Halliday’s Mood System: A Scorecard of Literacy in the English Grammar in an L2 Situation

Abstract

It is no gainsaying that English is not only renowned in world affairs; its hegemony over other languages seems incontestable, and perhaps, unchecked. The domineering behavior has persuaded an L2 speaker to seek the knowledge of the language at all costs. It is fascinating to propose that the Halliday’s mood system could play a vibrant role in the understanding of the structures of English. This basis inspired the study to elucidate the arms of the mood system as consisting of grammatical structures of declarative, imperative, and interrogative; semiotic domains of Mood and Residue; and interpersonal grammatical transposition of MOOD. For a practical purpose, the study examined ten texts of advertisements processed through the mood system. The analysis revealed the verbal group as containing the finite and the predicator. Moreover, in a situation of fusion, both Finite and Predicator shared the verbal functional entity in terms of tense and natural ‘process’ statuses. Furthermore, Subject, Finite, Predicator, Complement, and Adjunct (SFPCA) are the components of the declarative, Predicator, Complement, and Adjunct (PCA) represent the jussive imperative; and SPCAs are units of the suggestive imperative. The study suggested that the appreciation of mood systemic sequences could quicken an L2 speaker to a better-cum-fuller understanding of English grammatical system.