· Personal

Clarifying or arranging one’s ideas; expressing one’s thoughts or feelings: love, joy, pleasure, happiness, surprise, likes, satisfaction, dislikes, disappointment, distress, pain,

anger, anguish, fear, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, annoyance at missed opportunities, moral, intellectual and social concerns; and the everyday feelings of hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleepiness, cold, or warmth

· Interpersonal

Enabling us to establish and maintain desirable social and working relationships: greetings and leave takings

introducing people to others identifying oneself to others expressing joy at another’s success

expressing concern for other people’s welfare extending and accepting invitations

refusing invitations politely or making alternative arrangements making appointments for meetings

breaking appointments politely and arranging another mutually convenient time apologizing

excusing oneself and accepting excuses for not meeting commitments indicating agreement or disagreement

interrupting another speaker politely changing an embarrassing subject

receiving visitors and paying visits to others

offering food or drinks and accepting or declining politely sharing wishes, hopes, desires, problems

making promises and committing oneself to some action complimenting someone

making excuses

expressing and acknowledging gratitude

· Directive

Attempting to influence the actions of others; accepting or refusing direction: making suggestions in which the speaker is included

making requests; making suggestions

refusing to accept a suggestion or a request but offering an alternative persuading someone to change his point of view

requesting and granting permission

asking for help and responding to a plea for help forbidding someone to do something; issuing a command giving and responding to instructions

warning someone

discouraging someone from pursuing a course of action establishing guidelines and deadlines for the completion of actions asking for directions or instructions

· Referential

talking or reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in the future; talking about language (what is termed the metalinguistic function: = talking or reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in the future

identifying items or people in the classroom, the school the home, the community asking for a description of someone or something

defining something or a language item or asking for a definition

paraphrasing, summarizing, or translating (L1 to L2 or vice versa) explaining or asking for explanations of how something works comparing or contrasting things

discussing possibilities, probabilities, or capabilities of doing something requesting or reporting facts about events or actions

evaluating the results of an action or event

· Imaginative

Discussions involving elements of creativity and artistic expression

discussing a poem, a story, a piece of music, a play, a painting, a film, a TV program, etc. expanding ideas suggested by other or by a piece of literature or reading material

creating rhymes, poetry, stories or plays recombining familiar dialogs or passages creatively

suggesting original beginnings or endings to dialogs or stories solving problems or mysteries

	Created by ns13 over 10 years ago

The main objective of a functional grammar is to explain language in terms of what people do with it, how they use the language to live.