Thursday 24 March 2022

The Second-Order Nature Of The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):
The textual metafunction differs from the ideational one in a number of fundamental respects — 
its mode of syntagmatic progression is wave-like, with periodic prominence; 
it is inherently dynamic in that it organises text as process; and 
it is a second-order mode of meaning. …
The textual metafunction is second-order in the sense that it is concerned with semiotic reality: that is, reality in the form of meaning. This dimension of reality is itself constructed by other two metafunctions: the ideational which construes a natural reality, and the interpersonal, which enacts an intersubjective reality.