A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of ChatGPT's Academic Writing Responses: Metafunctional Patterns and Implications for Writing Pedagogy

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62978/2601tl100115

Keywords:

Systemic Functional Linguistics, ChatGPT, Academic Writing, Metafunctions, Writing Pedagogy

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (AI), particularly ChatGPT, is having a significant impact on how academic writing is produced, taught and assessed in higher education. This study uses Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analyze how ChatGPT constructs meaning when it responds to academic writing prompts. Drawing on Halliday’s three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual), it examines ten ChatGPT-generated texts representing five academic part-genres: the research introduction, the argumentative essay, the literature review, the methodology section and the discussion section. The analysis shows that ChatGPT produces highly formal, register-appropriate academic discourse characterized by dense nominalization, median- and low-value modality and formulaic evaluation. It makes sophisticated use of transitivity, mood and thematic progression, yet it constructs an “epistemic space of safe neutrality” in which alternative views are acknowledged but, where argument is most expected, left unresolved. Cross-genre analysis indicates that discussion sections have the highest modal density and nominalization and the most heavily hedged interpretive claims, argumentative essays leave their concessions unresolved, and methodology sections show the most procedural sequencing. These findings have implications for writing pedagogy and assessment at a time when machines can reproduce the form of scholarship with great fidelity. The study argues that SFL gives teachers an explicit metalanguage for educating students as critical consumers of language, able not only to produce texts but also to understand how meaning is constructed, negotiated and contested in and through language.

Author Biographies

  • Taimur Khan, Beijing Jiaotong University

    Taimur Khan is a master's student in Foreign Language and Literature at the School of Languages and
    Communication Studies, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China. His research interests include Second
    Language Acquisition, English Language Teaching, and Academic Writing.

  • Lei Feng, Beijing Jiaotong University

    Lei Feng (PhD) is Professor at the School of Languages and Communication Studies, Beijing Jiaotong
    University, China. Her Research interests include Second Language Acquisition, English Language
    Teaching, and Academic Writing.

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Published

2026-09-29

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2026)

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文章

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Copyright (c) 2026 Taimur Khan, Lei Feng (Author)

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