Friday 22 March 2013

Construing Levels Of Projection (Viewed ‘From Above’ And ‘From Below’)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 451, 452):
Something that is projected as a meaning is still a phenomenon of language — it is what was referred to above as a ‘metaphenomenon’; but it is presented at a different level — semantic, not lexicogrammatical. When something is projected as meaning it has already been ‘processed’ by the linguistic system — it is a phenomenon of experience that has been construed as meaning; but processed only once, not twice as in the case of wording, where a phenomenon of experience is construed first as meaning and then in turn as wording. … A wording is, as it were, twice cooked. … We are unconsciously aware [sic] that when something has the status of a wording it lies not at one but at two removes from experience; it has undergone two steps in the realisation process. … We have described the process ‘from above’, from the point of view of how experience is first construed as meaning (‘semanticised’) and then as wording (‘grammaticalised’). But looked at ‘from below’, a wording is closer to expression than a meaning is … .