From July 6 to 8, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics (hereafter “Martin Center”) successfully held the 2021 Annual Seminar on Systemic Functional Linguistics and Its Appliability. The topics of the seminar include social accountability of Systemic Functional Linguistics, genre and register, discourse semantics and functional grammar. The seminar was held in both offline and online approaches, and was attended by nearly 30 teachers, master students, and doctoral students from universities around China, including Southeast University, Heilongjiang University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, and Zhejiang Normal University.

Professor Chang Hui, Executive Vice Dean of School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech, which was hosted by Professor Wang Zhenhua, Founder and Director of Martin Centre. Dean Chang first introduced the history of the development of foreign language disciplines at SJTU and pointed out that SJTU's School of Foreign Languages has made great progress in the field of theoretical linguistics, with linguistics and literature advancing steadily, and new disciplines such as neurocognition, language pathology, linguistic intelligence, and metrological linguistics developing rapidly. Then he acknowledged the seminars of Applicable Linguistics held by Martin Centre over the years, and pointed out the necessity of succeeding and developing Systemic Functional Linguistics as well as the benefits of its applications. In the end, he placed great expectations for this seminar.

Professor Wang Zhenhua, Director of Martin Centre, gave a keynote speech on "The Social Accountability of Systemic Functional Linguistics". Learning from the domestic development background of philosophy and social sciences, Prof. Wang emphasized that our researchers of philosophy and social sciences should keep in mind the responsibilities and spirit for doing research. Based on the core ideas of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and their connotations, Prof. Wang elaborated the social explanatory force of SFL as appliable linguistics and its social accountability of solving the practical problems caused by language in use from the perspective of epistemology and axiology.

Dr. Wang Pin of Martin Center gave two keynote presentations on Systemic Functional Grammar. The presentations mainly covered the construction of systemic networks in Systemic Functional Grammar and grammatical metaphors. In the presentations, Dr. Wang Pin expounded detailed cases of grammatical structures and prepared exercises to make the participants better grasp the core ideas in Systemic Functional Grammar. Dr. Wang Pin's presentation is insightful for constructing the systemic network of Chinese grammar.

Associate Professor Lai Liangtao of Martin Centre gave a presentation on the IDEATION system, PERIODICITY system and IDENTIFICATION system in discourse-semantics. Prof. Lai gave a comprehensive and detailed introduction to each of the three systems of discourse semantics based on Martin and Rose's (2007) Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause.

Martin Centre’s Associate Professor Huan Changpeng gave a presentation on NEGOTIATION system, APPRAISAL system and CONJUNCTION system in discourse semantics. Prof. Huan introduced the theoretical content of the three systems in detail, and discussed the advantages and shortcomings of SFL’s research on dialogues from the perspective of its application. He also shared his study on news discourse by applying the APPRAISAL system and looked forward to more studies that apply these systems in discourse analysis.   

Professor J. R. Martin, Director Emeritus of the Martin Centre, gave a lecture on the theories of genre and register. When modelling genre, Prof. Martin integrated and developed a stratified model of language, register, and genre in terms of three meta-functions in SFL. With regards to the strata of genre, Prof. Martin differentiated several types of texts by examples of children’s writing and constructed the system of genre. When modelling register, Prof. Martin presented the three register variants as field, tenor, and mode from a topological perspective, and discussed the relation of realization between register and discourse-semantics.

Three-day seminar came to an end in the 8th afternoon. In his closing remarks, Prof. Wang Zhenhua, Director of the Martin Centre, shared his insights on the discipline development of Systemic Functional Linguistics and encouraged everyone to adhere to the theoretical foundations and make innovations while doing academic research, and strive for establishing an academic system of linguistics for truths and practice. Finally, Prof. Wang Zhenhua presented the certificates of participation to the offline participants.