On Situating the Plausibility of Functionalism in SLA: A Discursive Look

Functionalists argue that society has to be considered as a system of interconnected parts. The basic idea of this approach to functionalism is that grammars are driven to become more efficient semiotic systems. Put another way, to functionalists, language is a specific faculty that imposes the output (grammar). The paper concentrates on the functional aspects of language learning and expatiates on the main tenets of functionalism from a discursive look.