regards language as a system with social
functions, and its metafunctions include
ideational, interpersonal and textual functions,
which are realized by the “meaning potential” of
language, depending on the participants in
speech activities and the context, i.e., cultural
factors. The ideational function is the
communication between human beings and the
material world, reflecting the knowledge,
perception, and understanding of the real world
by the participants in the speech activity, and
reflecting “the meaning potential of the
communicator as an observer” (Zhao & Jiang,
2003, p. 181). Interpersonal function and textual
function are person-to-person communication.
The former reflects the social relations between
participants in speech activities and their
attitudes towards events (objects), reflecting the
meaning potential of the different identities of the
communicators. The latter reflects the
relationship between grammatical forms and
encoded meanings, reflecting the meaning
potential of communicative forms and
expressions. According to the theory of SFL,
language is a “meaning potential” system to
realize social functions and its meaning is
determined by the context of communicative
activities. This idea of context-constrained
meaning began with Malinowski.
Malinowski pioneered the concepts of “context
of situation” and “context of culture”
(Malinowski, 1923). He believes that context of
situation mainly refers to the immediate context
of the utterance, including the participants of the
speech activity, non-linguistic factors, the
general context of the situation, etc. While
outside the context of situation, there is the
context of culture, which refers to the
communicator's living environment and cultural
background, etc. “Malinowski’s concept of
contexts has a more obvious cross-cultural
awareness as the concept of context of culture is
proposed in response to the need for the study of
foreign languages” (Peng, 2008, p. 109). The
study of any foreign language must be carried out
in conjunction with its situation and culture.
However, Malinowski did not explicitly point out
the relationship between language and culture.
Halliday further explored context of situation and
context of culture within the framework of SFL,
arguing that the two are relations between the
instance and the system, the part and the whole,
with the former being a specific meaning
potential system linked to the situation of a
particular speech activity, and the latter being the
entire meaning potential system of the language.
Although Halliday pointed out that culture as a
context includes “traditional lifestyles, beliefs
and value systems of a language community”
(Halliday, 1999, p. 284), his research focused on
the same kind of language and the social nature
of language, which did not break through the
boundaries of cross-linguistic culture. In this
case, his concept of "context of culture" refers to
the socio-cultural factors of different social
groups within the same nation. From this point of
view, the “context of culture” is not unrelated to
the age, gender and class of the communicators,
which are also important factors in characterizing
the participants in speech activities within a
given "context of situation".
It can be seen that SFL makes it clear that the two
kinds of contexts are related to each other, but it
does not explain the difference between the two
clearly, and the exploration of the relationship
between language and culture has the
characteristics of sociolinguistics, i.e., it
recognizes the relationship between language,
society and culture. SFL emphasizes the role of
context of situation and believes that context
determines semantics. Its research focuses on
specific communicative activities, including the
influence of communicators, field, tenor and
mode on the meaning of the discourse.
Intercultural communication studies emerged in
the United States. Three factors contributed to
the development of the discipline. Firstly, with
the increasingly significant trend of
globalization, a large number of Americans went
overseas to live, work and study. There was an
urgent need to adapt to the local culture in order
to achieve effective communication. Secondly,
the United States is a multi-ethnic country, so
how to achieve inter-ethnic communication and
mutual understanding is the common concern of
anthropologists, sociologists, linguists,
ethnologists and culturalists. At the same time,
the US is also a multicultural country, and the
friction between subcultural groups and their
collision with the mainstream culture is
becoming more and more prominent. Thirdly, the
communicative character and individual
consciousness of Americans. Influenced by
individual consciousness, each individual can be
regarded as a carrier of “a small culture”, and the
communicative behavior between people can be
regarded as cross-cultural communication. While
the communicative character constitutes the
original demand for the development of cross-
cultural communication. These three factors also
determine the theoretical construction and
research scope of the discipline. Intercultural
communication is “a transactional, symbolic
process involving the attribution of meaning
between people from different cultures”