A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of Remote Real Estate Listings

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rural population in Canada increased faster than in any other G7 country. The province of Newfoundland was a distinct outlier, seeing the most drastic decrease of all rural Canadian regions at 6.4%. This was no surprise to local residents. Since the 1992 Cod Moratorium, these populations have faced continued socioeconomic hardship and decline. While decades of outmigration from rural Newfoundland to urban centres have been studied, current research does not account for this post-pandemic phenomenon. From a linguistic viewpoint, the population decline in Newfoundland has been redirected from regional discourse to a perpetuation of tourism development. While tourist discourse represents one strategy for combating population decline, the linguistic implications upon real estate listings are not known. This project investigated the linguistic implications of increased global mobility and urbanism on real estate listings. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), we analyzed the interpersonal, experiential, and textual metafunctions of a 2022 real estate listing from the remote town of Harbour Breton, Newfoundland. This project not only demonstrated the analytical value of SFL, but systematically revealed persuasive linguistic choices made by an author to attract buyers to a declining rural region. Findings include the frequent use of declarative mood structures, a prevalence of relational attributive processes, and major topical themes relating to the home. These features demonstrate a deliberate saturation of favourable details and a foregrounding of the features of the home above other notable factors (e.g., location, proximity, etc.).