Introduction.
Halliday’s theory of systematic functional linguistics depicts language as a social phenomenon which is concerned with text, structure, function and meaning which views language as system of making meaning. Systematic functional linguistics underlines three concepts namely, subject, actor and theme in a clause. Here the subject is what concerns the message, the actor is who does the action and the theme is the point of departure of a text. A text exists in line with these three elements of grammar. This also structures and organizes a text. This essay discusses the three concepts of language i.e. subject, actor and theme with regards to the systematic functional framework and traditional grammar. A conclusive discussion will be provided on how these three elements conflate with each other. These elements will be discussed in relation to Halliday’s theory of SFL providing specific examples to enact an understanding of these elements.
Subject.
According to Halliday & Mathiessen (2004), a clause contains one element which is the subject that is part of the syntactic principle. The subject acts as a grammatical function and it is therefore concerned with the message, the doer of the action and something that is being predicted. Moreover, the subject is basically the representation of the person who is doing the action and whom the message is concerned. There are three ways in which the subject can be classified i.e. the psychological subject which is concerned