A Systemic-functional Analysis Of Imam's Expostulation

The expostulation, as a religious discourse, is a major component of Hui people's culture. It is not only an integral part of Hui people's weddings and funerals, but also a way of self-education of Hui people. It's intended to convey religious doctrine, morality and the right philosophy of life, to arouse the attention of religious people on various social issues, to regulate their words and deeds, and to enhance the quality of their life. In the Hui people's villages or communities, the expostulation is given by Imam on Fridays at the mosque. However, when Hui people have a wedding or funeral at their home, the Imam would tell expostulation in their homes. The content of the expostulation is very broad. Based on the Koran and Hadith, Imam tells the religious people about the origins of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed and some good things done by his followers.During the expostulation, Imam first recites or reads a sentence of Koran or Hadith, and then explains the key content of Koran; Besides, he also requires Hui people to fulfill obligations, do some good deeds, and prevent evil or illegal deeds. For thousands of years, since the Hui ancestors settled down in China, they did like this from generation to generation. In this way, they keep their own culture. With the development of the communication, Hui people publish the books, videos and audios to satisfy the needs.This paper uses three meta-functions (interpersonal function, ideational function, textual function) of Halliday's systemic functional grammar as theoretical basis to analyze Imam's expostulation. The transitivity is a key content in the ideational function. From the statistics in the selected material, it is found out that the material process and verbal process occupy larger proportion. Through analyzing the interpersonal function, it is shown that the declarative clause takes a relatively larger proportion than any other mood types. It also shows that the expostulation of Imam mainly convey information to the religious believers to make them be a good and qualified man. By studying the modality, it can be seen that high value modal verbs are used frequently. At last, through the study of textual functional, the author finds out that the unmarkedness theme takes a larger proportion in the Imam's expostulation. Mixed types of thematic progression patterns are used in the imam's expostulation, while the same theme takes largest proportion in the religious discourse.Through the discourse analysis, we can understand the characteristics of expostulation; at the same time, it lays a foundation for other researcher's study on religious discourse.