Project 1 — Individual Discourse Analysis

Due Date: 2026-10-02 at 9:00 a.m.

Overview

Choose one of the five texts below. Write a 1000-word analysis applying Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to that text. Your job is to show, with evidence from the text, how specific language choices build meaning, not to summarize what the text says.

This project is standalone. It does not carry forward into Project 2 or Project 3.

Choose one text

What your analysis must do

Identify and apply at least two of Halliday’s metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, textual) to the text. For each metafunction:

  • Name the metafunction and the specific linguistic feature(s) you’re analyzing (e.g. modality, nominalization, passive voice, transitivity, appraisal/evaluative language)
  • Quote or closely paraphrase the specific passage you’re analyzing. Quotes from people interviewed in the stories will usually work best.
  • Explain what relationships to power are established through language choices.

Naming a concept is not analysis. “This is an example of nominalization” earns nothing on its own. Showing what the nominalization does in your text does.

Length

1000 words, not counting quoted material from the source text.

Complete / Redo

This project is graded Complete or Redo, consistent with the course’s ungrading approach.

Complete requires:

  • At least two metafunctions identified and applied, tied to specific evidence.
  • Analysis shows how the metafunctions operate in the text
  • Written in your own words except where quoting the text you are analyzing

Redo is assigned when:

  • The metafunctions are not meaningfully applied, or
  • You’ve only worked with one metafunction, or
  • The metafunctions are named but not connected to evidence, or
  • The analysis stays at the level of summarizing the text rather than analyzing its language

Redo attempts for this project are unlimited.

Submission

PDF, uploaded to Moodle under Project 1.