The Development of the Academic Type of Persian Language in the Writing of Foreign Persian Learners: An Analysis Based on Systemic Functional Grammar

The present study investigates Foreign Persian learners’ academic writing in the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) and based on Systemic Functional Grammar, one of the most important features of academic  writing and the acquisition of the language of science is to use variety of grammar metaphors in language use. 60 texts written by foreign learners of Farsi from Russia and China at elementary, intermediate and advanced levels is the corpus of this study. The purpose of this research is to answer the question of whether there are grammatical metaphors in the writing of Persian learners and whether the use of grammatical metaphors in the writing of Persian learners will increase with the language level progress. The results show that Persian learners in all three language levels use a variety of grammatical metaphors in their writing. Furthermore, with the increase of input and learning, the learners use more grammatical metaphors at higher language levels and their writing is more academic.
Introduction
One such approach is Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014). They were the first to propose a theory called Systemic Functional Grammar. One of the necessary measures to improve the status of the Persian language is to reinforce its academic aspect, and one of the most important features of the language of science and academic writing is the presence of grammatical metaphors in writing. In recent approaches to language teaching, the teaching of academic discourse is very important. Therefore, the main issue of the current study is how the use of grammatical metaphors can explain the academic writings of foreign Persian learners based on functionalism. Based on the grammatical metaphors (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) introduced by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), the study investigates whether there are grammatical metaphors in the writing of foreign Persian learners and whether their writing becomes more academic with increasing language proficiency and learning.
In Systemic Functional Grammar, there are three types of grammatical metaphors (ideational, interpersonal, and textual). According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), the presence of grammatical metaphors in writing is one of the most important features of the language of science. In the ideational grammatical metaphor, there are transitivity metaphors and nominalization. Nominalization is the most common grammatical metaphor. A transitivity metaphor is expressed by changing the type of process (verb), and usually this type of verb is used in congruent (conventional) forms, while a different process type is used in incongruent (metaphorical) forms. These processes (verbs) have six types: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential processes. All these processes can be transformed into another process to be metaphorized in the transitivity system. Ideational metaphor includes grammatical metaphors of mood and modality. Modality is determined by modal adjuncts and modal verbs, and in a metaphorical form it is expressed by means of a modal clause. In a modal metaphor, there is a change of clause, and due to verbal restructuring, the interrogative can be used as a statement. In textual metaphor, the organization of the text regarding its thematic structure, cohesive operators, and other organizational elements is important.
Method
This research is an analytical and applied study and, based on Systemic Functional Grammar and the grammatical metaphors proposed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), analyzes the extent and manner of the use of grammatical metaphors in the writing of foreign Persian learners. Sixty writings of Farsi learners—from elementary to advanced language levels, from Russian and Chinese nationalities, and from both genders—were selected as the statistical population of this research. After taking a placement test, the Persian learners started learning the Persian language in the Persian Language Teaching Center for Non-Persian Speakers of Allameh Tabatabai University in the academic year 1402–1403. At the end of the course, in the writing skill progress test, the writings of the Persian learners were carefully examined, and within the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar, the clause was considered as the unit of analysis. All kinds of ideational, interpersonal, and textual grammatical metaphors were extracted at different language levels, and the frequency of their occurrence was examined.
Results
In order to investigate the academic features of Persian language use in the writing of foreign Persian learners, and in accordance with the unit of analysis in Systemic Functional Grammar, the total number of clauses in the learners’ written texts was counted. Then, the number and percentage of grammatical metaphors—based on the number of clauses in the texts at each language level—were calculated. The results showed that 12.5% of Persian learners used ideational metaphors with nominal and transitivity forms of expression at the elementary level. They used 20.83% of interpersonal grammatical metaphors, i.e., metaphors of mood and modality. Also, 48.61% of the metaphors in their writing were textual, and Persian learners used more text-organizing functions. Intermediate-level learners benefited more from grammatical metaphors than elementary-level Persian learners, such that their texts included 14.72% ideational metaphors, 24.03% interpersonal metaphors, and 51.93% textual metaphors. As the language level of Persian learners increased, the use of grammatical metaphors in their writing became more substantial; so that ideational metaphor accounted for 21.62%, interpersonal metaphor for 24.86%, and textual metaphor for 53.51%. By comparing the frequency of grammatical metaphor use in the learners’ writings, it was found that with the progress of their language level and writing skills, the use of grammatical metaphors in their writing also increased. This demonstrates that as Persian learners advance, the likelihood of using grammatical metaphors in their language increases, which indicates that the presence of the language learner in university discourse supports and encourages the use of grammatical metaphors as indicators of academic text. The use of grammatical metaphors in academic writing has its own reasons, the most important of which is that grammatical metaphors are used to make the text more systematic and structured, and the findings of this research confirm this reason.
Conclusion
The results of the present research showed that foreign Persian learners at all three language levels—elementary, intermediate, and advanced—used a variety of ideational, interpersonal, and textual grammatical metaphors in their writings. Elementary Persian learners used fewer grammatical metaphors than intermediate learners, and intermediate Persian learners used fewer metaphors in their writing than advanced learners. Advanced-level Persian learners learn to use grammatical metaphors as a powerful resource to compress information, enrich content, and produce more specialized and academic texts for their readers.
Ethical Considerations
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Funding
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.