this last semester in her excellent analysis.

b) Research then hypothesis. Sometimes it's useful to just "go for a walk" in the data.

For example, before I began to look at Mr. Kim's data, I had NO IDEA that the distinction between identified/identifier and value/token was so important. But I can now see that it is an absolutely KEY point in teaching, related to the topic that is closest to my heart (which is the relationship between examples and concepts, individual objects and general representations).

In some ways, I think you are LUCKY. My other graduates have to take their qualifier on Saturday and start writing their thesis. But YOU have some time; you can go for a walk and explore a little bit. So let's not rush to ask questions. Not yet!

Firstly, the teacher is asking what the mother’s feeling is.

If we really want to begin at the beginning ("firstly"), we should probably begin by saying that there is no mother to feel, because we are talking about imaginary characters and not real people. You might think this is trite and trivial; but it IS one way of interpreting Taegeun's flippant comment. He's not heartless; he's just refusing to play the game.

if we don't want to begin at the beginning ("secondly"), we might add that the teacher probably KNOWS what the (imaginary) mother's feeling is. She's not really ASKING at all, because when we ask we are trying to get information, and the information she is asking for is information that she already has.

You might think this is trite and trivial. But if we really want to find out what the teacher's motives are, we have to ask WHY she would ask for information that she already has.

One explanation is that she wishes to THEMATIZE it: she wants to make this information the THEME of another question. What question do you think that is?

The teacher starts to ask the question with Korean honorific form(같아요? 보세요?), and changes it into non-honorific. How can we explain the change? Although the switch is not the teacher’s mistake and she did it on purpose, the structural grammar can’t explain explicitly what is going on in this exchange and what the teacher’s intention is.

Are you sure? In Halliday's volume on Early Speech, he points out that the first two functions of language are the:

a) mathetic (thinking) function

b) pragmatic (doing) function

These two functions NEVER go away. We spend a lot of our lives talking to ourselves, and then talking to others, and the talking to ourselves becomes the basis of the ideational representation that we have of the world while talking to others becomes the foundation of the interpersonal realization that we have of it.

Look at this.

T: 조용히 우리들은 1학년 24쪽 보세요. 지금 그림마다 동그라미가 있어요. 동그라미가 조그맣게 달려있죠? 

Ss: 네.

The teacher is getting attention, giving information, and checking integration. (Which Korean utterance does what? What is the STRESS on? Is it mostly getting attention, mostly giving information, or mostly checking integration?)

T: 여기는 너희가 그림을 보고 내가 잘 하는지 못 하는지 생각하는 거야. 너무나 내가 잘 하는 그림은 동그라미에 파란색 색연필로 칠하고 내가 잘 못 하는 그림은 빨간색으로 칠하세요. 내가 우리 집에서 정말 옷을 잘 입는지 아니면 숙제를 잘 하는지 생각해 보면서 칠하세요.

Here the teacher is mostly GIVING INFORMATION. But look how she does it. On the one hand, she uses a lot of 반말.

여기는 너희가 그림을 보고 내가 잘 하는지 못 하는지 생각하는 거야.

She’s not just giving information from outside the children. She uses a LOT of something that looks a little like 혼자 말: She sounds like she is INSIDE the children, helping the children talk to themselves. That’s why she says:

너무나 내가 잘 하는 그림은 동그라미에 파란색 색연필로 칠하고.

Yet she is not just giving information from inside the children. She’s also getting them used to listening to polite Korean. That’s why she says:

내가 잘 못 하는 그림은 빨간색으로 칠하세요.

Of course, the kids have heard polite Korean before. They probably use it to talk to older relatives and strangers. But this MAY be the very first time that the children have heard THEMSELVES referred to using polite Korean. They are learning how to be first graders!

We have a lot of information to give in this section too. We have to teach the children to listen, setting the scene, creating the characters, and predicting the text, then checking to see if the children’s prediction was right or wrong. We also have to teach the children to repeat, casting the roles, learning the lines, and checking to see if the kids can improvise. Finally, we have to  to see if the kids can remember what we’ve taught and sing or chant it on their own—with a little help from other children, of course. So we’ll look at “Look and Listen”, “Listen and Repeat”, and “Let’s Sing/Chant” as ways of giving information.

But there’s more to this section than just giving information…and also less. We need to review what we did in the first section: stress, intonation, gesture, T-S, S-T, S-S, and of course role-play and rule based games.

The main thing we need to is what the first grade teacher is doing in this extract. She’s initiating the children into a new language for learning, a new kind of talk. We are going to initiate our children into a new language for learning too: English.

Of course, our first grade teacher is teaching them this new talk through talk. After all, all teaching is talk. But she’s not JUST teaching this new talk through talk. After all, if the children understood everything there would be nothing to teach.

She’s teaching through THOUGHT. She’s thinking ALONG with the children, from INSIDE their heads as well as from OUTSIDE. That’s why she’s using different kinds of language, first inside, and then outside.

Ideational metafunction

어(Yes)
엄마	기분이	어떠실 거(sic)	같아요?
participants	participants	process	participants
subject	subject	relational  Isn't it TWO things and not ONE? Maybe THREE things? 어떠 이다 것 Isn't that really a participant, or maybe a circumstance, as well as a process?	range

얼굴을	좀	보세요
participants	participants	process
goal	range scope? adjunct?	material

Now, this is an imperative. So there is an UNMARKED participant, just as there would be in an English imperative. What is it?

얼굴	좀	봐(look)	봐(try)
participants	participants	process	process
goal	range	Material	Material

Remember that we had FIVE criteria for telling the difference between mental and material processes.

In English, "look" is a mental process, isn't it? Remember that we had five TESTS for distinguishing between mental and material processes. I pointed them out in my post on "Homework and Beyond". Here it is:

a) A mental process always has a HUMAN, ANIMATE, THINKING, FEELING subject, a SENSER. We can say that a tree stands, and a stone falls. But when we say that a tree thinks or a tree feels, we are metaphorically turning the tree into a human.

Do "look" and "try" have human, animate, thinking, feeling subject--that is, sensers? Yes or no?

b) A mental process has an IDEALIZED, REPRESENTED, "THOUGHT" or "FELT" object, a PHENOMENON. Material processes can have purely material goals (e.g. "Open your books!"). But mental processes require mental representations of the object. Even when we say:

T: Who did you see?

What we really mean is something like 'greeting and meeting", not some kind of direct, unmediated perception. Even when we say:

T: Did you see the full moon at Chuseok?

What we really mean is seeing the image of the moon. Seeing is psychological, it is always seeing an image.

Do "look" and "try" have idealized, represented, thought or felt objects? Are they about MENTAL phenomena?

c) A mental process can PROJECT, just like a verbal process. We can say:

S: Jinho say (sic), 'Wait!"

We can also say:

S: Jinho thinks, 'I hate you."

There is also indirect projection (e.g. "My parents wanted me to become a doctor", where "I become a doctor" is really an embedded clause), but we won't seem much of that in our data.

"Look" CAN of course project. We can say "I look on you as a friend". What about "try"? We can say "I tried to become a doctor". Right?

d) The "normal" present tense for a material process is this:

T: What is Jinho doing?

S: He is going to Namsan Tower.

But the normal tense for a mental process is really the present simple.

T: What weather do you like?

S: I like stormy weather.

T: What do you want to do?

S: I want to sing and dance and play the piano.

There's a good reason. A material process is clearly ongoing, you can SEE it happening. But the starting and stopping of a mental process is not so clear, so it's better described by using the present simple. You can see that systemic functional grammar really DOES help us answer WHY things happen in grammar, unlike purely structural approaches.

Which sounds more natural to you:

1) What do you want to do?

I want to look and see if I can solve the problem.

2) What are you doing?

I am looking and trying to see if I can solve the problem.

e) When we want information about a material process, we can ALWAYS ask "do" questions. Like this:

T: What did Jinho do?

S: Went to Namsan Tower.

But when we ask mental processes questions we cannot ALWAYS do this. For example,

MENTAL: PERCEPTIVE

T: What did Jinho do?

S: He looked and tried. (?)

You can see that when we use a "do" question with a perceptive verb, it becomes MUCH more like a material process. It means that Jinho dated Ann or met her or greeted her in some way, not that he visually looked at her.

MENTAL: DESIDERATIVE

T: What did Jinho do?

S: He wanted to look and try. (sic)

No, this is wrong.

MENTAL: COGNITIVE

T: What did Jinho do?

S: He looked and tried. (?)

Doesn't it look like "look and try" is a MENTAL process, at least in English?

The teacher is making her questions easier by changing verbs from relational process verb(“어떠실 거(sic)”) to material process verb(“보세요”, “봐(look)”, “봐(try)”)

But this is Korean. The problem is not so much in the verb as in the actual question, the kind of information that the teacher is (indirectly) seeking. The teacher is seeking to understand whether the children can figure out, from the story (not from the expression‎ on the cartoon character's face) and from their own experience (not from the very little dialogue given in the cartoon strip) the emotion behind the story.

Our teacher's smart. She knows perfectly well that she CANNOT ask for this information directly:

T: Do you understand how the mother feels?

When we ask for this information DIRECTLY, we simply get YES as an answer, and this tells us very little, because children always understand SOMETHING. What we really want to know is exactly HOW MUCH the kids understand.

So the teacher asks INDIRECTLY. But perhaps she doesn't ask indirectly enough.

T: How does the mother feel?

In English, this is a question about an ATTRIBUTE. Look:

1) I am sick.

2) I feel sick.

"Feel" is NOT a mental process here. It's actually a RELATIONAL one. Now, that brings me to the other point that I made in my posting on "Homework and Beyond". Look.

Consider the diference between:

I'm Minsu. (or, "I'm Julie.")

I'm fine. (or, "I'm sick.")

RELATIONAL: IDENTIFYING

Hi, I'm Minsu.

Here, Minsu is called the VALUE, and "I" is the TOKEN. The relationship is one of identity, and so of course it can be reversed, like this:

Minsu is me.

Compare it to THIS:

RELATIONAL: ATTRIBUTIVE

I'm fine.

Here, "I" am called the CARRIER, that is, the carrier of the attribute. And of course "fine" is the ATTRIBUTE, the quality that we are talking about.

To explain this in terms of structural grammar, you need to treat "to be" as a very special word, not a verb at all, but the "copula" which takes "complements" rather than objects. But in systemic functional grammar, there is nothing special about "to be": ALL processes have participants, and "to be" is no exception.  

Now it seems to me that "How is she feeling?" is actually NOT a mental process. That's why we can use questions like this:

T: Is she happy? Or is she sad?

It's a RELATIONAL process. Is it identifying? Or is it attributive? Is "How" a question about a name or about an attribute?

Interpersonal metafunction

어.

엄마

기분이

어떠

(하)

실 (this is a modifying clause, no?)

거

같아

요?

RESIDUE But isn't this really MOOD?

RESIDUE But isn't this really MOOD?

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE But isn't this really MOOD?

Subject

subject

predicator

Finite (tense)

predicator

Thing?

Finite (possibility) Resemblance?

predicator Finite?

Wait a minute! Remember that the MOOD is the finite, and the subject. In English, these are fused. But not here. The subject is, exactly as Ms. Choe says, the mother's feeling. But why does she say that it's the residue? Isn't it the mood? Now, what about the finite? It seems to me that "요" is the finite--because THIS is where we find the changes in modality, in honorification, and even in tense. Right? This IS a very complex sentence, because it has a clause inside a clause: "어떠 하 실 거" is a clause in itself. In fact, it seems to me that THAT explains the teacher's mistake! She assumes that the subject of this clause within a clause is the mother, but it's really the mother's feeling. Right?

얼굴을

좀

보

세요

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

complement

predicator

predicator Isn't this really a mood? (the implied subject is the whole class)

얼굴

좀

보(look)

ㅏ

보

ㅏ

Residue

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

RESIDUE

complement

predicator

predicator

predicator

predicator

The teacher addresses to the whole students using polite language at first(“보세요”). The first two clauses are commands and have no mood. Wait! If they have an honorific ending, isn't that a finite? The teacher does not allow a disagreement and she is giving pressure a little bit more on her students hoping to get the students’ answer. The polite form has been changed into 반말체 when she is looking at a boy and talking to him who might not concentrate on the class.

Yes, but it seems to me that the teacher does this in order to "get inside the child's head". Am I wrong?

It seems to me that 반말 very often serves to realize the MATHETIC, reflective, "egocentric speech" function. Right?

 What the teacher tries here is that lowering the boys position by using 반말체 and getting more authority on her command. So the boy takes it and answer the teacher’s question(“웃고 있다”) But his answer is not simple at all and I will discuss about it later.

Many people assume that the interpersonal function is ENTIRELY about power relations. Of course, that is one dimension of it. But for various reasons, I think that is not the whole story.

Textual metafunction

어.
엄마(는) Not 의?	기분이	어떠실 거	같아요
Theme	Rheme	Rheme	Rheme
topical	new This is a subject. Isn't it also a theme?	topical	new
얼굴을	좀	보세요
Theme	Rheme	Theme
topical		topical
얼굴	좀	봐	봐
Rheme	Rheme	Theme	Rheme
old		topical

It appears that the teacher is less trying to generate thematic changes here.

Secondly, we can not say that the data shows T-S exchange because the boy is not answering his teacher’s question. He takes the theme and twists it by telling an answer which is opposite to the one it is supposed to be. He is not talking 반말체 to his teacher but is talking to himself. 태근’s turn(“웃고 있다”) could be regarded as S1’s starting clause in S-S exchange.

Yes, it looks to me like the KEY to this data is looking at how the teacher switches from OUTSIDE the child's head to INSIDE the child's head. That's what we want to consider--AND it's what we want to consider for English teaching too.

I think that Ms. Choe's project is a very important one. There are a number of obvious GAPS in the language we use in English class when we compare it to the language we use in Korean class. For example, "why" questions and higher level conceptual questions (like "WHY does the mother feel angry?") appear to be MUCH more common in Korean teacher talk than in the English equivalent, which is largely concerned with establishing WHO and WHAT. We saw earlier that one reason for that is that WHY questions ask for information not present in the question, for the hidden CAUSE (the circumstantial adjunct) of the clause (see "Why are 'Why' questions so difficult?").

But another GAP between the language we use in English class and the language we use in Korean class is that in Korean class the teacher is often trying to model more than answers. The teacher is trying to model THINKING processes for the child. Now, in Korean, the teacher can do this by "exteriorizing" those thought processes as "혼잣말". In this way, the pragmatic function becomes MATHETIC, the interpersonal function becomes representational. But it's quite unrealistic and difficult to do this in English, because kids hardly ever talk to themselves in English!

dk