The Systematic Functional Analysis of Lullabies in Farsi

Abstract

Linguistic analysis of literary genres is one of the most interesting areas of research which can lead us to a better understanding of the verbal art. In this paper; it is aimed to implement Halliday’s Systematic Functional Linguistic Analysison lullabies to uncover different layers of meaning communicated. At first, some anonymous Farsi lullabies were collected. Then, regarding the ideational/experiential, textual and interpersonal metafunctions, they were analyzed. Considering ideational/experiential metafunction, all the processes introduced in the theory (i.e., material, mental, relational, existential, behavioral, and verbal) were present in different lullabies, though not at the same frequency. As the results indicated, material was the most occurring process, while existential was the least. Further, regarding the textual and interpersonal metafunctions, other underlying layers of meaning in lullabies were revealed.