Metafunctions

Metafunctions are systemic clusters; that is, they are groups of semantic systems that make meanings of a related kind. The three metafunctions are mapped onto the structure of the clause. For this reason, systemic linguists analyse a clause from three perspectives. Halliday argues that the concept of metafunction is one of a small set of principles that are necessary to explain how language works; this concept of function in language is necessary to explain the organisation of the semantic system of language. Function is considered to be "a fundamental property of language itself".