OJSA Home

2022 - Volume 5 - Number 1

Getting Better: A Systematic Functional Interpretation of Grief Through a Song

Rafael Cruz-Reyna * r.cruzreyna@ugto.mx * ORCID: 0000-0003-1259-1760
University of Guanajuato, Division of Social Sciences and Humanities, MEXICO

Open Journal for Studies in Arts, 2022, 5(1), 1-12 * https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsa.0501.01001c
Received: 10 June 2022 ▪ Revised: 21 July 2022 ▪ Accepted: 29 July 2022

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
This article presents an analysis of the song Get Better by British band Alt-J. The song was written amid the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. It mainly represents grief after the loss of a beloved person from the perspective of the bereaved. The analysis was conducted using the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework by Halliday with an emphasis on the three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The findings of the analysis determined that the song depicted a few of the occurrences that some people unfortunately had to experience after unforeseeable death of a loved one and how they managed to overcome grief.

KEY WORDS: bereavement, grief, systemic functional linguistics.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Rafael Cruz-Reyna, Universidad de Guanajuato, División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Departamento de Lenguas, Guanajuato, MEXICO. E-mail: r.cruzreyna@ugto.mx.

REFERENCES:

Δ(alt-J) [@alt_J]. (2021, November 3).  Get Better is the union of two songs. The first an improvised song from 2018 I sang to my partner [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/alt_J/status/1455961142740783113.

Bartlett, T., & O’Grady, G. (Eds.). (2017). The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Routledge.

Brubaker, J., Kivran-Swaine, F., Taber, L., & Hayes, G. (2012). Grief-stricken in a crowd: The language of bereavement and distress in social media. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 6(1), 42-49.

Corless, I. B., Limbo, R., Bousso, R. S., Wrenn, R. L., Head, D., Lickiss, N., & Wass, H. (2014). Languages of grief: A model for understanding the expressions of the bereaved. Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine: An Open Access Journal, 2(1), 132-143.https://doi.org/10.1080/21642850.2013.879041

Didion, J. (2005). The year of magical thinking. Vintage International.

Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.). Continuum.

Fatima, N., Hashmi, F. A., & Hashmi, Z. H. S. (2018). Systemic functional interpretation of transitivity templates in news reports. NUML Journal of Critical Inquiry, 16(1), 1-46.

Fuchs, T. (2021). Grief, melancholy, and depression: An existential phenomenology of reactions to transience. In A. Køster & E. Holte Kofod (Eds.), Cultural, existential and phenomenological dimensions of grief experience (pp. 11-24). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003099420-3

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and identity in the late modem age. Stanford University Press.

Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). Routledge.

Halliday, M., & Webster, J. J. (Eds.) (2009). Bloomsbury companion to systemic functional linguistics. A&C Black.

Hedtke, L. (2002). Reconstructing the language of death and grief. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 10(4), 285-293. https://doi.org/10.1177/105413702236510

Howarth, G. (2000). Dismantling the boundaries between life and death. Mortality, 5(2) 127-138. https://doi.org/10.1080/713685998

Kellehear, A. (2002). Grief and loss: past, present and future. Med J Aust, 177(4),176-177 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.2002.tb04726.x

Køster, A. (2021). What is longing? An existential-phenomenological investigation. In A. Køster & E. Holte Kofod (Eds.), Cultural, existential and phenomenological dimensions of grief experience (pp. 25-39). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003099420-3

Monger, T. (n.d.). Alt-J biography. All music. https://www.allmusic.com/artist/alt-j-mn0002867436/biography?1647570420407.
Ritchie, D. (2003). Loss, grief and representation: “Getting on with it”. Double dialogues, 4, 1-3.

Rosenblatt, P. C. (2016). Parent grief. Narratives of loss and relationship. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315800639

Strange, J. M. (2002). ‘She cried a very little’: Death, grief and mourning in working-class culture, c. 1880-1914. Social History, 27(2), 143-161. https://doi.org/10.1080/030710202OI2837

The sherp (2016). The stories behind all your favourite alt-j tracks. Sherpa Land. https://www.festivalsherpa.com/the-stories-behind-all-your-favourite-alt-j-tracks/.