CHAPTER 1

Exercise 1.1

Clause recognition exercise

Text 1.1

Hello there. How are you? How are you managing with work, school and the boys? Are you finding time for yourself at all? Again, sorry I have been so long in getting back to you. Work has been crazy too. I always feel like I am rushing. So now, when I feel that, I try and slow myself down. I also have the girls getting more prepared for the next morning the night before and that has seemed to help the mornings go more smoothly. I will be glad when we don’t have to bother with boots, hats and mitts. The days are getting longer so hopefully it will be an early spring.

Text 1.2

This module aims to offer an introduction to a functionally oriented approach to the description of the English language and to provide students with an understanding of the relationship between the meanings and functions that are served by the grammatical structures through which they are realized. The major grammatical systems will be explored through a functional framework. At all stages the description and analysis will be applied to a range of text types. By so doing, we will be able to explore both the meaning potential that speakers have and how particular choices in meaning are associated with different texts.

Exercise 1.2

There are many ways to answer this question. There is considerable similarity in what each person is saying about themselves and in relation to the political party of which they are a member. However, Tony Blair is expressing an act of choosing and he is representing himself as the one doing the choosing and the Labour party as having been chosen by him. Nick Clegg is saying something similar but he expresses it very differently. He is describing himself as a liberal. There does not seem to be the same active agency in what Clegg says as compared to Blair.