Mood and Modality in Christian Magazines A Systemic Functional Analysis of Christian Women Mirror
This study presents an exploration ofhow interpersonal relationships are created and the nature of propositions in religious articles. Some columns in six editions of a Christian magazine,"Christian women mirror"were selected for analysis. The selected texts were broken down into clauses and analyzed for mood and modality within the frame work of Systemic Functional Grammar. The analysis reveals a mood structure that gives varying degrees of 'propositions' and 'proposals' that are capable of getting the readers persuaded. We concluded that the difference in the Lexico grammar analysis and the Speech functions of the clauses are due to the need to get the readers persuaded about the Christian ideology. Introduction This paper is an investigation into the nature of propositions made in religious magazines from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) Magazines and tracts are other means of preaching the gospel of Christ, in the modern day rather than the conventional church sermons. In fact, articles in magazines and tracts can simply be referred to as written sermons because they are written to get people persuaded about Christian life styles. Articles in Christian magazines, just like sermons are pervaded by some strong ideological features which are intended to influence the readers in order to get them convinced and persuaded about the subject matter of the articles. These ideologicalfeatures are inherent in the grammatical choices employed by the writers. Hence, it is worthwhile to carry out an analysis of the nature of propositions made by the writers to get the readers persuaded, from a grammatical point of view. This paper will carry out a Lexico grammatical analysis of a column in The Christian Women Mirror Magazinewith the aim of identifying how interpersonal relationships are created between the writer and the readers as well as the nature and types of propositions made in the article and how committed is the writer to the propositions through the systems of mood and modality. Language of Religion The language of religion, which has been documented through the centuries, has its own historical development which has often been independent of the historical development of modern English. This is to explain that the language of religion has some peculiarities and characteristics, which makes it a register on its own. Crystal and Davy (1969:164) observed that there were lots of irregular verbs still in their old forms till the modern age. Examples are 'spake' 'aileth' 'sayest' speaketh' etc in the use of pronouns, there are, thou, thine, thee, thyself, ye and the use of inflectional morphemes to indicate the third person singular where 's' would have been appropriate in modern usage.These archaisms are what Lamidi (2004:198) refers to as Victorian (Shakepearean) English, which are considered archaic in modern English as also pointed out in Babatunde(2005) the use of archaic farms is not only aimed at provoking a string feeling of reverence for the Almighty God But also targeted at making the adherents of the religion in question realize the unchanging nature of God. (c) Center for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 139 Lexically, there are peculiar terms such as prophecy, miracle, salvation, restitution, saviour, sacred, sacrilege and so on. At the graphological level, the paragraph is always short, comprising not more than two to three sentences. The purpose is to make the message easily understandable. The sentences are therefore more often than not loosely coordinated by additive conjunction 'and' At the semantic level, the meaning which religious language acquired is quite different from what is obtained in ordinary use of language. This is to say that the language usually has a deep meaning, which can only be understood by the users of the language. In essence, meanings are directed towards the winning of souls for the kingdom of God. Ibiere (1991:20) explains further that at the level of syntax, the language has a variation of the left and the right branching sentences and this is meant to prevent monotony. This makes Babatunde (2005) citing Onuigbo (1996) to conclude that the language of religion shows a sustained disregard of formal syntactic and punctuation rules and the fact that the language is poetic in nature makes it exhibit syntactic and semantic deviations. The language of religion is a form of language that claims to speak about supernatural realities in a manner whose sense or meaning is different from that of the ordinary language of day to day human life,(Komolafe1992) It is therefore with mentioning that the perlocutionary effects of the language cannot be over emphasized, that is, when used by the 'right persons' Crystal and Davy (1973) observe that the kind of language a speech community uses for the expression of its religious beliefs on public occasions has its own distinctive and aesthetic part to play and its style has a cultural function and a linguistic impact which is generalisable beyond the original religious context in which it appears, due to the belief of the users that the language is being spoken 'as the spirit gave utterance'(Adelowo2005) This also explains the reason for the solemn nature of the language of religion since the aim is to invoke and glorify a particular deity and also to accomplish a given action or deed.The use of the language is to facilitate communication in order to enable useful, appropriate and expected action to take place. The distinctiveness of the language of Christian religion is due to the cultural and linguistic background of the language of the Bible, which is the basis for the Christian evangelism. As explained by Crystal and Davy (1969) the cultural and linguistic background to liturgical language exerts a unique range of pressures on the choice of forms to be used. According to them therefore, there seem to be three main influences: "Firstly, there are the linguistic originals; the Bible, book of common prayers, the requirement of conformityto the sacred character as well as thesense, of the text in the original languageis a restriction on one's choice of English,Also, there are traditional formulations ofbelief of doctrinal significance, which are difficult to alter without an accusation of inconsistency or heresy being leveled (P149)" Language is used in Christian religion to perform different functions; to persuade, convince, control behaviour, pacify and win over new converts. The appropriate use of the language could bring about the expected result from the listeners. Hence, our analysis of mood and modality of a Christian Magazine is to explore how writers of Christian articles attempt to persuade, convince, control behaviourof and win over readers through the systems of mood and modality. Theoretical Framework This study has as its theoretical framework, the Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) The Systemic Functional Grammar approach in linguistics considers grammar in terms of usage and the creation of meaning. It takes the resource perspective rather than the rule perspective; and it is designed to display the overall system of grammar rather than only fragment.(Halliday Mathiessan 2004) According to Halliday&Hassan (1985:4) SFG perspective of Language is concerned with "attempt to relate Language primarily to a particular aspect of human experience, namely, that of social structure".This relationship between Language and social situation implies that language use is viewed as a system of choices made among other options or ways of communication available within the context. Thus, SFG equally states that context of situation is arranged in categories. These categories are Field, Tenor and Mode and the three Met functions corresponding to the categories are Experiential, Interpersonal and Textual respectively. ExperientialMetafunction looks at grammar of a clause as representation and it is realized by the systems of transitivity, Interpersonal Metafunction views grammar of a clause as exchange and it is realized by the systems of mood and modality. While Textual Metafunction views the grammar of clause as message and it is realized by the system of theme. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 4, No. 14; December 2014 140 According to the SFG, A clause is viewed as realizing these three layers of meaning referred to as metafunctions and they are the three modes of meaning that are "present in every use of language in every social context" (Halliday, 1987:112) The lexico grammatical systems of Transitivity, Mood and Theme are at work in the conversion of these semantic metafunctions into structural patterns. In this study, our major concern is the interpersonal metafunction which is realized by the systems of mood and modality. According to Halliday&Hassan (1985:8) Clause in interpersonalmetafunction is considered as a piece of interaction between the speakers and listener. Butt, et al (1995:13) explains further that interpersonal metafunction uses language to encode interaction and to show how defensible or binding we find our proposition or proposal" Mood is the component of Lexicogrammar which realizes interpersonal metafunction (where clause is considered to be an exchange) A clause is therefore analysed into mood and residue; mood element is further analyzed into subject and finite. The subject and complement are typically realized by nominal groups, the finite is realized by the tensed element of the verb and the predicate is realized by the non tensed element of the verb. The mood structure indicates how clause is structured to realize the speech functions of offer, command, statement and question in interaction From the Lexico grammatical structure of a clause, a statement is realized by declarative mood, question is realized by interrogative mood and command is realized by imperative mood. Modality, however, refers to the degree of certainty and truth