Minimalism and Language Functions in the Language Classroom: An Overview of Chomsky’s Position and Its Pedagogical Implications

This paper examines the relationship between Chomsky’s Minimalist Program and language functions in the language classroom. The study is motivated by a persistent theoretical and pedagogical question: how can a formal theory concerned primarily with the structure and computation of language be related to classroom practices in which learners use language for communicative, interpersonal, cognitive and social purposes? The paper adopts a qualitative, library-based conceptual research design. Scholarly works published mainly from 2000 to 2026 were purposively selected and thematically synthesized, while foundational works were retained where necessary to establish the historical development of the concepts under investigation. The analysis is organized around three related perspectives: Minimalist syntax, particularly competence, syntactic computation and Merge; functional approaches to language, particularly Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics; and contemporary research on classroom discourse and language pedagogy. The review finds that Minimalism and functional approaches address different analytical dimensions of language. Minimalism provides an account of the computational and structural resources through which linguistic expressions are constructed, whereas functional approaches explain how speakers deploy those resources to accomplish communicative purposes in context. The analysis further demonstrates that the seven functions considered in the paper: informatative, instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic and imaginative, cannot be mapped mechanically onto individual syntactic structures. Rather, a single structure can realise different functions depending on context, and a single function can be realised through different grammatical forms. The paper therefore argues for a complementary, rather than conflated, relationship between formal and functional perspectives. In classroom practice, grammatical instruction can be strengthened when teachers connect form with meaning, communicative purpose and context. The paper recommends that language teaching should integrate structural awareness with opportunities for authentic functional language use, while teacher education should equip teachers to distinguish grammatical form from communicative function and to recognise the multifunctionality of classroom discourse.